Низами Гянджеви

«Nizami’s strong character, his social sensibility, and his poetic genius fused with his rich Persian cultural heritage to create a new standard of literary achievement. Using themes from the oral tradition and written historical records, his poems unite pre-Islamic and Islamic Iran»

UNESCO recognised the 1141 date as his birth date and declared 1991 the year of Niẓāmī.

ATĀBAKĀN-E ĀḎARBĀYJĀN, an influential family of military slave origin, also called Ildegozids, ruled parts of Arrān and Azerbaijan from about 530/1135-36 to 622/1225; as «Great Atābaks» (atābakān-e aʿẓam) of the Saljuq sultans of Persian Iraq (western Iran), they effectively controlled the sultans from 555/1160 to 587/1181; in their third phase they were again local rulers in Arrān and Azerbaijan until the territories which had not already been lost to the Georgians, were seized by Jalāl-al-dīn Ḵᵛārazmšāh in 622/1225.

Īldegoz… He also sought to secure his position on the edges of the declining Saljuq empire by gaining control over parts of Azerbaijan; he probably gained clear control over it only after the death of Masʿūd’s last favorite, Ḵāṣṣ Beg Arslān b. Palangarī in 548/1153, who had been given a position in that area as well.

We can also discern the progressive Persianisation of this originally Arab family (a process parallel to and contemporary with that of the Kurdicisation of the Rawwadids [q.v.] in Adharbaydjan). After the Shah Yazid b. Ahmad (381—418/991-1028), Arab names give way to Persian ones like Manuchihr, Kubadh, Faridun, etc., very likely as a reflection of marriage links with local families, and possibly with that of the ancient rulers in Shabaran, the former capital, and the Yazidids now began to claim a nasab going back to Bahrain Gur or to Khusraw Anushirwan.

«It is to be noted that the Seljuks, those Turkomans who became sultans of Persia, did not Turkify Persia — no doubt because they did not wish to do so. On the contrary, it was they who voluntarily became Persians and who, in the manner of the great old Sassanid kings, strove to protect the Iranian populations from the plundering of Ghuzz bands and save Iranian culture from the Turkoman menace.»

Nizami Ganja’i, whose personal name was Ilyas, is the most celebrated native poet of the Persians after Firdausi… His nisbah designates him as a native of Ganja (Elizavetpol, Kirovabad) in Azerbaijan, then still a country with an Iranian population, and he spent the whole of his life in Transcaucasia; the verse in some of his poetic works which makes him a native of the hinterland of Qom is a spurious interpolation.

Глава 21. О разорении города Гандзак — "Этот многолюдный город [Гандзак] был полон персов, а христиан там было мало.

This city was densely populated with Iranians and a small number of Christians.

The most significant merit of Nozhat al-majāles, as regards the history of Persian literature, is that it embraces the works of some 115 poets from the northwestern Iran (Arrān, Šarvān, Azerbaijan; including 24 poets from Ganja alone), where, due to the change of language, the heritage of Persian literature in that region has almost entirely vanished.

«…Nizami’s mother was of Kurdish origin, and this might point to Ganja where the Kurdish dynasty of Shaddad ruled down to AH. 468; even now Kurds are found to the south of Ganja».

«The author of the collection of documents relating to Arran Mas’ud b. Namdar (c. 1100) claims Kurdish nationality. The mother of the poet Nizami of Ganja was Kurdish (see autobiographical digression in the introduction of Layli wa Majnun). In the 16th century there was a group of 24 septs of Kurds in Qarabagh, see Sharaf-nama, I, 323. Even now the Kurds of the USSR are chiefly grouped south of Ganja. Many place-names composed with Kurd are found on both banks of the Kur»

Several cities in Īrān are more opulent than many others, Richer and more productive, by reason of climate and soil, [<Arabic>] Of these is Ganjah, so full of treasure, in Arrān, Isfahān in `Irāq, In Khurāsān Marv and Ṭus, in Rūm (Asia Minor) Āq Sarāy.

«The three main literary styles which follow each other consecutively are known as: Khurasani, Iraqi, and Hindi. The time spans of each style are equally flexible. Within these broad geographical divisions we then come across certain „literary schools“ which reflect regional peculiarities and idiosyncrasies and are identified with smaller entities like provinces or towns. For example, there are: the Azerbayjani school, the Tabriz school, or the Shirvan school.»

Hakim Jamal al-din Abu Muhammad Ilyas b. Yusuf b. Zaki b. Mu’ayyad Nizami a native of Ganja in Azarbaijan… Little is known of his life, the only source being his own works, which in many cases provided no reliable information.

«Abû Muhammad Ilyas ibn Yusuf ibn Zaki Mu’ayyad, known by his pen-name of Nizami… He lived in an age of both political instability and intense intellectual activity, which his poems reflect; but little is known about his life, his relations with his patrons, or the precise dates of his works, as the accounts of later biographers are colored by the many legends built up around the poet.»

«Abû Muhammad Ilyas ibn Yusuf ibn Zaki Mu’ayyad, known by his pen-name of Nizami, was born around 1141 in Ganja, the capital of Arran in Transcaucasian Azerbaijan, where he remained until his death in about 1209.»

