Benedict XVI And Today's Muslims Opposite Manuel II Palaeologus And His Turkic Interlocutor

“Lots of stories written in these ancient papers, showing a lot. Good moments, bad moments, victories, defeats, lessons from the past. One small look in them can teach you what lies beneath those unlimited sands.”

The Perception of the Divine - I

God created Man and not Man God; consequently, God defined Man and not Man God. That is why Man sensed God, perceived the Divine, and acted accordingly within the spiritual and the material universes. Due to the first fall of Man, this sense and this perception were gravely impaired. Because of this situation, the early men started developing faculties in order to catch up with what they had missed but to no avail. These faculties, which we now identify as the basics of civilization, were truly unnecessary and they only resulted in further falls.

If we consider the original sin as an infidelity, the so-called 'human civilization' was constructed on unrequested powers, skills and intelligence. This invalid, counterfeit intelligence is what exactly we read in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (3:19; ἡ γὰρ σοφία τοῦ κόσμου τούτου μωρία παρὰ τῷ Θεῷ ἐστιν / Sapientia enim hujus mundi, stultitia est apud Deum): "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight".

Texts and representations from the scene related to the Weighing of the Heart of Ani, which took place in the Hall of Judgment (from the Papyrus of Ani); Ani and his wife Tutu (lower section, left) enter the realm of the Divine. At center, Anubis, in kneeling position, weighs Ani's heart (left plate of the scale) against the feather of Maat (right plate of the scale). He is observed by the divine forces Renenutet, Meshkenet, and Shay, as well as by Ani's own Ba (lower spiritual body which is depicted as a bird with human head). At the right end, Ammut, intending to devour Ani's soul if his heart is proven sinful, awaits the verdict. Identified as the Divine Wisdom, Thoth (with human body and the head of the bird ibis) prepares to record it. In the upper section, all supreme aspects of the Divine act as judges: (from left to right) Hu and Sia, Hathor, Horus, Isis and Nephthys, Nut, Geb, Tefnut, Shu, Atum, and Ra-Horakhty. Written by the Theban scribe Ani -for the preparation of his life in the Hereafter- in the first half of the 13th c. BCE, the Papyrus of Ani was discovered in 1888 in Luxor by the English Egyptologist Sir E. A. Wallis Budge and smuggled to the British Museum. It is a 24 m long scroll that has a width of 33 cm; the monumental document needed three volumes to be duly published (introductory analysis; transcription and translation; facsimile reproduction),

Yet, this conclusion is nothing more than the true essence of Ea's advice to Adapa (the First Human) according to the Ancient Sumerian/Assyrian-Babylonian sacred text "Adapa and the South Wind":

«At the door of Anu, Tammuz and Gishzida are standing, "they will see thee, they will ask thee; 'Sir,' For whose sake dost thou so appear, Adapa? For whom Art thou clad in a mourning garment?' 'In our country two gods have vanished, therefore Am I so.' 'Who are the two gods, who in the land Have vanished?' 'Tammuz and Gishzida.' They will look at one another and Be astonished. Good words».

In other words, in the original Paradise, there would never be any 'civilization'. Then, the quest for the original perception of the Divine is a direct, straightforward and conscious rejection of all the human cultures and civilizations. Quite unfortunately for them, all those who intend to stick to their traditions and cultures, by so doing, they bring the total collapse of the human civilization closer. This is apparently so because their civilization is flawed and putrefied, their faith nonexistent, and their perception of the Divine dishonest and erroneous.

Contents (Part I: I-VI)

Introduction

I. Man: soul, body, and character

II. Communication with the material universe

III. Communication with the spiritual universe

IV. The function of the Man: interaction among soul, body and character

V. Mind without thoughts; heart without sentiments; solar plexus without desires

VI. At the antipodes of the ancient Spiritual Sciences, Modern Psychology produces monsters, leading to the extermination of mankind

VII. The human soul, its parts, and their functionality

VIII. Soul consciousness without subconscious and unconsciousness

IX. Knowledge as self-consciousness: no need of language, writing and learning

X. Wisdom as consciousness of one's own destination in the material universe

XI. Fate: the process of all interconnections and mutual impact of all created factors

XII. Fortune: inherent sense of conditions enabling man to outdo what Fate specified

XIII. Perception of the Divine: from the Five Elements to the Twelve Supreme Beings

XIV. God & the Divine vs. the Divine & the gods

XV. The perception of God and the perceptions of gods

XVI. The human concept of the Divine: result of the malfunction of the Fallen Man

XVII. End Times: liberation from thoughts, sentiments, desires, languages & writings

Introduction

The modern Western (in fact: Western European) world, which by means of military, political, economic, academic, intellectual, educational, religious, cultural and spiritual colonization invaded and (by so doing) desecrated the rest of the world, has been based on a peremptory, 'humanist' assumption, an arbitrary, detrimental rejection of the pre-Renaissance world, a baseless, yet unprecedented historical revisionism, and a self-determination to deliberately define God. Within this vicious and calamitous context, which precipitates the total annihilation of the mankind, there is absolutely no place for perception of the Divine.

Nonetheless, it has been inevitable that several humans managed to liberate themselves from today's destitute, fake and corrupted religions, absurd and nonsensical philosophies, and various other schemes, theories and ideologies in order to find their true inner selves and in the process perceive the Divine.

