Хамсе

Another noteworthy work of Persian literature was the Khamsa (Quintet) of Nizami (1141—1209), which retold some of the heroic and romantic stories of the Shahnamah, the Arabic romance of Majnun and Layla, and incorporated poetic reflections on philosophical and religious themes. Nizami had a great influence on the subsequent development of Persian poetry.

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.

Ḵosrow o Širin… The death of his beloved wife, and the perusal of Gorgāni’s Vis o Rāmin, inspired Neẓāmi’s second major narrative poem: Ḵosrow and Širin (1181), his first masterpiece. It has a complex structure with several genres exploited simultaneously; and contains many verbal exchanges and letters, all imbued with lyrical intensity. 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.

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.).

«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, 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.

The Eskandar-nāma also has a lot of local color in the episodes set in the Caucasus, which must have appealed to the poet’s intended audience, and perhaps the most attractive character in the poem, Queen Nūšāba, belongs to that area, as does the Armenian princess who is the heroine of Ḵosrow o Šīrīn. Indeed, a striking feature in all three of the mentioned poems is the prominence of strong female characters.

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 бардинской 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 Барду за Ширин. Шапур мчится в 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, a narrative poem of approximately 4,600 lines composed in 584/1188 by the famous poet Neẓāmi of Ganja.

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.

LEYLI O MAJNUN … Leyli dies out of grief and is buried in her bridal dress. Hearing this news, Majnun rushes to her grave where he instantly dies. They are buried side by side and their graves become a site of pilgrimage. In the coda, someone dreams that they are united in Paradise, living as a king and queen.

HAFT PEYKAR, a famous romantic epic by Nezami of Ganja (Neẓāmi Ganjavi) from the last decade of the 6th/12th century. The title can be translated literally as "seven portraits, " but also with the figurative meaning of «seven beauties.» Both translations are meaningful and the poet doubtless exploited intentionally the ambiguity of the words.

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.

Bahrām’s father Yazdjerd (i.e. Yazdegerd I) dies, and Bahrām returns to Persia to claim his throne from a pretender. After much palaver he is recognized as king. He rescues his people from a famine. Next Nezami picks up the story of Bah-rām’s hunting expedition with the loose-tongued slave-girl Feṭna, but alters the version known from the Šāh-nāma considerably; here the girl is not put to death, but eventually pardoned, and the king learns a lesson in clemency. The king sets out in search of the seven princesses and wins them as his brides. He orders his architect to construct seven domes to house his new wives.

The craftsman tells him that each of the climes is ruled by one of the seven planets and advises him to assure his good fortune by adorning each dome with the color associated with the clime and planet of its occupant.

The king is at first skeptical but eventually lets the architect have his way. The princesses take up residence in the splendid pavilions. The king visits each princess on successive days of the week: on Saturday the Indian princess, who is governed by Saturn, in the black dome, on Sunday the Greek princess, who is governed by the sun, in the yellow dome, and so on. Each princess regales the king with a story matching the mood of her respective color. These seven beautifully constructed, highly sensuous stories occupy about half of the whole poem.

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… Alexander’s wars with the Rūs, which are depicted at considerable length, end with his victory and his magnanimous treatment of the defeated army. The Šaraf-nāma concludes with the account of Alexander’s unsuccessful search for the water of immortal life.

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.