The generous gifts of these royal patrons, which included a Turkish slave-maid with one or two pieces of land, offered a good opportunity for the poet to work on his poetical craft with the patience of a skillful embroiderer. In fact, some writers of Tadhkiras have stated(4) that embroidering was the inherited profession of the poet’s family and that, he himself had renounced it for the sake of poetry, although there is nothing in the poet’s work that might assure us of this point. … But in all these facts, there is nothing to assure us about the poet’s craft.

«Abû Muhammad Ilyas ibn Yusuf ibn Zaki Mu’ayyad, known by his pen-name of Nizami, was born around 1141 in Ganja, the capital of Arran in Transcaucasian Azerbaijan, where he remained until his death in about 1209. His father, who had migrated to Ganja from Qom in north central Iran, may have been a civil servant; his mother was a daughter of a Kurdish chieftain; having lost both parents early in his life, Nizami was brought up by an uncle. He was married three times, and in his poems laments the death of each of his wives, as well as proferring advice to his son Muhammad. He lived in an age of both political instability and intense intellectual activity, which his poems reflect; but little is known about his life, his relations with his patrons, or the precise dates of his works, as the accounts of later biographers are colored by the many legends built up around the poet.»

As the scene of the greatest flowering of the panegyrical qasida, southern Caucasia occupies a prominent place in New Persian literary history. But this region also gave to the world Persia’s finest creator of romantic epics. Hakim Jamal al-din Abu Muhammad Ilyas b. Yusuf b. Zaki b. Mu’ayyad Nizami a native of Ganja in Azarbaijan, is an unrivaled master of thoughts and words, a poet whose freshness and vigor all the succeeding centuries have been unable to dull.

«We can only deduce that he was born between 535 and 540 (1140-46) …»

The traditional biographers, and some modern researchers, differ by six years about the exact date of his birth (535-40/1141-6)…

пыль, прах, земля, земь; вещество, плоть, материя, противоположно духу

«В лучшей и старейшей из известных мне рукописей Низами, принадлежащей Национальной библиотеке в Париже и датированной 763 г. (1360 г. н. э.), этой строки не имеется.»

«Abû Muhammad Ilyas ibn Yusuf ibn Zaki Mu’ayyad, known by his pen-name of Nizami, was born around 1141 in Ganja, the capital of Arran in Transcaucasian Azerbaijan, where he remained until his death in about 1209. His father, who had migrated to Ganja from Qom in north central Iran…»

Neẓāmī, in full Elyās Yūsof Neẓāmī Ganjavī, Neẓāmī also spelled Niẓāmī (b. c. 1141, Ganja, Seljuq empire [now Ganca, Azerbaijan]—d. 1209, Ganja), greatest romantic epic poet in Persian literature, who brought a colloquial and realistic style to the Persian epic.

We can only deduce that he was born between 535 and 540 (1140-46) and that his background was urban.

«Little is known of his life, the only source being his own works, which in many cases provided no reliable information.»

«Abû Muhammad Ilyas ibn Yusuf ibn Zaki Mu’ayyad, known by his pen-name of Nizami, was born around 1141 in Ganja, the capital of Arran in Transcaucasian Azerbaijan, where he remained until his death in about 1209. His father, who had migrated to Ganja from Qom in north central Iran, may have been a civil servant; his mother was a daughter of a Kurdish chieftain; having lost both parents early in his life, Nizami was brought up by an uncle.»

«At all events his mother was of Iranian origin, the poet himself calling her Ra’isa and describing her as Kurdish.»

«At all events his mother was of Iranian origin, the poet himself calling her Ra’isa and describing her as Kurdish.»

«Abû Muhammad Ilyas ibn Yusuf ibn Zaki Mu’ayyad, known by his pen-name of Nizami, was born around 1141 in Ganja, the capital of Arran in Transcaucasian Azerbaijan, where he remained until his death in about 1209. His father, who had migrated to Ganja from Qom in north central Iran, may have been a civil servant; his mother was a daughter of a Kurdish chieftain; having lost both parents early in his life, Nizami was brought up by an uncle.»

«His father, Yusuf and mother, Rai’sa, died while he was still relatively young, but maternal uncle, Umar, assumed responsibility for him»

«His father, Yusuf and mother, Rai’sa, died while he was still relatively young, but maternal uncle, Umar, assumed responsibility for him»

When Nizami, who was an unusual gifter child, began his formal education, he encountered a vast ocean of Islamic sciences. He studied the religious sciences as his work reflect and mastered the art of quaranic interpretation and Hadith which are the fundamental and foundational bases of the Islamic sciences.

"As a learned Iranian poet, Niẓami, who demonstrates his eclecticism in the information he gives (he says, «I have taken from everything just what suited me and I have borrowed from recent histories, Christian, Pahlavi and Jewish … and of them I have made a whole»), locates the story of his hero principally in Iran.