In today's world, there is no self-definition of Man. This is so because the peremptory concept of Humanism constitutes an unfounded dogma and the foundation of all posterior conclusions, considerations and theories. Any spiritual-intellectual attempt to question the validity of the 'humanist' absurdity results instantaneously in utterly dictatorial persecution, hysterical rejection, and fanatical, systematized defamation. Yet, the insanity of 'Humanism' leads straight to the eradication of mankind.

As a matter of fact, for every civilization and culture, the self-definition of Man was never the first priority in terms of ancestral narratives, meditation, rumination and world view; on the contrary, the definition of God was the central, fundamental task. We do not exist of our own; we live because God created us. Contrarily to Him, we cannot say "I am who I am" (אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה; ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν; ego sum qui sum / Exodus 3:14). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

Similarly, and more authoritatively than the Torah, the Assyrian-Babylonian sacred text of Enuma Elish (the world's paramount 'Genesis' or 'Cosmogony') in its 3rd and 4th verses stipulates the following: «apsûm-ma rēštû zārûšun; mummu Tiamat muallidat gimrišun» {Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter, (and) Mummu Tiamat, she who bore them all / as per the transliteration in P. Talon, The Standard Babylonian Creation Myth: Enūma eliš; Helsinki, 2005}.

https://ia600707.us.archive.org/16/items/Holy-Books/EnumaElish.pdf

Everything, every aspect of the Divine, every later name of God or aspect of God depended on the primordial Apsu and Tiamat, the names of God before Creation. In the World History's first and foremost holy text, the narrative of the Creation starts before the Creation. After the original moments of Becoming are stipulated, all the rest follows. In other words, only because humans defined God first, they were able to determine who they were at a second stage. But to define God, men had to perceive the Divine at an earlier moment.

I. Man: soul, body, and character

In this brief presentation, I don't intend to expand on the perception of the Divine of the Ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians-Babylonians and Egyptians, thus composing a historico-religious monograph. On the contrary, I will use material and concepts, methods and approaches of the Ancient Mesopotamian monotheists, which can help today's people to best question and ultimately refute the prevailing, absurd and preposterous definition of the Divine, which has become good reason for the mankind's decay. 

There cannot be mental, sentimental or sensual perception of the Divine. The brain, the heart, and the solar plexus are parts of the human body that function at the very intersection of the soul and the body within every human being; however, they still generate material functions. Through these means a human obtains perception of the material universe. However, only the human soul creates spiritual functions, and it is only through one's soul that a man can perceive the spiritual universe, the Divine, and God. In brief, there is only spiritual perception of the spiritual world.

Because the dissociation between the human soul and the human body is the result of the successive falls of mankind, today's man has lost the originally inherent ability to establish a complete synergy between the soul and the body. Many misinformed and disoriented people, who believe in the existence of the human soul and the spiritual universe, think that the thoughts, the ideas, the theories, the sentiments, the desires and the passions constitute the soul, but that's very wrong.

As driving force of life, the soul is entirely different from the body; it does however permeate the human body and, to enable the human being's major functions at the material level, it forms particular junctures within the body in the heart, the brain, and the solar plexus. At best, which means before all the Falls, the three junctures (or intersections) are totally empty, and ethereal vitality keeps the human being in perfect synergy between the soul and the body.

The electromagnetic flow is thus exemplarily processed, being uninterrupted and unabsorbed by the various, unnecessary debris formed during cases of traumatic experience. Then, this man is well-lit and bright, able to emit light, and transform his eye into a lantern for his body; this is the meaning of Jesus' famous hint "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light" (Ὁ λύχνος τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ὁ ὀφθαλμός· ἐὰν οὖν ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου ἁπλοῦς ᾖ, ὅλον τὸ σῶμά σου φωτεινόν ἔσται·; lucerna corporis est oculus si fuerit oculus tuus simplex totum corpus tuum lucidum erit; Matthew 6:22)

Quite contrarily, in the case of the man of the Fall, the three intersections are filled with unnecessary data, pieces of 'knowledge', amounts of worthless information, endless thoughts, considerations, theories, ideas, ideologies, sentiments and desires, not to mention passions and abominable calculations, which keep the human being captive of the worst enemies of mankind. In such cases, the soul is greatly affected and clearly condemned to damnation. These unfortunate and unsubstantiated beings have thus already become 'persons', overwhelmingly filling the part of their soul that we conventionally call 'subconscious' with collateral debris, which constitute an enormous burden for the soul and gradually force her to incapacity and castigation.

The intersections of the soul and the body (solar plexus, heart and brain) create what we come to know as the character of the human being; the character is the epitome of individuality. But a human being, i.e. an individual, should never become a 'person'. The character corresponds to what many mystics call conventionally 'lower spiritual body'; this is wrongly called 'astral body' (it has nothing to do with stars). Few days after the separation of the soul from the body (i.e. the 'death'), both, the material body and the lower spiritual body, start getting disintegrated.

