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A Mazandarani Account of the Babi Incident at Shaikh Tabarsi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Habib Borjian
Habib Borjian*
Affiliation:
Persian at Hofstra University, New York
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Abstract

This article transcribes and glosses a nineteenth-century Mazandarani document on Babi-state conflict at Shaikh Tabarsi. Collected in 1860 in the town of Barfurush, it was published five years later by Boris Andreevich Dorn in Perso-Arabic characters. The text is the first known prose document based on natural speech in the modern Mazandarani language. The language of the text is fundamentally the same as that spoken today in the Persian province of Mazandaran, located south of the Caspian Sea. As one expects, however, there are certain extinct traits in the text, which could be identified only by comparison with other surviving Mazandarani documents of the same period. The text will contribute to the study of the largely understudied language of Mazandaran, particularly to its development since the composition of the text. It may also serve as a supplementary historical document for the historic incident it narrates.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 381 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2006

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Footnotes

He is indebted to his wife Maryam Borjian (Mohammadi Kordkheili) for her help with making sense of many parts of the Mazandarani text. He wishes also to thank Mr. Fakhr-al-Din Surtiji of Sari for his valuable hints on certain words.

References

1 See Luzhetskaya, N. L., s.v. “Dorn,” in Encyclopaedian Iranica ed. Yarshater, Ehsan (New York, 1983 ff.), 7: 511–13Google Scholar.

2 See Zabihi-Moghaddam, Siyamak, “The Babi-State Conflict at Shaykh Tabarsi,” Iranian Studies 35 (2002): 87–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kazembeyki, Mohammad Ali, Society, Politics and Economics in Māzandarān, Iran, 1848–1914 (London, 2003), 116-125Google Scholar.

3 Boris Andreevich Dorn, Morgenländische handschriften der kaiserlichen öffentlichen bibliothek zu St. Petersburg. Nachträge zu dem Verzeichniss der im Jahre 1861 erworbenen Chanykov'schen Sammlung (St. Petersburg, 1865). Reprinted as “Nachträge zu dem Verzeichniss der von der Kaiserlichen öffenlichen Bibliothek erworbenen Chanykov'schen Handschriften und den da mitgetheilten Nachrichten über die Baby und deren Koran,” in Mélanges asiatiques tirés du Bulletin de L'Académie Impériale des sciences de St.-Pétersbourg V. 1864–1868 (St. Petersburg, 1968), 377–419.

4 Bab' i Babidy: religiozno-politicheskiya smuty v Persii v 1844–1852 godakh (St. Petersburg, 1865).

5 An unidentified Mazandarani poet, who is believed to have composed, among other dialect poems, the quatrains known as amīrī, a popular genre still sung widely in rural communities throughout the province. See Habib Borjian and Maryam Borjian (Mohammadi Kordkheili), s.v. “Amir Pāzvāri,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica Supplement (available on the Internet site www.Iranica.com).

6 An introductory study of these documents is available in Sadiq Kia, “Chand vāzha az Tārīkh-i Tabaristān,” Sukhan 1 (1943–44), 135–136, 344–346, 440–441, 514; idem, Vāzhanāma-yi tabarī Irānkude 9 (Tehran, 1947), 9–20, 225–246. Kia's notes are commented on by Monchi-Zadeh, Davoud in “Contribution to Iranian Dialectology: Explanation of Verses in Old Tabari,” Orientalia Suecana 18 (1969) 163–182Google Scholar.

7 None of these translations are published or studied, except a study of the manuscript of the Koran, kept at Edinburg, by Elwell-Sutton, L. P. in “An Eighteenth Century (?) Caspian Dialect,” Mélanges d'orientalisme offerts a Henri Massé (Tehran, 1963): 110–140Google Scholar. See also Borjian, H., “Historical Sources in Old Tabari (in Persian),” Dialectology/Gūyish-shināsī no. 4 (2005)Google Scholar, forthcoming.

8 A manuscript is published in Huart, Clément, Textes persans relatifs a la sectes des Houroûfîs, (Leiden, 1909)Google Scholar, based on which and other Hurufi documents a glossary is compiled in Kia, Sadeq, Vāzhanāma-yi gurgānī, 2nd ed. (Tehran, 1951)Google Scholar.

