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Of This World and the Next: Metaphors and Meanings in the Qābūs-nāmah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Soheila Amirsoleimani
Soheila Amirsoleimani*
Affiliation:
University of Utah
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Extract

In an article antitled “Belles-Lettres, Ethics and Didactic Literature: Thoughts on Three Concepts in Iranian Culture,” Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak poses the question whether the large body of andarz literature, “…may be said to form…‘the grammar of ethical thought’ in Persian.” The author briefly reviews the most recent scholarship on the subject, including Charles-Henri de Fouchécour's comprehensive and singular work, and concludes by calling for the necessity of close analyses of works of andarz from rhetorical, cultural, and social perspectives. It is through such close analyses, he maintains, that we can begin to understand “the grammar of ethical thought in Persian.”

Karimi-Hakkak underscores the pragmatic aspect of andarz literature. As de Fouchécour also observes, ‘The point of departure was…not a set of moral precepts, but convenience: Morality was knowing how to live in society (farhang, adab).” The authors of andarz literature provided both general and specific directives as to how one could best live in society.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 1-3 , Winter Summer 2002 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2002

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References

1. Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad, “Adab, akhlāq, andarz: ta˒ammulāt-i dar-barā-yi sih mafhūm dar farhang-i Īrān,” Iran Nāmeh, 7 (1368): 636–56Google Scholar, quotation from the English summary, 43.

2. de Fouchécour, C. -H., “Ethics,” Encyclopædia Iranica (henceforth EIr), 9: 3–7.Google Scholar

3. Karimi, “Adab, akhlāq andarz,” 43.

4. Ibid., 4.

5. Khaleghi-Motlagh, Dj., “Adab,” EIr 1: 437.Google Scholar

6. Shaked, Shaul, “Andarz and Andarz Literature in Pre-Islamic Iran,” EIr 2:14.Google Scholar

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid, 5.

10. Khaleghi-Motlagh, “Adab,” 438; Shaked, “Andarz,” 15.

11. de Fouchécour, “Ethics,” 3-4; Rahman, F., “Aḵlāq,” EIr 1: 719–23Google Scholar, quotation on 719-20. De Fouchécour also points out the importance of cardinal virtues which do appear in andarz literature, having been integrated into it from the Hellenistic-Byzantine cultures, see his “Ethics,” 4.

12. Karimi-Hakkak, “Adab, akhlāq, andarz,” 652-53.

13. De Fouchécour notes the flowering of works of andarz from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, “Ethics,” 6. Also see Bosworth, C. E., “Naṣīḥat al-Mulūk” Encyclopedia of Islam (EI2), 7: 984–88.Google Scholar He especially mentions these three works as the best examples of this genre, 987.

14. The analogy of the king as gardener is attributed to Buzurgmihr, Ghazali's Book of Counsel for Kings (Nasihat al-muluk), trans. Bagley, F. R. C. (London, 1964), 90.Google Scholar Nizam al-Mulk refers to the king as kadkhudā of the world in three instances; see Darke, Hubert, ed., Siyar al-mulūk (Siyāsat-nāmah), Khvājah Niẓām al-Mulk (Abu ᶜAli Hasan Tusi) (Tehran, 1962), 80–81, 153, 162.Google Scholar The edition of the Qābūs-nāmah to which I will refer throughout the article is that of G.-H Yusofi (Tehran, 1966).

15. Burke, Kenneth, A Grammar of Motives and A Rhetoric of Motives (New York, 1962), 503.Google Scholar On the importance of rhetoric (balāghat) to medieval men of letters, whether poets or scribes, see the manuals of rhetoric in Arabic and Persian, Asrār al-balāgha by al-Jurjani, , ed. Ritter, Hellmut (Istanbul, 1954)Google Scholar; and Tarjumān al-balāgha by Raduyani, ed. Ates, Ahmed (Istanbul, 1949).Google Scholar I have chosen Kenneth Burke's definition of metaphor both for its simplicity and accessibility.

