A Parvānchī Turned Poet Dilettante: History and the Persian Ghazals of Āq Quyūnlū Statesman Najm al-Dīn Masʿūd Sāvajī (d. ca. 898/1493)

Abstract

Abstract This study analyzes selected Persian ghazals attributed to Najm al-Dīn Masʿūd Sāvajī (d. ca. 1493), who, at the behest of Āq Quyūnlū Sultan Yaʿqūb b. Ūzūn Ḥasan (r. 1478–90), held paramount administrative positions in the White Sheep confederate empire. The analysis departs from existing scholarship on premodern Persian ghazal—the tendency of which is to regard the poetic form as nonreflective of its author and its times—and considers these ghazals as sources of historical information. The study thus determines the extent to which the selected lyrics of Najm al-Dīn affirm information about Āq Quyūnlū royal personalities and state policies contained in the traditional sources, like official chronicles, literary biographies, and personal correspondences. In the process, the article introduces an influential, though hitherto overlooked, Āq Quyūnlū bureaucrat who exemplifies a category of versifier largely neglected by modern specialists of Persian classical poetry: the statesmen-cum-poet dilettante.