Being aware of the intensified spiritual attack against the mankind and the increased number of sinful humans, modern mystics wanted to find a convenient and very conventional 'solution' of the problem. They therefore invented the childish theory of generalized reincarnation. It is certain that some souls can reincarnate; spiritually and materially, reincarnation is possible. Jesus spoke explicitly about that, referring to the Men of Nineveh, i.e. the Ancient Assyrians: "The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here" (ἄνδρες Νινευῖται ἀναστήσονται ἐν τῇ κρίσει μετὰ τῆς γενεᾶς ταύτης καὶ κατακρινοῦσιν αὐτήν, ὅτι μετενόησαν εἰς τὸ κήρυγμα Ἰωνᾶ, καὶ ἰδοὺ πλεῖον Ἰωνᾶ ὧδε; viri ninevitae surgent in iudicio cum generatione ista et condemnabunt eam quia paenitentiam egerunt in praedicatione Ionae et ecce plus quam Iona hic; Matthew 12:41).

The generalized theory of reincarnation invalidates the purpose of the Creation. It is an absurdity according to which one human being can achieve perfection in three lives, another man in six lives, and a third person in nine lives; indeed, this is utterly blasphemous. If things had been arranged in this paranoid manner, God would have been snoring at the end station of this useless and otherwise comical process. Only pathetic ignorance and abject immorality can make someone think that the Moral Order does not matter and that the facts of spiritual reward and spiritual castigation are meaningless. Contrarily to this nonsensical scheme, for all early sacred texts, it matters greatly whether the Moral Order is maintained and respected by all humans or not. Without Order there is no Creation; breaching the universal Order is an act that destroys some part of the universe. That is why reward and castigation are consequential, instantaneous and inevitable.

In this regard, it is absolutely puerile to suggest that, since most humans were sinful, if we happen to believe that there will be reward for the innocent and punishment for the guilty, we will end up in a scarcely inhabited Paradise with few souls and in a densely populated Hell packed with the souls of sinners. I am absolutely convinced that this is a hypocritically childish response (pronounced in Modern times) to an inconsistent and unsophisticated sermon (given in Christian and Islamic times).

I cannot expand further here (as this article does not concern the Structure of the Spiritual Universe), but I have to point out that it is mere theological vanity to try to interpret terms like "eternal life" and 'eternal fire" within the context of life of the Fallen Man. Sacred texts that use similar terms apparently give figurative sense to several terms that they use, since their readers will ostensibly be totally unable to fully and deeply comprehend them. I must therefore conclude that modern mystics' opposition to Christian-Muslim preachers is an intentional evildoing, although the latter clearly failed to accurately interpret their respective sacred texts.

==================

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The Perception of the Divine - I

Contents (Part I: I-VI) Introduction I. Man: soul, body, and character II. Communication with the material universe III. Communication with

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The Perception of the Divine - I

Contents (Part I: I-VI)IntroductionI. Man: soul, body, and characterII. Communication with the material universeIII. Communication with the

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The Perception of the Divine – I

Восприятие Божественного – I God created Man and not Man God; consequently, God defined Man and not Man God. That is why Man sensed God, per

academia.edu

The Perception of the Divine -I

Восприятие Божественного - I Contents (Part I: I-VI) Introduction I. Man: soul, body, and character II. Communication with the material univ

January 26 1988 - Burnum Burnum plants the Aboriginal flag at the cliffs of Dover, claiming England for the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, exactly 200 years after Arthur Phillip claimed Australia for the British. [video] The full Burnum Burnum Declaration:

I, Burnum Burnum, being a nobleman of ancient Australia, do hereby take possession of England on behalf of the Aboriginal people. In claiming this colonial outpost, we wish no harm to you natives, but assure you that we are here to bring you good manners, refinement and an opportunity to make a Koompartoo - ‘a fresh start’. Henceforth, an Aboriginal face shall appear on your coins and stamps to signify our sovereignty over this domain. For the more advanced, we bring the complex language of the Pitjantjajara; we will teach you how to have a spiritual relationship with the Earth and show you how to get bush tucker.

We do not intend to souvenir, pickle and preserve the heads of 2000 of your people, nor to publicly display the skeletal remains of your Royal Highness, as was done to our Queen Truganinni for 80 years. Neither do we intend to poison your water holes, lace your flour with strychnine or introduce you to highly toxic drugs. Based on our 50,000 year heritage, we acknowledge the need to preserve the Caucasian race as of interest to antiquity, although we may be inclined to conduct experiments by measuring the size of your skulls for levels of intelligence. We pledge not to sterilize your women, nor to separate your children from their families. We give an absolute undertaking that you shall not be placed onto the mentality of government handouts for the next five generations but you will enjoy the full benefits of Aboriginal equality. At the end of two hundred years, we will make a treaty to validate occupation by peaceful means and not by conquest.

Finally, we solemnly promise not to make a quarry of England and export your valuable minerals back to the old country Australia, and we vow never to destroy three-quarters of your trees, but to encourage Earth Repair Action to unite people, communities, religions and nations in a common, productive, peaceful purpose.

Burnum Burnum

Walk through the heart of ancient Persia.

This isn’t just a tour. It’s a time-travel experience you’ll never forget.

Join us on a journey to Persepolis a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the greatest wonders of the ancient world.

Feel the stories carved in stone, where kings once walked and empires rose.

Letsvisitpersia

Persepolis Tour

Persepolis Tour - Persepolis (Takht-e Jamshid) is the capital of the Achaemenid empire and the first popular tourist destination in Iran.