9 Edited by B. A. Dorn (in the series Beiträge zur Kenntnis der iranischen Sprachen), 2 vols. (Saint Petersburg, 1860–66).

10 See Borjian, H., “Mazandaran: Language and People: The State of Research,” Iran and the Caucasus 8 no. 2 (2004): 289–328CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Borjian, H., “The Oldest Known Texts in New Tabari: Collection of Aleksander Chodzko,” Archiv Orientální 74 (2006)Google Scholar, forthcoming.

11 They appear as facsimilies in Morgan, Jacques de, Mission scientifique en Perse 5 (Paris, 1904), 248–260Google Scholar. The texts have neither been translated nor studied. See H. Borjian, “Two Mazandarani Texts from the Nineteenth Century,” JAOS, forthcoming.

12 Somewhat less authentic Mazandarani prose works are those translated from Persian literature in Kanz al-Asrār 1∶1–122; and the Mazandarani translation of a passage from Tūfān al-Bukā, in Berésine, E., Recherche sur les dialects persans (Kazan, 1853), 272–79Google Scholar. See Borjian, H., “The oldest known prose text in Modern Tabari: A translation from Tufan al-Boka',” Studies in Persianate Societies 3 (2005)Google Scholar, forthcoming; Borjian, H., “Tabari language materials from I. N. Berezin's Recherches sur les dialectes persans,” Iran and the Caucasus 10 (2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, forthcoming.

13 Of the numerous recent studies on the Babi-government conflicts of the mid-nineteenth century none has used this Mazandarani text as a source. It is also absent in MacEion, Denis, The Sources for Early Bābī Doctrine and History: A Survey (Leiden, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 This summary is based on the present text and the following secondary sources: Kazembeyki, Society, Politics and Economics, 116 ff.; Zabihi-Moghaddam, “The Babi-State Conflict at Shaykh Tabarsi,” 96–99; Momen, Moojan, “The Social Basis of the Bābī Upheavals in Iran (1848–53),” International Journal of Middle East Studies 15 (1983): 157–183, especially 161–165CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and MacEoin, D. M., “Babism,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica 3: 309–317Google Scholar. See also “Dizh-i Tabarsi,” Abâkhtar 2 no. 5 & 6 (2004) 109–122.

15 As the text belongs to a century-and-a-half ago, it exhibits certain differences with the dialect as spoken today. Many textual problems, both phonologic and morphologic, were tackled by drawing parallels from the other nineteenth-century texts.

16 In iǝ, ie, ia, io, iu, and iā the euphonic glide y between the two vowels is implied.

17 The numbers in square brackets indicate page numbers in Dorn 1868.

18 vǝ/ve ‘he, she, it’ is rendered with a kasra mark throughout the text, perhaps to avoid confusion with the morpheme o ‘and,’ which is, following a Persian orthographic tradition, represented in the text by <v>. I show the word as vǝ throughout the text. Note that certain Mazandarani dialects use the form ve as the oblique case of the 3rd person singular pronoun, for which the parallel form vǝne ‘him, his’ is used throughout this text. For a more detailed discussion, see Borjian, H. “Personal and Reflexive Pronouns in Mazandarani,” Orientalia 2 (2004): 7–13Google Scholar.

19 pǝr ‘father,’ deduced from the spelling <pa-r> in the Perso-Arabic alphabet used in the script. The current pronunciation is per, pir, piǝr, or pier, depending on the locality in Mazandaran.

20 The written form <ve-n-h> (=venǝ ‘must’) is obviously a misprint.

21 Spelled <ba-de-ya-h>.

22 In the text:<d-r-n-n-h> (=darnǝnǝ) ‘they are not’.

23 Written <b-a-ye-na-h>.

24 ašnuss-ǝnǝ ‘they heard’; the text's spelling is <a-š-no-v-sse-na>, corresponding to ašnusse nǝ, in which the Mazandarani phonological rule of the shift from ǝ to e after a sonant governs. Cf. bašnusse nǝ in Paragraph 10.

