Nāṣir-i Xusrav and his Raušanāīnāmeh (“The Book of Enlightenment”)

Abstract

The article is a publication of the first commented translation into Russian of a large part of the philosophical and didactic poem (masnavi) Raušanāī-nāmeh – “The Book of Enlightenment” by the great Tajik-Persian poet and philosopher Nāṣir-i Xusrav (Nasir-i Khusrav). Nāṣir-i Xusrav (b. 1004 AD Kobadian d. 1072 AD Yumgan) later in his life adopted the teachings of Isma’ilism (a branch of Shi`a Islam). After traveling to the Middle East, he returned to Khorasan as da’i or Khujjat (the official preacher of Isma‘ilism). He had to hide from persecution in the mountain village of Yumgan. There he spent the last years of his life and wrote his main poetic and philosophical works, viz. Zād al-musāfirīn, Jāmi‘ al-ḥikmatayn and (masnavi) Raušanāī-nāmeh. The latter although comprises the main ideas of the two previous treatises, however, conveys them in a popular form. Nāṣir-i Xusrav’s mostly poetical heritage has already received sufficient attention of the Russian scholars of the 20th century (E. Bertels, V. Nikitina, A. Edelman and A. E. Bertels), however the translation into Russian of his philosophic works remains a desideratum. The translation offered in this article is an attempt to redress the balance. The authors offer a “philological translation”. Contrary to the “literary” translation, this type of translation in the most accurate way conveys the meaning and style of the original in particular, the lexical components, as well as the style. Out of the total 594 beyts the authors had published 162 beyts, which comprise the translation of the al-Ḥamd and the Faṣl fi al-naṣīḥat. The next 58 beyts were translated by M. Shakarbekova. Here we propose the translation of the the following 100 beyts. Nāṣir-i Xusrav deals there with the four elements, the three kingdoms of nature and the origin of the human body from these kingdoms. According to A. E. Bertels, the set of themes of this passage reflects “the scheme of the universe”, and, in general, contains the picture of the world, which was typical for Muslim authors. As one of the oldest poetic documents in the Persian language, this text is of great interest for the study of traditional ideas, as well as their evolution, among authors of other historical epochs and directions of Islam.