16. Shaked, “Andarz,” 14.

17. The first statement appears in a longer passage, Qābūs, 37-38: “If someone hurts you unintentionally, you must try not to hurt him. For the home of benevolence is in the neighborhood of kindness and humanity. And as they say, the essence of humanity (mardumī) is hurting others as little as possible (kam-āzārī).” The second statement is on 148. The translations that appear in this article are my own. I have, however, consulted and benefited from the English translation by Levy, Reuben, A Mirror for Princes, The Qabus Nama by Kai Ka˒us Ibn Iskandar, Prince of Gurgan (New York, 1951).Google Scholar

18. On Kay Kavus ibn Iskandar, see Bosworth, C. E., “Kay Kā˒ūs b. Iskandar,” EI2 4: 815.Google Scholar On the Ziyarids, see Madelung, W., “The Minor Dynasties of Northern Iran,” The Cambridge History of Iran 4, (Cambridge, 1975), 198–249CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bosworth, C. E., “On the Chronology of the Later Ziyarids in Gurgan and Tabaristan,” Der Islam 40 (1964): 25–34.Google Scholar

19. On the editions and translations of the Qābūs-nāmah, see Yūsofī, Ğ. Ḥ., “Andarznāma,” EIr 2: 23—24Google Scholar and Bosworth, “Kay Kā˒ūs b. Iskandar.”

20. Malik al-Shuᶜara Muhammad Taqi Bahar, Sabk-shināsī yā tārīkh-i taṭavvur-i nari Fārsī 2nd edition (Tehran, 1958), 2: 113–22Google Scholar; Browne, Edward, A Literary History of Persia, volume II From Firdawsi to Saᶜdi (Cambridge, reprint 1964), 276–87Google Scholar; Lazard, Gilbert, La langue de plus anciens monuments de la prose persane (Paris, 1963), 100–103Google Scholar; Safa, Zabih Allah, Tārīkh-i adabīyāt dar Īrān, v. II, az miyānah-i qarn-i panjum tā āghāz-i qarn-i haftum-i hijrī (Tehran, 1960), 898–902.Google Scholar

21. de Fouchécour, Charles-Henri, Moralia, les notions morales dans la litterature persane du 3e/9e au 7e/13e siècle (Paris, 1986), 179–223.Google Scholar

22. De Fouchécour devotes a long section to the discussion on javānmardī, ibid., 210-22. He believes that the various pieces of advice on the rules of such habits as eating, sleeping, being a host, etc., discussed in chapters 10 through 17, all bear on the topic of khirad and the making of a khiradmand, a wise and sagacious man, Moralia, 189.

23. Khaleghi-Motlagh, “Adab,” 435.

24. Citations to the Qābūs-nāmah will henceforth be given in parentheses in the text. All references are to Yusofi's 1966 Tehran edition.

25. De Fouchécour, Moralia, 220-21.

26. See Mīnū-yi Khirad, tr. Ahmad Tafazzuli (Tehran, 1975), 72 and 4, note 2.

27. Qābūs-nāmah, 263, for Nushirvan, 51-55; Alexander, 148 and 238; Mahmud, 146-47 and 230-31; Masᶜud, 84 and 231-32; Mawdud, 234 and 237-38; ᶜAżud al-Dawla, 235-37. There are also stories about the Ziyarid ruler, Shams al-Maᶜali, 83-84, and the Saffarid ruler, ᶜAmr al-Layth, 96.

28. Nizam al-Mulk, Siyāsat-nāmah, 18, 49, 72, 73; al-Ghazali, Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, 70.

29. Khaleghi-Motalgh, “Adab,” 436.

30. Khaleghi-Motlagh, “Adab,” 435.

31. Ibid., 432.

32. Yūsofī, Ğ.-Ḥ, “Andarz-nāma,” 450Google Scholar mentions that the letters refer to the sūrat almā˒ida, verse 37.

33. There were other professions, including medicine and the secretarial craft, whose practice was believed to involve the use of deception (ḥīlah). On ḥīlah, see my “Truths and Lies: Irony and Intrigue in the Tarikh-i Bayhaqi” Iranian Studies, 32 (1999): 243–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Kay Kavus follows this advice with one of his own poems, using the same metaphors of wheat and barley.

35. Khaleghi-Motlagh, “Adab,” 432-33.

36. Qābūs, on Turks in the chapter on buying slaves, 115; on bāzāriyān, 72.