Persian Epic Research Articles

Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāma Narratives as Epic Episodes: A Case Study

Abstract The article begins with a recapitulation of attention to the Shāhnāma in America and proceeds to an overview of the Shāhnāma in the context of the epic species of narrative, with attention to Hamid Dabashi’s critique in The Shahnameh: The Persian Epic as World Literature of Western writing on world literature and Ferdowsi. The article also here reviews Amin Banani’s much reprinted essay first called “Ferdowsi and the Art of Tragic Epic.” There follow a suggestive list of Shāhnāma parts and a conclusion that, as a whole, it seems not to function as a single narrative, but rather as a collection of epic episodes. As an illustration, the article turns to the story of Rustam and Suhrāb. First comes a cursory American formalist analysis of “The Tale of Sohrab” in Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings translated by Dick Davis. Then comes a discussion of poetic features and effects in Mujtabā Mīnuvī’s edition called Dāstān-i [story of] Rustam va Suhrāb az Shāhnāma.

Utopia’s Cauldron: Travelers’ Lore and Korea (“Besila”) in the Persian Epic of Kush the Tusked

ABSTRACT Besila is a paradisical setting in the Kushnameh, an early twelfth-century Persian epic that combines the ancient Iranian messianic legend of Kangdez with more recent geographical knowledge, based on travelers' reports, of China and Korea. Besila’s messianic role in the narrative, its antipodal location, and its quasi-fictional status are quintessentially utopian, and yet little is revealed about the society of Besila. The Kushnameh instead emphasizes the means by which paradises are formed, including the rational origins of Besila’s monotheistic creed, organic growth, translatio imperii, travel, and geographical knowledge. The Kushnameh’s vision of universal monotheism anticipates the story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, a later utopia with important connections to the development of Islamic political theory. The case of Besila thus suggests that the early modern genre of utopia has deep roots in the medieval discourse of travel and travelers.

Shahrbānū's Recompense: Muslim and Non-Muslim Antagonists and the Hero-Imam in Rabīʿ’s Alī nāma

This article explores the central antagonisms at work within the Alī nāma of Rabīʿ, a fifth/eleventh-century Persian epic by a Twelver Shīʿī poet narrating the deeds of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, in particular the battles of the Camel and of Ṣiffīn. It gives an analysis of this poem within its twin contexts of Shīʿī imamology and Persian poetry, illustrating how these fields are variously drawn upon, combined and challenged in the poem’s unique narrative of the imam, and arguing that Rabīʿ cultivates his oft-cited opposition between Arabo-Islamic truth-telling and Iranian/Zoroastrian deception as a means of navigating intra-Muslim sectarian dynamics. The article argues against reductionist views of the poem, demonstrating the hybrid nuance of its engagement with Sunnīs, Shīʿīs and the pre-Islamic past, as well as providing an overview of this under-studied work of literature.

Koshti/Wrestling: A Victory Key for Heroes in Shahnameh

ABSTRACT Shāhnāmeh, Book of Kings, is one of the greatest epics in the world, beautifully put into verse by Abolqāsem Ferdowsi. It is the great Persian epic which makes the Persian language proud. One of the words repeated many times in Shahnameh is ‘Koshti’ which, in new Persian, means Wrestling as a sport. The authors have attempted to examine the philosophy of Koshti/wrestling in this great feat. The findings of the study show that, often, the great heroes (pahlavānān) in battle, having tried various combat tools and having failed to gain victory over one another, inevitably resort to wrestling which determines the ultimate winner of the fight. In Shahnameh, there are two types of wrestling either on foot or on horseback. The heroes often use wresting techniques to defeat the opponent. It is also worth noting that the hero’s prayer to God and seeking His help are repeated in important cases of wrestling. The place of most of the wrestling is mythological and unknown, often driven by revenge, vengeance or an attempt to safeguard a homeland. Shahnameh narrates heroic values in historical myths. Throughout history, these values have led to the social and educational development of Iranian society and neighboring countries. It should be concluded that heroic values can be extended to the modern world of sports, and play an important role in improving and strengthening the philosophy, moral atmosphere and behavior of today’s sports.

The Image of Women in Eastern and Western Epic literature: Shahnameh and Odyssey

The research examines two epics, one from the East and one from the West with regards to the question of woman and her images in early epic literature. The epics were selected from the literature. The epics were selected from the literature of two cultures, both of which, in different historical periods produced the most advanced civilizations of their time. The Persian epic, The Shahnameh (the book of Kings) was tooted in the ancient Indo-Iranian pagan as well as Zoroastrian traditions, an epic of approximately 60,000 couplets rewritten in the tenth century A. D. in the final, completed from which has reached us today. The Greek exemplar was the odyssey of Homer, epic with which Greek literature begins and widely influences not only the later periods of Greek literature but also the entire Western literature; this epic is also widely known in the East. Central to our study of The Shahnameh and Homeric epics were the themes of dynamism, the individuality of characters and their struggles in the epic world, the resourcefulness of the human mind ascribed to them, the subject of human crises, and irony, all of which are deep-seated components marking the central literary qualities of these epics. Women are indispensable in the early epics of both traditions and more often than not highly regarded by epic heroes in general and the narrators of the stories in particular. In both Eastern and Western example the structure split the female image in two opposite directions: one force is represented by exalted, praiseworthy, and positive images which also endow the women of The Shahnameh and the Homeric poems with powerful characteristics.