Sumerian Taxes

Whenever spring rolls around and I do my taxes, I think of the Sumerians. Cuneiform may have been used to write literary works, hymns of praise, and personal letters, but a massive chunk of the texts in Sumerian we have today are account ledgers, business records, and especially tax documents. It’s been theorized that the earliest writing was, in fact, developed for the purpose of keeping track of property and taxation records.

This tablet, from the Indiana State Library, is a list of taxable produce from about 2350 BCE. It predates what was probably the pinnacle of the Mesopotamian tax system, called bala taxation, in the 22nd and 21st centuries. Under the bala system, tens of millions of liters of grain were moved around Mesopotamia to support a population of state workers possibly numbering as many as 500,000, using an accounting system of thousands of tablets a year. More than ten thousand such tablets have been found at Puzrish-Dagan, an administrative center founded by King Shulgi at which tax records from across the Neo-Sumerian Empire. When I send my tax forms in to the IRS center in Austin, Charlotte or Kansas City, I think of it as a modern Puzrish-Dagan.

Though the damage on the right side of the above tablet is probably more recent, I like to imagine someone got frustrated with the local tax-collector-scribe and tried to deface their documentation. So when you fill in those tax forms, think of the Sumerians, and the connections we have across millennia, with love, and sometimes just a touch of frustration.

Cosmas Megalommatis, Is History Secret?

(Book review of Umberto Eco's book, Foucault's Pendulum); DIAVAZO, fasc. 235 (March 21, 1990), pp. 113-128

Η Ιστορία Μυστική; (Βιβλιοκρισία του βιβλίου του Ουμπέρτο Έκο, Το Εκκρεμές του Φουκώ); Διαβάζω, τεύχος 235 (21 Μαρτίου 1990), σελ. 113-128

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Η Ιστορία Μυστική; (Βιβλιοκρισία, ΔΙΑΒΑΖΩ)

(Βιβλιοκρισία του βιβλίου του Ουμπέρτο Έκο, Το Εκκρεμές του Φουκώ); Διαβάζω, τεύχος 235 (21 Μαρτίου 1990), σελ. 113-128

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Η Ιστορία Μυστική ΔΙΑΒΑΖΩ.pdf

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https://www.slideshare.net/MuhammadShamsaddinMe/ss-9cf1 https://figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/_b___b_/24720432

Beyond Afrocentrism: Prerequisites for Somalia to lead African de-colonization and de-Westernization

What follows is the quasi-totality of my response to a Somali scholar, intellectual and activist, who happened to be a very good personal friend since the early 2010s and my days in Somalia. Being a perspicacious reader, my good friend, who originates from two different tribal backgrounds and has an unmatched knowledge of his great but recently (since 1991) beleaguered nation, noticed several recent articles of mine in which I call for a definite and irreversible replacement of the Anglo-French colonial rule in Africa with a genuine, secular African-Chinese-Indian-Russian alliance.

The Great Cat - Horus (Messiah) defeats the Ancient Serpent - Seth (Anti-Messiah); wall painting from the Tomb of Pashedu (TT3) in Deir el Medina (Luxor West)

Afrocentrism will be a total failure if it is thought to be just an African intellectual's thought, idea, theory or ideology. Theorizing is already part of Western intellectuals' falsehood and evildoing. Philosophy is nonsensical, absurd, false and inhuman. There was never 'philosophy' in Africa, because it would be viewed as deviation and decay. Contrarily, in Ancient Africa there were Truth, Transcendental Spirituality, Primordial Myth, World Conceptualization, Supratemporal Eschatology, and Spiritual-Material Synergy. So, the primary tasks of African Afrocentric intellectuals involve the irrevocable obliteration of all Western terms and their replacement with Oriental African concepts, notions, terms, values and virtues. Consequently, there cannot be "an Afrocentric University", because this term follows a Western pattern. Offering herewith an example, I suggest that every institution in which African students will learn the truth should be called after the Ancient Egyptian term "the Place of Truth" and the instructors "Servants in the Place of Truth". This title was associated at the time with all the great scholars specializing in mummification and in the preparation of the human soul for the Hereafter. However, this has always been the value of life, learning and knowledge according to all the varieties of African culture: material life is subject to moral judgments that enable us to gain eternal life.

Contents

Introduction

I. Decolonization and the failure of the Afrocentric Intelligentsia

II. Afrocentric African scholars should have been taken Egyptology back from the Western Orientalists and Africanists 

III. Western Usurpation of African Heritage must be canceled.

IV. Afrocentrism had to encompass severe criticism and total rejection of the so-called Western Civilization

V. Afrocentrism as a form of African Isolationism drawing a line of separation between colonized nations in Africa and Asia

VI. General estimation of the human resources, the time, and the cost needed

VII. Decolonization means above all De-Anglicization and De-Francization

Introduction

Realizing what is at stake and being well acquainted with earlier African attempts for a final decolonization (notably the intellectual-academic sphere of Afrocentrism and the political activists of African Renaissance), my friend, who has the same age with me and who studied, lived, worked and prospered in the USSR, Canada, Yemen and Pakistan, wrote to ask me how Somalia could eventually contribute to or lead the African decolonization and de-Westernization movement, thus taking the Black Continent to the next stage and justifying the great expectations that were created across Africa back in 1960, due to the independence and the unification (of only two out of the five parts) of Somalia.