25 <a-tte> (=ǝtte).

26 Both forms are valid pronunciations for the puzzling orthography <na-v'e-ve>.

27 <da-vv-'e>.

28 Represented as <na-yya-h> (=nayyǝ), a parallel pronunciation.

29 <ba-š-no-v-sse-na-h> (=bašnusse nǝ); cf ašnuss e nǝ in Paragraph 4.

30 <be-ya-n-d> (=beyand); the final d is superfluous.

31 For Mazandarani bakušǝn.

32 For the truly Mazandarani midun.

33 Appears as <da-sa> ; thus could read also as še dassǝ ‘its handle’.

34 Dorn added [ba] here, presumably after the Persian paradigm. In Mazandarani, however, the verb bǝnā hākǝrdǝn ‘to begin’ does not normally take the postposition be, maybe because it is followed as a rule by an infinitive, which itself begins with a b- (when the verb lacks a preverb). Cf. the next sentence and Paragraphs 12, 24, and 27.

35 For genuine Mazandarani še ‘(their) own’; see Borjian, , “Personal and Reflexive Pronouns in Mazandarani,” Orientalia 2 (2004): 7–13Google Scholar.

36 <b-a-ye-r>.

37 The script form, <e-y-na-na-h>, corresponds to inǝnǝ, another acceptable pronunciation.

38 Persianism for Mazandarani vǝšune fekr.

39 biǝ ‘it was’ is used for the expected daiǝ ‘it existed, there was’.

40 The word is problematic. It clearly spells <ne-ya-nna-na-h>, which, if we neglect the gemmination of n, renders n-ia-nǝnǝ, a parallel form of n-e-nǝnǝ ‘they do not come’. But this is out of the context of the sentence. Alternatively, the word could be a typo for ninǝ ‘they are not,’ but the expected auxiliary verb is -ǝnǝ or hassǝnǝ ‘they are’.

41 <be-ya-n-d> beyǝnd; again, the final d is added under Persian influence.

42 Appears in the text as ta‘bia xun, apparently a typographical error, as noted by Dorn.

43 Scribed as <ba-k-a-r-da-nne-y-na-h>.

44 The spelling <bo-v-na-h> naturally yields bunǝ, a variant of vu-nǝ ‘he becomes’; cf. ba-vu-e ‘that he becomes’.

45 Appear in the text as Bābi, singular noun in plural sense.

46 Kal is an abbreviation of Karbalā'i (lit. ‘of or related to Karbala’), one who has made pilgrimage to the Mesopotamian town of Karbala'.

47 Sāhib-al-zamān, i.e., the twelfth successor of the Prophet in Shi'i beliefs.

48 A facsimile of this letter is published in The Bahā'ī World 5 (1936), 58; apud Zabihi-Moqaddam, , “The Babi-State Conflict,” Iranian Studies 35 (2002): 89Google Scholar.

49 Lit. ‘lay out a building’.

50 Thirty, according to other primary sources; see Zabihi-Moqaddam, , “The Babi-State Conflict,” Iranian Studies 35 (2002): 98Google Scholar.

51 ta ‘ziya-khvān, an actor of passion-plays.

52 A pond near the town; appears as Dazzǝk(ǝ)čāl, etc., in other sources.

53 Numbers in parentheses refer to the text paragraphs.

54 <daft-und-i-? Cf. dapǝtunninǝ ‘they hurled’ (Jacques de Morgan, Mission scientifique en Perse 5, [Paris, 1904], 260, line 4); dāpartunniyǝ ‘he shot (an arrow) at’ (Kanz al-asrār 1:25, line 7).

55 The expected form is koš-ǝnǝnǝ. The gemination of n may correspond to the causative stem koš-ǝnd-> koš-ǝnn-, contracted when the 3rd plural ending -(ǝ)nǝnǝ is suffixed: košǝnn-+-nǝnǝ> košǝnnǝnǝ; see Borjian, H., “Personal Endings in Eastern Mazandarani Verbs (in Persian),” Dialectology/Gūyish-shināsī, no. 3, (2005): 13–19Google Scholar. Cf. the causative form košāndan in Tajiki Persian.