Geschichte in Versen vermessen: Annäherung an persische historische Epen (šāhnāmas) aus dem 15.–16. Jahrhundert

Shortly after the completion of Firdausī’s Šāhnāma, historical epics in modern Persian were being written. While sharing in the tradition of šāhnāma-nivīsī, these epics deal with a more recent past. This paper maps out the characteristics of Persian historical epics by means of three examples (ʿAbdallāh Hātifī: Timurnāma and Šāhnāma-yi Hātifī; Qāsimī Gunābādī: Šāhnāma-yi Ismāʿīl). Not only during the Ilkhanid era, but also during later eras these kinds of works were actively being produced in Iran, even though they are as yet largely unexplored. The three aforementioned epics dating from the late Timurid and early Safavid periods (15th and 16th c.) shall illustrate continuities in form and content that transgress the limits of dynastic history, while at the same time acknowledging the three epics’ characteristics to be understood within their particular historical context. It will become clear then that historical epics tied together poetry and historiography consciously. For centuries, the respective authors sought to follow up on Firdausī’s opus and thus to embed the depicted ruler or dynasty/dynasties in a narrative of Iranian history, which apparently greatly appealed to their envisaged audience.

Grotesque Corporeality and Literary Aesthetics in Sadeq Chubak's The Patient Stone

This article is concerned with ways in which grotesque corporeality shapes Sadeq Chubak's controversial novel The Patient Stone (Sang-e Sabur, 1966). Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's understanding of grotesque realism in Rabelais and His World, the discussion demonstrates that Chubak employed devices associated with grotesque aesthetics, and that these devices were used to invert and contest social and literary conventions in Iranian culture, although it seems he remains caught to a certain extent within the very systems he challenges. Grotesque realism involves estrangement of the familiar, and leads to degrading the abstract, spiritual and sublime to the material level of physicality and the body. In The Patient Stone, Chubak replicates motifs of classical Persian epics, religious scriptures and the myth of creation and debases them by excessive depictions of bodily conditions and grotesque corporeality (such as deformity, paralysis and decay). The use of grotesque corporeality embodied in the style, content and characters of Chubak's novel facilitates a variety of paradoxes of being and non-being, appearance and reality, death and rebirth, hope and anxiety of a fragmented and alienated society in desperate need of change.

Peering through the cracks in the Baburnama: The textured Lives of Mughal sovereigns

This article examines the intertwined literary and political processes that moulded the texts of Mughal sovereignty and shaped the lives of Mughal sovereigns. In historical terms it considers the lives of Babur (d. 1530) and his grandson Akbar (d. 1605) and the ‘books’ associated with them, the Baburnama and Akbarnama. However, in order to connect the two pairs, this article follows an unconventional and less trodden path through Safavid political history, Iranian Sufism and the Persian epic and storytelling tradition. By doing so, it reveals new, less intuitive perspectives on the cultures that produced these texts and their protagonists. Specifically, it shows how Babur’s work and others like it were not only products of new literary tastes and reading practices but also participated in the making of new institutions of kingship and sainthood that evolved together in Mughal India and Safavid Iran over the sixteenth century.

Yamamoto, Kumiko: The Oral Background of Persian Epics.

Yamamoto, Kumiko: The Oral Background of Persian Epics.

The Oral Background of Persian Epics: Storytelling and PoetrySunset of Empire: Stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi

The Oral Background of Persian Epics: Storytelling and PoetrySunset of Empire: Stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi

The Oral Background of Persian Epics: Storytelling and Poetry, and: Sunset of Empire: Stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. Vol. 3 (review)

The Oral Background of Persian Epics: Storytelling and Poetry, and: Sunset of Empire: Stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. Vol. 3 (review)

K. Yamamoto. The Oral Background of Persian Epics. Storytelling and Poetry. Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2003, Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures, vol. XXVI, 191 p., bibl., index.

C’est avec un souci de methodologie tres appreciable que l’A. aborde la question difficile de l’influence de l’oralite sur la genese et l’evolution de la tradition persane epique. Prenant pour point de depart l’Oral-Formulaic Theory (voir les travaux d’A. B. Lord et d’A. Parry et les recentes etudes d’O. M. Davidson), elle en propose une approche alternative, definissant un Oral Performance Model compose d’un ensemble de criteres formels et thematiques. Ce modele est elabore a partir de l’etu...

The oral background of Persian epics: storytelling and poetry

This volume discusses the indirect influence of oral transmission on the genesis and evolution of the Persian written epic tradition. On the basis of formal characteristics of naqqali (Persian storytelling) performance, a set of formal and thematic criteria is proposed to determine the extent to which written Persian epics show structures ultimately deriving from oral performance. It is applied to the Shah-name of Ferdowsi (c. 1000) and to the Garshasp-name of Asadi (c. 1064-66). The first part of the book examines the Oral-Formulaic Theory and proposes an alternative approach focusing on naqqali. The book may be relevant to both oralists and Iranists; it demonstrates the complex process where orality interacts with written tradition in the genesis of the Shah-name.

The Clouds Are Departing

1 A mountainous region in eastern Tajikistan and Afghanistan, traditionally famous for its rubies. 2 A tenth-century Persian poet of Bukhara, who is considered the father of Persian poetry. 3 The fourteenth-century poet Hafiz of Shiraz and the eleventh-century poet and astronomer-mathematician Omar Khayyam of Nishapur. Rudaki nostalgically refers to this stream in Bukhara in one of his best-known poems. 5 Rustam is a legendary hero in Firdawsi's Persian epic, the Shdhndma. 6 Abu Ali ibn Sina, known to the West as Avicenna, was an eleventh-century Iranian philosopher. 7 Shashmaqonii Central Asian classical music.

A Persian Epic, Perhaps for the Ottoman Sultan

A Persian Epic, Perhaps for the Ottoman Sultan

Some Parallels between the "Feng-Shen-Yen-I" and the "Shahnameh" and the Possible Influence of the Former upon the Persian Epic

Some Parallels between the "Feng-Shen-Yen-I" and the "Shahnameh" and the Possible Influence of the Former upon the Persian Epic