At this point, I have to add that the present response is only the first of three letters that I planned to send to my friend. The urgent need for worldwide decolonization and de-Westernization has become a major issue for great nations, organizations and alliances, like the BRICS+. Many people across the world would therefore question the entire conversation, stating that presently Somalia is too small, too weak, and too disunited in order to possibly undertake international tasks that seem to be best suited rather to some of the world's leading states.

I believe that, although this approach may be shared by many people, it is ostensibly very shallow. This is so because stronger a nation is, more difficult it becomes for their rulers, elites, and people to undertake an in-depth self-criticism, reassessment, and restart or partly rectification. In other words, a better organized nation is by definition more conservative and therefore less inclined to changes; these traits and conditions have been attested repeatedly throughout History.

Consequently, when it comes to colonization and Westernization, self-scrutiny must be very deep, and this -at the national level- can be extremely painful. That is why, in Russia, de-Westernization will be a far more difficult process to be carried out than in India.

Taken into consideration that Westernization (not only behavioral-cultural but mainly educational-academic-intellectual) is tantamount to alteration, corruption and degeneration, one has to underscore at this point that national identity is not necessarily proportionate to national independence. It is quite possible that an educationally-academically-intellectually corrupted nation, although in possession of an independent state, has minimal national consciousness (because of their entirely Westernized education), whereas an enslaved nation struggling to achieve national independence may have fully preserved their national identity and intellectual originality.

Back in January 2021, I explained exactly this to an Oromo friend, who wrote to ask me why Egypt does not help the Oromo liberation movements achieve national independence for Oromia and in the process demolish the obsolete and genocidal state of Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia). Egypt is an independent state without national consciousness of historicity whereas the Oromos are a non-independent nation with emphatically strong Cushitic national identity and cultural originality. It took me a series of five articles to fully respond at the time; in the last article of the series, one can find titles of and links to the earlier parts:

academia.edu

Contrary to Oromos & Somalis, the Masriyin (Christian or Muslim Egyptians), as subjects of the Mamluks and the French, have had no National

First published on 28th January 2021 here: https://megalommatis.wordpress.com/2021/01/28/contrary-to-oromos-somalis-the-masriyin-christian-o

I expand on these topics, because there is a multitude of parameters in the much needed effort of African decolonization and educational-academic-intellectual de-Westernization. To offer an example, I have to say that even the nefarious term "university" (from the Latin "universitas") cannot be possibly accepted by all those who -in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America- seek decolonization, de-Westernization, and restoration of the ancestral values, moral standards, cultural integrity, and academic-educational traditions. This is however discussed in a second letter dispatched to my friend. Last, in a third letter, I examine a number of major issues around which the refutation of the Western colonial forgery and pseudo-historical doctrine will have to revolve.

---------------------- Letter to a Somali friend -----------------------

Thank you for the opportunity you offer me to write down my observations, perceptions, reflections, and conclusions on the topic under discussion!

I. Decolonization and the failure of the Afrocentric Intelligentsia

Several educational, academic, intellectual and political efforts have been undertaken over the past six (6) decades in order to take Africa out of the disastrous and heavy, colonial impact and to help the various nations of the Black Continent achieve national identity, cultural integrity, and ultimate liberation from the Western yoke.

Explaining why the Afrocentric African intellectuals failed (or at least they did not meet the early enthusiastic expectations) necessitates an extremely lengthy treatise the size of an encyclopedia; however, at this moment, I have to pinpoint the crucial mistakes made by the leading figures of the movement that became known as Afrocentrism.

To offer beforehand a recapitulative judgment, I would say that they all viewed their tasks within a far narrower context, thus minimizing the extent of the work that lies ahead.

They did not realize the importance of inter-African concertation, reciprocal knowledge, and systematized cooperation.

They failed to evaluate the extent to which they all have been altered, Westernized, and alienated from their t=roots.

They did not examine how sick, absurd, criminal, and inhuman the Western world was - even before colonizing Africa and other parts of the world.

And they did not consider as their priority to contact other colonized nations in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, to exchange descriptions of common experience, and to decide about their much needed common struggle and decolonization effort.

II. Afrocentric African scholars should have been taken Egyptology back from the Western Orientalists and Africanists 

First and foremost, their overall mental and intellectual endeavor was utterly wrong, misplaced, upended, and factitious. Although this statement seems to be extremely disappointing and perhaps even unfair, it is not. When people like Cheikh Anta Diop and Molefi Kete Asante decided to oppose the colonial powers and their historical distortions by means of Afrocentrism, they acted (without even understanding it) as typical Western intellectuals or philosophers.  

The Afrocentric African intellectuals thought that their own African culture could give them the foremost insignia of originality, but this was a wrong assumption. Unfortunately, they never questioned their authenticity and they failed to notice that they had already been exposed to overwhelming colonial impact at the mental, intellectual, educational, academic and scientific levels. So, they did not even imagine that they had first to methodically filter their mindsets, concepts and beliefs, and to remove the clutter. They did not realize that they had first to thoroughly study in-depth Egyptian hieroglyphics, Ancient Egyptian civilization, and the History of Egypt down to Modern Times in order to have access to the foremost African past.  