In a highly evocative tale he relates in the Makhzan al-Asrar («Treasury of Secrets»), the twelfth-century Persian poet, Nizami whose oeuvre is an acknowledged repository of Iranian myths and legends, illustrates the way in which the rose was perceived in the Medieval Persian imagination.

From his poetry, it is evident that he was learned not only in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, jurisprudence, history, and philosophy but also in music and the arts.

In recognition of his vast knowledge and brilliant mind, the honorific title of ḥakīm, "learned doctor, " was bestowed upon him by scholars.

Nizami was not a philosopher like Farabi, ibn Sina and Suhrawardi or the expositor of theoretical Sufism like Ibn 'Arabi and 'Abd al-Razzaq Kashani. However he should be regarded as philosopher and a gnostic who had who had mastered various fields of Islamic thought which he synthesized in a way to bring to mind the tradition of the Hakims who were to come after him such as Qutb al-Din Shirazi and Baba Afdal Kashani, who, while being masters of various school of knowledge, attempted to synthesize different traditions of philosophy, gnosis and theology.

«Usually, there is more precise biographical information about the Persian court poets, but Nizāmī was not a court poet; he feared loss of integrity in this role and craved primarily for the freedom of artistic creation.»

«Alāʾ-al-dīn of Marāḡa… He seems to have been a man of pronounced literary interests, since at his request the poet Neẓāmī Ganǰavī composed the Haft peykar».

«… Nizami was brought up by an uncle. He was married three times, and in his poems laments the death of each of his wives, as well as proferring advice to his son Muhammad. He lived in an age of both political instability and intense intellectual activity, which his poems reflect; but little is known about his life, his relations with his patrons, or the precise dates of his works, as the accounts of later biographers are colored by the many legends built up around the poet.»

«… He was married three times, and in his poems laments the death of each of his wives, as well as proferring advice to his son Muhammad.»

«… Nizami … He lived in an age of both political instability and intense intellectual activity, which his poems reflect; but little is known about his life, his relations with his patrons, or the precise dates of his works, as the accounts of later biographers are colored by the many legends built up around the poet.»

In honour of Nizámi, it is related that Ata Beg was desirous of forming and cultivating an acquaintance with him, and with that view ordered one of his courtiers to request his attendance. But it was replied, that Nizámi, being an austere recluse, studiously avoided all intercourse with princes. Ata Beg, on hearing this, and suspecting that the extreme piety and abstinence of Nizámi were affected, waited upon him in great pomp for the purpose of tempting and seducing him from his obscure retreat; but the result was highly favourable to the poet; and the prince ever afterwards looked upon him as a truly holy man, frequently visiting him, and treating him with the most profound respect and veneration. Nizámi also received many substantial proofs of the admiration in which his genius and learning were held. On one occasion, five thousand dinars were sent to him, and on another he was presented with an estate consisting of fourteen villages.

The traditional biographers, and some modern researchers, differ by six years about the exact date of his birth (535-40/1141-6), and as much as thirty-seven years about the date of his death (575—613/1180-1217). Now there is no doubt, however, that he died in the 7th/13th century, and the earlier dates must be discarded as erroneous.

The culture of Nizami’s Persia is renowned for its deep-rooted tradition and splendor. In pre-Islamic times, it had developed extraordinarily rich and exact means of expression in music, architecture, and daily life as well as in writing, although Iran, its center--or, as the poets believed, its heart--was continually overrun by invading armies and immigrants, this tradition was able to absorb, transform, and ultimately overcome foreign intrusion. Alexander the Great was only one of many conquerors, to be seduced by the Persian way of life.

Nizami was a typical product of the Iranian culture. He created a bridge between Islamic Iran and pre-Islamic Iran and also between Iran and the whole ancient world.

The centripetal tendency is evident in the unity of Persian literature from the points of view of language and content and also in the sense of civic unity. Even the Caucasian Nizami, although living on the far-flung periphery, does not manifest a different spirit and apostrophizes Iran as the Heart of the World.

… the great 12th century Persian poet Nezami, who in the famous Haft Peykar («The Seven Portraits») wrote that «The world is the body and Iran is its heart».

چونکه ایران دل زمین باشد:

Весь мир — тело, а Иран — сердце,

Не устыдится высказавший это сравнение.

Так как Иран — сердце мира,

то сердце лучше тела, несомненно.

(подстрочный перевод с персидского)

Оригинальный текст (перс.)[показатьскрыть]

همه عالم تن است و ایران دل

نیست گوینده زین قیاس خجل

چونکه ایران دل زمین باشد

دل ز تن به بود یقین باشد

The world is a body, Iran its heart,

No shame to him who says such a word

Iran, the world’s most precious heart,

excels the body, there is no doubt.

Among the realms the kings posses,

the best domain goes to the best.

The world entire is body, Persia, heart,

the writer shames not at this parallel;

For since that land’s the heart of (all) the earth

the heart is better than the body, sure*295.

Of these dominions which the rulers have

the best of places to the best accrue.

295. The sense is apparently, «since Persia is the heart of the earth, Persia is the best part of the earth, because it is certain that the heart is better than the body.»

