The sabk-i Hindī school of classical Persian literature is almost always equated with the ghazal, appropriately so since this was the privileged form for poets of the post-Timurid age. However, other classical poetic forms like the qasīdah and the masnavī were also utilized in courtly and non-courtly spheres of production. The courtly masnavī continued on its independent course of development with poets composing Shāhnāmah-like verse narratives or imitating Nizāmī Ganjav and Amīr Khusrau in the field of romantic tales. The masnavī form in classical Persian literature is particularly associated with the topic of courtly ethics since the narrative form provides a (pseudo-) historical framework for discussion of the themes of kingship and justice, and is important for understanding the extent and dynamic nature of Mughal court poetry. This paper is a study of a masnavī by the poet Muhammad Rizā Nau‘ī Khabūshānī (d. 1609 C.E.), who came to India from Iran towards the end of the sixteenth century, and was patronized by the Mughals. Nau‘ī is the author of a masnavī entitled Sūz u gudāz, the story of a sati (or suttee), i.e., a Hindu widow who burns on the funeral pyre of her husband, a controversial and chiefly premodern practice in India.This work is of interest in several respects. First, the choice of theme shows the exoticization of Hindu culture by an Iranian poet who was attempting to be innovative while working within the parameters of the limited poetics of the masnavī.

Additionally, the context in which the work was produced illustrates the complex institution of the patronage of literature and the relationship between poetry and politics during the Mughal period. Further, it adds another chapter to the vast subject of Nizāmī and his imitators. In this last respect, this study is located within the larger framework of Heshmat Moayyad's work on Nizāmī and his followers in a series of articles published in Irānshināsī under the title, “Dar madār-i Nizāmī.”

The tradition of courtly masnavīs in Persian goes back at least to the eleventh century Ghaznavid court. The topics of these romances were often culled from Firdausī's Shāhnāmah, as well as from legends of Iranian or Arabian origin, or even Hellenistic sources.