This would not be an easy task, because they would have to take Egyptological courses mainly in French- or English-speaking countries (or alternatively in Italy, Germany, Russia, Austria, Poland or Egypt - without however major differences in the syllabus, methodology or apparoach). In these countries' academic institutions, their professors would teach and propagate the compact, pseudo-historical dogma, which has progressively covered all sectors of Humanities and which was geared in order to historically legitimize and consolidate the Western colonial power at the educational, intellectual, and academic levels. This Western historical forgery is at the origin of every colonial evildoing, because it stipulates the preposterous Western supremacy, it defines the cruel and inhuman West as 'the realm of civilization', it denigrates all the other great nations (not only Africans) as barbarians, and it offers to the Western gangsters the foremost pretext to colonize the world.

So, as Afrocentric African students, they would have to meticulously search, find out, and identify -in the manuals that they would study and in the courses that they would attend- endless inaccuracies, deliberate errors, obvious lies, and a multitude of techniques geared by Western Egyptologists in order to distort the historical truth and to adjust all newly found data to the arbitrarily preconceived and shamelessly pronounced diagram of World Pseudo-History that the evil intellectuals of Western European Renaissance composed in the 15th and the 16th centuries, before sending their heinous, anti-Christian, barbarian and racist conquistadors and rascals to invade the rest of the world and carry out unstoppable series of genocides.

This means that, instead of blindly accepting their Western professors' assumptions and teachings, the Afrocentric African students of Western Egyptologists should scrutinize every single word, argumentation, conclusion, pretension, interpretation, lecture and publication of their professors, denounce -point by point- every single case of falsehood or deliberate distortion, and reject the Western Egyptology across the board.  

The task of the first Afrocentric African Egyptologists would be immense, involving

a) the publication of encyclopedias and books, academic periodicals, and secondary education manuals, and

b) extensive activities in terms of science popularization in newspapers, reviews, movies and TV programs – all available in many African languages, not in French and English.

All the criminal lies of the Western Eurocentric Egyptologists should be ferociously denounced, whereas Egypt, Sudan and Libya should be persuasively asked by all the other African states to effectively ban every Western European, Australian, and North American Egyptologist and Egyptological mission member, who did not denounce the fallacies of Eurocentrism, Judeo-Christian tradition, Greco-Roman civilization, Hellenism, Classicism and Renaissance. 

To give you an approximate idea, if the aforementioned development had taken place at the time, by now there would have been formed several hundreds of Afrocentric African Egyptologists teaching factual, truthful and unadulterated Egyptology in more than a hundred universities across the Black Continent. You certainly can fathom what a devastating blow against the Western European and North American colonial academia this development would have been.

Contrarily to this indispensable task and inevitable priority, the first Afrocentric African Egyptologists were merely theorizing in a most harmless manner, while having a very shallow understanding of Ancient Egypt. As a matter of fact, they never challenged, let alone endangered, the academic, educational and intellectual interests and biases of the Western colonial elites. Even worse, they intended to make political use of the Ancient Egyptian heritage; but this was really calamitous because "politics" is an entirely Modern Western fabrication that did not exist in the past in Africa, Asia or Europe. There will never be decolonization with politics anywhere, because there was no politics before the colonial era.  

More importantly, the aforementioned approach, which applies to Egyptology, should have also been followed in all the other sectors of Humanities that concern Pre-Islamic Africa, namely Meroitic-Cushitic Studies, Axumite Abyssinian Studies (to best document the Yemenite, non-African, origin of the Axumites), Punt and Ancient Somali Studies, Punic (Carthaginian) Studies, Libyco-Berber Studies, Late Antiquity Africa, and African Christianity.

III. Western Usurpation of African Heritage must be canceled.

In addition to the aforementioned, the Afrocentric African Egyptologists should undertake another, turly enormous endeavor, namely the ultimate denunciation and the irrevocable cancellation of the Western usurpation of a sizeable part of African and Asiatic historical heritage. Example:

Plotinus (204-270), who was an Egyptian mystic, erudite scholar, and spiritual master, has been distortedly named as "Greek Platonist philosopher" by the racist, colonial forgers of Western universities; but Plotinus was born in today's Asyut (Zawty in Egyptian Hieroglyphics; Syowt in Coptic; Lycopolis in Ancient Greek) in Central Egypt. He was an Egyptian, and his spiritual doctrine was entirely Egyptian; Plotinus wrote in Ancient Greek only to further propagate his knowledge, wisdom and world conceptualization, but his knowledge of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics is unquestionable.

Would it be therefore normal to consider an African American as an Anglo-Saxon only because he writes in English?

Many non-specialists may wish to formulate another question about Plotinus:

Why do then Western forgers call Plotinus "a Platonist philosopher"?

This is simple to answer.

Plato had traveled and studied in Egypt; in fact, his theories and world views are not his, but have derived from well-known, fundamental Ancient Egyptian concepts of transcendental knowledge, spirituality, moral, and world conceptualization. The underlying nature of Plato's so-called philosophy is the Ancient Egyptian Iwnw (Heliopolitan) dogma (also called among Greeks as "the Ennead"), i.e. one of the most influential religions of Ancient Egypt, which progressively spread throughout the Mediterranean Sea and Europe. So, Plotinus is a valuable part of Ancient African heritage that has been usurped after it was labeled "Greek" by the racist and criminal French, English and American academics and forgers.