«It seems that Nezami’s favorite pastime was reading Firdawsi’s monumental epic Shahnameh(The book of Kings)»

«However, it was not Tabari directly, but Ferdowsi who was Nizami’s source of inspiration and material in composing Iskandarnameh. Nizami constantly alludes to the Shahnameh in his writing, especially in the prologue to the Iskandarnameh. It seems that he was always fascinated by the work of Firdawsi and made it a goal of his life to write an heroic epic of the same stature.»

The poem had an immense influence on Neẓāmi, who takes the bases for most of his plots from Ferdowsi but the basis for his rhetoric from Gorgāni. This is especially noticeable in his Ḵosrow o Širin, which imitates a major scene (that of the lovers arguing in the snow) from Vis o Rāmin, as well as being in the same meter (hazaj) as Gorgāni’s poem. Nezami’s concern with astrology also has a precedent in an elaborate astrological description of the night sky in Vis o Rāmin. Given Nezami’s own paramount influence on the romance tradition, Gorgāni can be said to have initiated much of the distinctive rhetoric and poetic atmosphere of this tradition, with the exception of its Sufi preoccupations, which are quite absent from his poem.

The Ḥadiqat al-ḥaqiqa is not only one of the first of a long line of Persian didactical maṯnawis, it is also one of the most popular works of its kind as the great number of copies made throughout the centuries attest. Its great impact on Persian literature is evidenced by the numerous citations from the poem occurring in mystical as well as profane works. It has been taken as a model by several other poets, including Neẓāmi, ʿAṭṭār, Rumi, Awḥadi, and Jāmi.

The first poet who frankly acknowledged his indebtedness to Sanai as a writer of a didactical Masnavi was Ilyas ibn Yusuf Nizami of Ganja (1141—1209).

Though he did not write for the stage, he could be called a master dramatist. The plot in his romantic stories is carefully constructed to enhance the stories' psychological complexities. The characters work and grow under the stress of action to discover things about themselves and others and to make swift decisions.

Niẓāmī's originality lies in his psychological portrayal of the richness and complexity of the human soul when confronted with intense and abiding love.

He delineated simple people with as much insight and compassion as the princely heroes in his mat̲h̲nawīs. Artisans were particularly dear to him. Painters, sculptors, architects and musicians are carefully portrayed and often play crucial roles.

Niẓāmī was a master in the genre of the romantic epic. In erotic sensuous verse, he explains what makes human beings behave as they do, revealing their follies and their glories, all their struggles, unbridled passions and tragedies.

To Niẓāmī, truth was the very essence of poetry. On this principle, he attacks the court poets who sell their integrity and talents for earthly returns. The Islamic law served as the loom on which the philosophy of his Mak̲h̲zan al-asrār was woven in intricate patterns. He was looking for universal justice, and is trying to protect the poor and humble people and to put under scrutiny the excesses of the powerful of the world. The guidelines for people in the poem are accompanied by warnings of the transitory nature of life.

… the poet Nizami has attempted to picture a perfect society—a utopia.

It is virtually impossible to draw a clear line in Niẓāmī's poetry between the mystical and the erotic, the sacred and the profane.

Although some scholars consider Mak̲h̲zan al-asrār a mystical poem, the mysticism with its symbolism is apparent only in the introduction, which is infused with the essence of Ṣūfī thought.

… As a matter of fact, contrary to what the usually inaccurate Dawlatshah has maintained, our poet was never received formally in a Sufi order.

It seems, however, more likely that Nizami, might represent an ascetic mysticism, similar to that of Ghazali and '՝ Attar, to which the individualist tendencies of the poet have added more decernable features.

Gol or gul; rose (Rosa L. spp.) and, by extension, flower, bloom, blossom.

The association of the rose with Islam’s prophet was expressed in many spiritually and artistically creative ways…

The culture of flowers in Iran was always closely linked with the cultivation of the Persian garden… The medieval Persian garden, in the form of the quadripartite architectural garden (chaharbagh), was the direct descendent of the ancient Persian «paradise» (paridaiza) of the Achemenid kings, which had formed an intrinsic part of the imperial palace institution. Even the advent of Islam to Iran did not exert a negative impact on Persian garden culture.

The antiquity of rose cultivation in Iran … would appear to be confirmed linguistically as well.

the rose was associated … with Daena, one of the female yazatas, who was the deity of religion.

In medival Perso-Islamic culture, and in poetry in particular, which is the finest expression of the Persian creative genious, the image of the rose was employed as a vehicle for a variety of concepts. It became an especially powerful symbol in the mystical trend that, from the twelfth century onwards, permeated Persian religious thought and literary culture.

… many Persian mystical authors utilized the image of the rose as a symbolical depiction of the Divinity

… the nightingale’s love for the rose was interprete as the mystic’s spiritual yearning for the Divine…

… Rumi states that the fragnance of the rose provides a hint of the mystery of the divine Reality that underlies all things…

… he (Rumi) exhorts the mystic to abandon his carnal self in order that he might himself become like the scent of the rose that guids others to the divine Rose Garden.

… «the breath of intellience and reason».

