Shahzad Bashir's book on the circulation of Persian poetry in premodern times belongs to a series called Elements in the Global Middle Ages, which combines features of the scholarly book and the journal article. In the introductory section, the author breaks down scholarly approaches to premodern Persian poetry and the categories that define them. He then reassembles them for a new perspective on how literature relates to society and how the present relates to the past. For example, he takes aim at the categories “medieval” and “early modern,” which have grown out of European culture in particular but do not necessarily help us understand trajectories of the Persian tradition. He also interrogates the elitism that premodern Persian cosmopolitanism may imply. I recall a knowledgeable colleague referring to Persian as a “prestige vernacular,” implicitly contrasting it with the earlier development of Arabic with its special role in Islamic culture, and further comparing Persian with the later development of Ottoman Turkish and Urdu, both of which, like Arabic literature, draw on Persian in the development of their traditions. My colleague's description of Persian was accurate, but it also is interesting to consider Bashir's attempt to problematize it. Finally, the author makes the useful observation that no society ever existed in which Persian was the only language of communication. He pursues that line of inquiry later in the book when he discusses composite works, consisting of multiple texts or selections of texts, that included or circulated in languages other than Persian or that suggest comparisons with works in other languages.
The author's stated aim to study the synchronic and diachronic connections among people through their circulation of Persian poetry, rather than connections based on maps, chronology, or genealogy, attempts to delineate a cultural sphere that is distinct from politics, history, and hierarchy. But perhaps here he overstates the case in his effort to rethink his object of study. Politics, history, and hierarchy are among the trajectories that the circulation of poetry travels, traditionally and in this book. The author correctly notes that the notion of poet-patron relationships has often dominated scholarship even though the circulation of poetry extends in time, space, literary citation, and composite works beyond the original context in which patrons may have sponsored poetry, and his book succeeds in exploring this wider circulation of Persian poetry through social and literary interaction. In particular, he calls attention to the relevant fact that the codes of poetry serve the multidimensional communication needs of both Sufis and court officials.
After distancing himself from the most familiar categories of scholarship on premodern Persian poetry, Bashir proposes a new lens for analysis of this tradition: the market. Although it makes sense to propose that poetry has exchange value, which is familiar from research on dedicated genres of poetry that extends beyond those genres, it is less helpful in this context to think of the market as an abstraction denoting human relations. Another aspect of this approach includes material culture, book culture, and art.
The author's investigation of cases of social interaction through poetry in a series of composite literary genres (translation, history, memoir, and anthology) is engaging, creative, and persuasive, even if it is quite dense and fast-paced because of the nature of the series, which promises books that are both succinct and authoritative. The author observes that scholars do not often address composite genres of Persian poetry. His point about the need for more consideration of composite genres is important, but perhaps not entirely fair. Scholars of Persian have investigated composite genres of different kinds in recent work by Dominic Parviz Brookshaw on Hafiz, Christine van Ruymbeke on Kashifi, and Fatemeh Keshavarz and Domenico Ingenito on Saʿdi. Interesting research on this topic also appears in Bilal Orfali's monograph on al-Thaʿalibi's Yatimat al-dahr and edited volume on anthologies; Hilary Kilpatrick's monograph on al-Isfahani's Kitab al-aghani; Beatrice Gruendler's research on akhbar, translation of Akhbar Abi Tammam, and monograph on the Arabic book; Elias Muhanna's monograph on the enormous encyclopedia of al-Nuwayri; and Letizia Osti's new monograph on al-Suli.
The author's discussion of the seventeenth-century anthologist Awhadi, who lived and worked in both Iran and India, offers a thoughtful analysis of how this writer views time and literary relationships of rivalry and imitation in several case studies. In the discussion of the composite and critical works of Shams-e Qays Razi, Nizami ʿAruzi, and Muhammad ʿAwfi, Bashir presents an interesting contrast between the priority of the external qualities of poetry in the work of the literary critic Shams-e Qays with the interest in the inner meaning of poetry in the work of the anthologist ʿAwfi. The author continues with an analysis in which he contrasts prophetic and poetic uses of language for access to wisdom. He also considers the role of poetry in the career of the first Sufi master who received a Persian hagiography, Abu Saʿid Abi-l-Khayr. He then expands his insightful analysis of perspectives on poetry and wisdom to include both ʿAruzi and Abu Saʿid.
This interesting critical and analytical approach to poetry and the wisdom or insight of a variety of writers of composite genres continues in Bashir's discussion of the composite works of Samarqandi, Rumi, and Amir Khosrow, as well as poetry by Hafiz. Meanwhile, the author also considers the role of Samarqandi in displaying the relations in verse between other major poets such as ʿAttar, Sanaʾi, Saʿdi, and Nizami Ganjavi, and explores the intersection of Persian and Turkish poets in the work of Sam Mirza. This book enriches our understanding of major poets and writers with insightful analysis of the relationship between poetry and knowledge and the literary exchange among poets portrayed in composite genres.
Bashir usefully comments on his approach in his narrative, making the observation that he is examining the circulation of poetry as a perspective on society rather than a literary history. For example, he notes that in Fakhri-Haravi's work, women poets matter when they are amorous or antagonistic toward men, and he analyzes the sequence and significance of the poets who are included. He pursues his comparative approach to Persian poetry in the discussion of the translation of the Babur-nama from Chagatay Turkish and the kinds of texts that are included in this composite work, such as poetry, the Qur'an, and hadith. He also approaches this work by comparing the use of Hindu gods as role models in other Indian texts with the use of human Persian and Muslim figures as role models in Baburnama. The author's discussion of memory and imagination animates the analysis of Vasifi's memoir of Herat. Finally, a comparison of the European and Asian connections in the Golshan album, a premodern art book compiled for Jahangir for educational purposes at court, offers an additional global perspective on the circulation of Persian culture.
The premise of the Cambridge Elements series is scholarly writing that is both authoritative and concise, so that the author sometimes has to move along to a new topic very quickly, in a way that feels rushed. In spite of this limitation, the breadth and critical depth of this book is impressive, and it brings this rich premodern tradition to life for the contemporary reader.