Another example is offered by Porphyry of Tyre (234-305), Plotinus' student; he was a Phoenician spiritual master, cosmologist, mathematician, intellectual, debater, and author. Although Assyrian-Babylonian spirituality, science and wisdom are evident in his works, Western academic fraudsters still call him "Neo-platonic philosopher", which is another blatant case of Western usurpation of Oriental Asiatic heritage.  

There is nothing "Greek", nothing "European", and nothing "Western", in the highly valuable works of those great spiritual mystics and erudite scholars; they were genuinely Oriental, either African or Asiatic. But faithless, atheist, and materialist forgers of the Western universities have ludicrously labeled all these great masters "philosophers", thus propagating the use of a profane word, which during the Antiquity was of low connotation, because it was in straight opposition to words such as "wise", "sacred", "venerated", "pious", and "consecrated".

Compared to the high priests of Egypt, Cush/Meroe, Punt/Somalia, Carthage, Phoenicia, Assyria and Iran, the so-called Ancient Greek and Roman "philosophers" constituted villainous and degenerate evildoers. The profanity of those corrupt, obscene and barbarian malefactors (like the Epicureans) is beyond description, as they pretended that Man has the right to perform all the absurd crimes and the most repugnant sins if this is 'good' for his sensual pleasures.    

No Afrocentric African Egyptologists and Africanists will ever do good service to the Black Continent, their national identity, their cultural integrity, and the values and virtues of their ancestors, if they do not irrevocably reject the Western usurpation of Oriental heritage; actually, it is their obligation to irreversibly eradicate the last shred of Western impact on African education, academic knowledge, intellectual life, and moral tradition.  

IV. Afrocentrism had to encompass severe criticism and total rejection of the so-called Western Civilization

Second, the overall mental and intellectual endeavor of the Afrocentric African intellectuals was definitely incomplete. Not only they did not study Egyptology to acquire access into the Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic sources that constitute the utmost African originality, but they also failed to duly explore, analyze and criticize the Modern Western world. All the same, they would have two major tasks in this regard; more specifically, they had to first, evaluate the Western world on the basis of their own African criteria and values, and second, publish their argumentations, evaluations, and conclusions.   

As a matter of fact, they had to ultimately investigate the so-called Western world per se, identify its nature and origin, describe the process of its fabrication, denounce its unreliability and inhumanity, and discredit the Western intellectuals' conclusions, assumptions, pretensions, and fake stories. In other words, they had to effectively check whether the so-called Western world was anything more than spiritual corruption, deliberate alteration, and degenerate disfigurement of a part of the Ancient Oriental world.

This is a very critical point; although no Afrocentric African Egyptologists and Africanists have been formed until now (in order to subsequently re-establish an Afrocentric version of Egyptology and of several other related fields of Humanities), African universities have been flooded with numerous types of absurd, preposterous Western propaganda, notably the academic fields of French Literature, Art, History and Culture, English Literature, Art, History and Culture, Italian Literature, Art, History and Culture, Modern European Philosophy, etc.

All these fields have been accepted and developed in African universities; and the contents of numerous syllabuses were instructed to African students on African soil. This was carried out very thoughtlessly and extremely disastrously. Due to this situation, a great number of texts written by Western poets, playwrights, authors, philosophers and others were diffused among African populations. This means that immoral concepts, evil plots, inhuman stories, criminal ideas, vicious thoughts, counterfeit values, and execrable vices made their way into the hearts and the minds of millions of innocent Africans, fully corrupting them and effectively destroying their culture. This very deceitful and extremely pernicious method made many Africans unconsciously accept what would be impermissible for their parents' and ancestors' standards, values, and measures to tolerate.  

It is most unfortunate that the Afrocentric intelligentsia of Africa failed to make it clear that no Western European and Northern American text can be taught, studied, printed or diffused on African soil, if it does not comprehensively comply with African values, virtues and traditions. Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, William Shakespeare, François Rabelais, Joachim du Bellay, Montesquieu, Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Rudyard Kipling, Albert Camus, Agatha Christie, and scores of other supposedly important, valuable or even acceptable authors are absolutely pathetic and worthless when evaluated as per African moral values, measures and cultural criteria.

In fact, most of these pathetic, anomalous and evil individuals were heinous fanatics, paranoid fraudsters, and abhorrent sinners, who carried out crimes, propagated evildoing, despised their fellow countrymen, and promoted immoral manners and unethical behavior. They were abnormal to the extent of loathing and reviling the Christian culture of the societies in which they belonged and which they wanted to destroy. Clearly, there is only one reason for which Agatha Christie's novels (to offer an example) could be accepted as a study topic in African universities: in order to castigate the evil plot and to articulate a devastating critique of English Literature on the basis of African moral considerations, traditional values, and literary standards.

V. Afrocentrism as a form of African Isolationism drawing a line of separation between colonized nations in Africa and Asia

Third, the overall mental and intellectual endeavor of the Afrocentric African intellectuals proved also to be disturbingly egocentric; this is due to the fact that the interpretation of their approach leads us to the conclusion that they considered the colonial wrongdoings as necessary to eliminate only from Africa. In other words, they failed to notice that Africa was only one of the colonial powers' targeted lands or continents and that the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the English, the French, the Dutch, and the Belgians also colonized vast territories in Asia, Europe and Latin America. Last, they did not take into account that the Western colonial practices have been continued by several derivative states of the colonial powers, notably the US, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.