Although the tale points primarily to the power of psychological suggestion, what is of significance for our topic is that it is the mysterious nature of scent, and of the scent of the rose in particular, that serves as the metaphorical vehicle in this classic text of medival Persian poetic narrative.

In Islamic cosmology, the earth was placed in the centre of the seven planets: the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These were considered agents of God, and in their motion influenced beings and events on earth. Niẓāmī firmly believed as well that the unity of the world could be perceived through arithmetical, geometrical, and musical relations. Numbers were the key to the one interconnected universe; for through numbers multiplicity becomes unity and discordance, harmony.

Niẓāmī's use of allegories, parables and words with double meaning raised the Persian language to a new height.

The language of Niẓāmī is unconventional. He introduces new and lucid metaphors and images as well as coining new words.

… the compounds and images are welded together with various elements of the narrative to enhance its force.

Another remarkable feature of Nizaml’s style is his avoidance of every-day words for human occupations, emotions and behaviour.

Another salient feature of Nizamfs style is the introduction of aphorisms. Long passages of Layll and Majnun are composed in epigrammatic style, and many of the poem’s maxims have become proverbs.

… the use of concise and pithy expressions but also in the insertion of colloquial speech. The poet’s language is idiomatically rich but stylistically deceptively relaxed and simple, especially in dialogues and monologues.

Nizami describes his own style as gharib, meaning 'rare,' 'unique,' 'strange,' or nau, 'new,' 'novel.' He refers to himself as the magician of words whose name is "the mirror of the invisible.

NOZHAT AL-MAJĀLES, an anthology of some 4,000 quatrains (robāʿi; a total of 4,139 quatrains, 54 of which have been repeated in the text) by some 300 poets of the 5th to 7th/11th-13th centuries, compiled around the middle of the 7th/13th century by the Persian poet Jamāl-al-Din Ḵalil Šarvāni.

Ḵosrow o Širin… The poem was composed over a period of about 16 lunar years, between 571/1175-6 and 587/1191 (cf. de Blois, pp. 440, 446; Zarrinkub, p. 25ff.). It contains eulogies to the Seljuq sultan Ṭöḡrol III b. Arsalān (571 /1175-6-590/1194), to his nominal vassal but actual master, the atābak (q.v.) of Azerbaijan Abu Jaʿfar Moḥammad b. Ildegez Jahān-Pahlavān (571/1175-6-582/1186-7), and to the latter’s brother and successor Qezel Arsalān (582/1186-7 to 587/1191).

But the manuscripts of the ‘a’ recension have altered (or miscopied?) the name of the dedicatee to Qïzïl Arslān, retained the verse giving the day, month and hour of completion, but altered the year to «after ṯā (variant: tā) and ṣād and ḥē» i.e., either «after 498» (which is much too early) or «after 598/1202.»

This suggests that Neẓāmī originally planned to dedicate the Eskandar-nāma, like Leylī o Majnūn, to one of the kings of Šarvān. But that dynasty evidently lost power over Ganja by the time the poems were completed, and in their final form they are dedicated to the malek of Ahar, Noṣrat-al-Dīn Bīškīn b. Moḥammad. This ruler is mentioned in the introduction to Šaraf-nāma, chap. 10, vv. 11-12, where the poet makes a pun on his name Bīškīn («whose hatred is more»), though some of the manuscripts have a superscription claiming (wrongly) that the verses evoke Bīškīn’s overlord, the atabeg Noṣrat-al-Dīn Abū Bakr.

The five epic poems represent a total of close to 30,000 couplets …

It contains the didactic poem Maḵzan al-asrār in around 2,260 couplets in sariʿ meter; three epic romances: Ḵosrow o Širin (q.v.) in around 6,500 couplets in hazaj meter, Leyli o Majnun (q.v.) in around 4,600 couplets in hazaj meter, and Haft peykar (q.v.) in about 5130 couplets in ḵafif meter; and the Eskandar-nāma (q.v.), which can be regarded as an epic interlaced with didactic observations and consists of two formally separate parts, in all about 10,500 couplets in motaqāreb meter.

LEYLI O MAJNUN, a narrative poem of approximately 4,600 lines composed in 584/1188 by the famous poet Neẓāmi of Ganja.

The first of his five (see below) ‘Treasures’ was influenced by Sanāʾi of Ghazna’s (d. 1131) monumental Garden of Truth (Ḥadiqa al-ḥadiq wa šariʿa al-ṭariqa; q.v.).

The details with which Nizami describes musicians are one of the delights of the Khamseh and make it a principal source of our present knowledge of the twelfth-century Persian musical composition and instruments.

However, in spite of his interest in commoners, Nizami did not reject the institution of kingship; he always believed it was an integral and sacred part of the Persian way of life.

… the perusal of Gorgāni’s Vis o Rāmin, inspired Neẓāmi’s second major narrative poem: Ḵosrow and Širin (1181), his first masterpiece.

«Khosrow and Shirin» proved to be a literary turning point not only for Nizami but for all of Persian poetry. Furthermore it was the first poem in Persian literature to achieve complete structural and artistic unity

Ḵosrow o Širin… … Neẓāmi states that his source was a manuscript kept in Bardaʿ, the ancient capital of Arrān.

The poem relates a love affair that takes place in a historical setting: the deposition, imprisonment, and blinding of the Sasanian king Hormoz (579—590 CE), during an insurrection led by two maternal uncles of prince Ḵosrow, designated to become king and probably party to the rebellion; the accession of Ḵosrow to his father’s throne (590 CE); the uprising of the army commander Bahrām Čubin against the new king; and Ḵosrow’s flight to the Byzantine empire to seek help from the qeyṣar, emperor Maurice (582—602 CE). These events, documented in the historical sources (Christensen, pp. 436-90), and narrated in detail in Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma, are only briefly referred to by Neẓāmi, who focuses his attention on the love relationship between Ḵosrow and Širin.

Ḵosrow o Širin, the second poem of Neẓāmi’s Ḵamsa, recounts the amorous relationship between the Sasanian king Ḵosrow II Parviz (590—628 CE), and the beautiful princess Širin.

Ḵosrow o Širin… … Širin, an Armenian princess, is of the same proud and aristocratic mettle as Vis, both ardently faithful to their declared love and daring enough to force the hand of Fate, a Destiny that plays, in the case of Širin, upon the weaknesses and youthful foibles of her lover, Ḵosrow Parviz, grandson of Ḵosrow I.

FARHĀD, a romantic figure in Persian legend and literature, best known from the poetry of Neẓāmī Ganjavī (q.v.) as a rival with the Sasanian king Ḵosrow II Parvēz (r. 591—628) for the love of the beautiful Armenian princess Šīrīn.

2) «Хосров и Ширина», напис. в 1180 г. Любовь сасанидского царя Первиза к армянской княжне Ширине должна аллегорически изображать стремление души человеческой к Богу; но эта поэма (как и последующие) так живо рисует человеческие характеры и страсти, что не предупреждённый читатель не может даже подозревать здесь аллегории. Изд. в Тебризе (без года), в Лагоре (1871); нем. пер. Гаммера (Лпц., 1809).

Друг Хосрова Шапур, изъездивший мир от Магриба до Лахора, соперник Мани в живописи и победитель Евклида в черчении, повествует о чудесах, увиденных на берегу Дербентского моря. Там правит грозная царица Шемира, именуемая также Мехин Бану. Она повелевает Арраном вплоть до Армении, а лязг оружия её войска слышен в Исфахане.

Хосров, восхищенный рассказом друга, лишается сна, думает лишь о неведомой пери. Наконец он посылает Шапура в Армению за Ширин. Шапур мчится в армянских горах, где лазурные скалы облачены в желтые и красные одежды цветов.

В это же время большую известность на всем Ближнем Востоке получил другой гениальный поэт Низами, написавший в 1188 г. по заказу Ахситана поэму «Лейли и Меджнун».

The most famous Persian rendering of this tale is the epic romance Layla va Majnun by Nizami Ganjavi (1141—1209 A.D.). His Layla and Majnun (1188 A.D.) is the third work in his Khamza (Quintet, a collection of five great epic poems), and was written by the order of Akhsatan, a king of the Shirvan-shah dynasty.

Its popularization was accelerated by Layli Majnun, a romantic epic of about 4,000 verses, composed in 1188 by Nizami, at the request of Akhsatan I of Azerbaijan.

LEYLI O MAJNUN … The romance belongs to the ʿUḏri (ʿOḏri) genre. The plot ofʿUḏri stories is simple and revolves around unrequited love; the characters are semi-historical and their actions are similar to, and easily interchangeable with, those of characters from otherʿUḏri romances.

LEYLI O MAJNUN … Persian verse romances are commonly about princes, and characters are usually related to courtly circles. Likewise, Neẓāmi portrays the lovers as aristocrats. He also urbanizes the Bedouin legend: Majnun does not meet Leyli in the desert amongst the camels, but at school with other children. Other Persian motifs added to the story are the childless king, who desires an heir; nature poetry, especially about gardens in spring and autumn, and sunset and sunrise; the story of an ascetic living in a cave; the account of the king of Marv and his dogs; the Zeyd and Zeynab episode; Majnun’s supplication to the heavenly bodies and God; his kingship over animals, and his didactic conversations with several characters.

LEYLI O MAJNUN. There are numerous editions of the romance from many countries, in a variety of forms. An enormous body of lithographed publications appeared in India, and these need to be examined not only for their texts but also for their illustrations. Critical editions of the romance appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century in Persia. The Persian scholar Waḥid Dastgerdi made a critical edition containing 66 chapters and 3,657 lines: he omits 1,007 couplets as interpolations, but he admits that some of these are by Neẓāmi. According to Dastgerdi, the interpolations must have taken place between 780/1349 and 800/1398. Under the supervision of Evgeniĭ E`duardovich Bertel’s, A. A. Alizada prepared another edition (Moscow, 1965) which consists of 66 chapters and 4,559 couplets. Behruz Ṯarvatiān’s edition has 63 chapters and 4, 553 verses, while the most recent critical edition of the poem, edited by Barāt Zanjāni, has 67 chapters and 4,583 verses.

… the title of the story can be translated as the «Seven Portraits», the «Seven Effigies», as well as the «Seven Princesses». The poem is also known as the Haft gunbad or «Seven Domes».

After the customary long introductory sections, the poet gives an account of the birth of Bahrām, the often-told story of his upbringing at the court of the Arab king Noʿmān (here, as often, mislocated in the Yemen instead of al-Ḥira) and the construction of Noʿmān’s fabled palace, Ḵᵛarnaq. Reared in the desert, Bahrām becomes a formidable huntsman. Wandering through the palace, Bahrām discovers a locked room containing the portraits of seven princesses, one from each of the seven climes, with whom he immediately falls in love.

Years pass. While the king is busy with his wives an evil minister seizes power in the realm. Eventually Bahrām discovers that the affairs of the kingdom are in disarray, the treasury is empty and the neighboring rulers poised for invasion. To clear his mind, he goes hunting in the steppe. Returning from the hunt he comes across a herdsman who has suspended his dog from a tree. He asks him why. The shepherd tells the story of how the once faithful watchdog had betrayed his flock to a she-wolf in return for sexual favors. The king realizes that his own watchdog (the evil minister) is the cause of his misfortune. He investigates the minister. From the multitude of complainants he selects seven, who tell him of the injustices that they have suffered (the stories of the seven victims are the somber counterweight to the stories of the seven princesses). The minister is put to death. The king restores justice, and orders the seven pleasure-domes to be converted into fire temples for the worship of God. Bahrām goes hunting one last time and disappears mysteriously into a cavern. He seeks the wild ass (gūr) but finds his tomb (gūr).

ESKANDAR-NĀMA OF NEŻĀMĪ, the poetical version of the life of Alexander by the great 12th century narrative poet Neẓāmī Ganjavī (535—605/1141-1209). It consists of two formally independent works, both in rhymed couplets and in the motaqāreb meter (see ʿARŪŻ) of the Šāh-nāma. The first part is generally known as Šaraf-nāma, the second as Eqbāl-nāma or Ḵerad-nāma, but there is no strong evidence that the author used these names to distinguish the two parts, and in quite a few manuscripts the name Šaraf-nāma is in fact applied to the second of the two poems. In India they are also known as Eskandar-(or Sekandar-) nāma-ye barrī and baḥrī respectively. Together they form one of the five constituent parts of the Ḵamsa, the posthumous collection of Neẓāmī’s major poems, and in most, though not all, of the manuscripts they are the last constituent.

ESKANDAR-NĀMA OF NEŻĀMĪ… But earlier in the same poem (Šaraf-nāma, chap. 9, vv. 49-51) Neẓāmī says that he has already created «three pearls» before undertaking this "new ornament, " strengthening the suspicion that the mention of a fourth title in chapter 13 is an interpolation. Moreover, in Šaraf-nāma, chap. 41, vv. 3-23, the author laments the death of the Šarvānšāh Aḵsatān (the dedicatee of Leylī o Majnūn) and addresses words of advice to his (unnamed) successor. This suggests that Neẓāmī originally planned to dedicate the Eskandar-nāma, like Leylī o Majnūn, to one of the kings of Šarvān. But that dynasty evidently lost power over Ganja by the time the poems were completed, and in their final form they are dedicated to the malek of Ahar, Noṣrat-al-Dīn Bīškīn b. Moḥammad. This ruler is mentioned in the introduction to Šaraf-nāma, chap. 10, vv. 11-12, where the poet makes a pun on his name Bīškīn («whose hatred is more»), though some of the manuscripts have a superscription claiming (wrongly) that the verses evoke Bīškīn’s overlord, the atabeg Noṣrat-al-Dīn Abū Bakr.

ESKANDAR-NĀMA OF NEŻĀMĪ… The principal episodes of the legend of Alexander, as known to the Muslim tradition, are elaborated in the Šaraf-nāma: the birth of Alexander, his succession to the Macedonian throne, his war against the Negroes who had invaded Egypt, the war with the Persians, ending with the defeat and death of Dārā (see DARIUS III) and Alexander’s marriage to Dārā’s daughter, his pilgrimage to Mecca.

ESKANDAR-NĀMA OF NEŻĀMĪ… Neẓāmī then dwells at some length on Alexander’s stay in the Caucasus and his visit to Queen Nūšāba of Bardaʿa (q.v.; in the immediate neighborhood of Neẓāmī’s home town, Ganja) and her court of Amazons; this lady takes over the role of Candace in earlier versions of the Alexander saga. Alexander then goes to India and China. During his absence the Rūs (i.e., the Russian Vikings) invade the Caucasus and capture Bardaʿa (as they in fact did some two centuries before Neẓāmī’s time) and take Nūšāba prisoner.

ESKANDAR-NĀMA OF NEŻĀMĪ… In the Eqbāl-nāma Alexander, the undisputed ruler of the world, is depicted no longer as a warrior, but as a sage and a prophet. He debates with Greek and Indian philosophers, and a sizeable part of the text is occupied by the discourses in which the seven Greek sages elaborate their ideas about the creation.

ESKANDAR-NĀMA OF NEŻĀMĪ… But we find also a number of extended parables, of only tangential connection with the Alexander story but exceptionally well told. The poet then tells of Alexander’s end and adds an account of the circumstances of the death of each of the seven sages. It is at this point that an interpolator has added the already mentioned account of Neẓāmī’s own death.

ESKANDAR-NĀMA OF NEŻĀMĪ… Whereas the Šaraf-nāma clearly belongs to the tradition of Persian epic poetry — though Neẓāmī makes no attempt to emulate the style and manner of the Šāh-nāma — in the Eqbāl-nāma he shows his talents as a didactic poet, an anecdotist and a miniaturist.

In honour of Nizámi, … The brief notice in Dowlat Shah’s account of the Poets of Persia represents him as the finest writer of the age in which he lived. Hafiz thus speaks of him:— Not all the treasured store of ancient days Can boast the sweetness of Nizami’s lays.

Many later poets have imitated Nizami’s work, even if they could not equal and certainly not surpass it; Persians, Turks, Indians, to name only the most important ones. The Persian scholar Hekmat has listed not less than forty Persians and thirteen Turkish versions of Layli and Majnun

The influence of Neẓāmi’s work on the subsequent development of Persian literature has been enormous. Not only each of his poems, but also the Ḵamsa as a whole became a pattern that was emulated in later Persian poetry (and also in other Islamic literatures).

The stories in Neẓāmi’s poems have provided the Persian art of the miniature with an abundance of subject matter: his Ḵamsa, together with Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma, were the most frequently illustrated literary works.

The first attempt at a critical edition was made by Waḥid Dastgerdi (Tehran, 1934-39, with several reprints).

The Haft peykar has come down to us as part of the Ḵamsa, the posthumous collection of Nezami’s narrative poems. A critical edition of the Haft peykar was produced by Helmut Ritter and Jan Rypka (Prague, printed Istanbul, 1934) on the basis of fifteen Ḵamsa manuscripts and the Bombay lithograph of 1265.

This is one of the very few editions of a classical Persian text that uses a strict text-critical methodology: the editors divided the principal manuscripts into two families (called ‘a’ and ‘b’). Only those verses shared by both families are regarded as authentic. The ‘b’ family is taken as the main basis for the edition, with those verses missing in the ‘a’ family printed in square brackets.

In his Noten und Abhandlungen Goethe paid tribute to several other Persian poets: Ferdowsi, Anwari, Neẓāmi, Rumi, Saʿdi, and Jāmi (Goethe, 1998a, pp. 153-60). But Ḥāfeẓ was the only one to whom he devoted an entire book.

… but it was Joseph Hammer-Purgstall’s 1812 translation of the fourteenth-century poet Hafiz, master of the Ghazel, that inspired Goethe’s West-ostlicher Divan.

The Divan of Hafiz inspired Goethe to write the three hundred poems of his West- Eastern Divan…

Низами бог между поэтами. Как же можно ставить его имя наряду с пророками?

Nizami is not so familiar to western nations as Firdausi, Hafiz, or Sa’di; but in Persia he is among the foremost classics, and, in his peculiar field, may be placed second to Firdausi.

Nizami is not so familiar to western nations as Firdausi, Hafiz, or Sa’di; but in Persia he is among the foremost classics, and, in his peculiar field, may be placed second to Firdausi.

Nizami is not so familiar to western nations as Firdausi, Hafiz, or Sa’di; but in Persia he is among the foremost classics, and, in his peculiar field, may be placed second to Firdausi.

There are hundreds of them, but the sacred number seven enumerates those that the Persians themselves and critics generally consider the greatest. These, beside Firdausi, are Anvari, Nizami, Jalal ud-Din Rumi, Sa’di, Hafiz, and Jami.

The memorization and recitation of their literary heritage has alway beens vital to Iranians, whose attitude towards the power of the written and spoken word is revential. Even today the national passion for poetry is constantly expressed over radio and television, in teahouses, in literary socities, in daily conversation, and in the Musha’areh, the poetry recitation contest. Nizami’s work serves as a vehicle and a symbol of this tradition.

The UNESCO declaration that 1991 was the year of Niẓāmī in honor of the 850th anniversary of the poet’s birth as well as Giacomo Puccini’s use of a story from Haft Paykar for the basis of his opera Turandot exemplify Niẓāmī’s lasting eminence beyond the realm of Persian literature.

Кроме «Джаваншира» и «Ожидания», М. Гусейн написал ещё две пьесы — «Слава» — о жизни пограничников (1938) и «Низами» (1940).

Nizami Ganjevi, because of his wide fame and enormous contributions to Persian-language literature, is seen as an example of the interconnections between Turkish and Persian cultural strands and of Azerbaijan’s place in Turco-Persian culture.

UNESCO recognised the 1141 date as his birth date and declared 1991 the year of Niẓāmī. To honour the 850th anniversary of his birth, there were international Niẓāmī congresses held in 1991 in Washington, Los Angeles, London and Tabrīz.