It would however be very helpful for all the Afrocentric African intellectuals to examine how the Ottoman Empire (one of African History's largest empires), Iran, the Mughal Empire of India, China, and even Russia were systematically and incessantly targeted by the colonial empires of the West. Furthermore, it would be very useful for those intellectuals to observe and assess that, for the colonial powers, the military occupation or the political dependence of a land, nation or kingdom is not the only means of effectively impacting a colony and introducing it into the colonial metropolis' sphere of influence.

Russia was never occupied militarily by the Western colonial powers, but from the beginning of the 18th c., the Romanov dynasty was targeted with a sophisticated and multifaceted process of Westernization (Europeanization) to which many Russian nobles, clerics and intellectuals reacted ferociously. It is quite telling that the Imperial Russian elite was successfully dragged to the extent of becoming an ally of the atheist and profane state of France (instead of naturally siding with Germany and Austria-Hungary), only to be exhausted in WW I, defeated by the Germans, and replaced by the Communists, who were totally alien to Russian culture.

This shows that to best serve African nations' interests and anticolonial vocation, the Afrocentric intelligentsia of Africa should enlarge their horizons, see Africa as only one colonially targeted land or continent, and enrich their knowledge and experience with the study of non-African civilizations, lands and nations that have also been colonized by the Western colonial powers. No one can possibly assess the historical distortions made by the Western academics during the formulation of their bogus-historical dogma, without duly delving into numerous fields of Humanities and fully checking endless inaccuracies, deliberate errors, obvious lies and a multitude of techniques geared by Western scholars in fields like Assyriology, Hittitology, Iranology, Biblical Studies, Indology, Islamology, Turkology, Slavic and Russian Studies, and Sinology.

VI. General estimation of the human resources, the time, and the cost needed

The aforementioned criticism may now help as a guideline for the future; what was not achieved in the past can be attempted now. Presently, perhaps the international context is more favorable to such an effort. Speaking for a middle-size African state, such as Algeria (in guise of an example), the effort to launch numerous sectors of Humanities, as new academic fields entirely free of colonial falsehood and distortion, would not be difficult to undertake. All the same, it would certainly demand perfect conceptualization of the commendable objective and proper contextualization within the international community. As it consists in a project of national and all-African dimensions, it should be placed under central (governmental) guidance and supervision.

It goes without saying that a project this important would also involve fully committed students, who would be absolutely conscious of the national and all-African character of the undertaking, and of their role in it. They should first be prepared during a 3 or 4-year syllabus (leading to a B.A.) and then financially supported during their graduate, postgraduate and doctoral studies. They should finally be committed to

a) returning to their 'alma mater',

b) being appointed there, and

c) launching a new department of studies in the sector in which they would have already been specialized.

To give an estimate, this national and all-African project (covering sectors named or insinuated in the aforementioned parts II, III, IV and V) would encompass around 50 (fifty) different sectors of Humanities. Selecting 10 (ten) genuinely interested and devoted students, who would be ready to specialize in the designated fields and return to be employed, means a total of 500 students, i.e. 500 scholarships for 10 years, and one secretariat in order to adequately administer the whole project. For a country like Eritrea or Mauritania, this would certainly be difficult to undertake, but for Algeria it is affordable. It would not exceed 100 million US$ for the entire period (including also the infrastructure and the establishment of basic libraries).

It would not only be a historic investment in terms of National and All-African Education, but it would also constitute a formerly colonized nation's most radical, resolute and drastic step out of the colonial era. In other words, in 15 (fifteen) years, an effort of such magnitude would bring forth results that would be exponentially greater than what the reputed Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana achieved in more than 60 years (it was incepted in 1962).

VII. Decolonization means above all De-Anglicization and De-Francization

The previous paragraphs contain a brief criticism of the Afrocentric movement and at the same time reveal why it failed to bring forth substantive results. As a matter of fact, it should have started with an in-depth effort of self-knowledge. Today, in reality, Africans do not know one another, and if they do, this happens at a so superficial level that it is insignificant. This is exactly what I wrote before more than 10 years in a presentation which was widely publicized in Nigeria:

academia.edu

AFRICAN RENAISSANCE UNIVERSITY A VISION

Proposals for the establishment of the first Afrocentric University in Africa

There is no African unity, no African identity, and no African interconnection, when Africans need colonial nations' languages (English and French) to communicate with one another. In this regard, it is essential at this point to highlight that the current political appearance and the political map of Africa are also of entirely colonial nature; it is what the colonial powers wanted to impose on the Black Continent. That's why it cannot be taken seriously into account.   

Any genuine and integer African cannot accept the colonial falsehood as per which Arabic is the main language throughout North Africa. This 'happens' only according to the Orientalist falsehood and due to colonial involvement and interference. In reality, Berber (Amazigh) is the main language throughout North Africa, and all the Africans, who deny this reality, are -quite unfortunately- victims of the colonial powers and of the delusion that European Orientalist and Africanist academics methodically created in order to effectively prevent Africans from achieving true nation building. Then, this implies that there should be Departments of Berber Language and Culture in at least 15 African countries. A Hausa-speaking Nigerian, a Somali, and a Swahili-speaking Kenyan should have the chance (in the perspective of 15 years after the beginning of the herein described educational-academic-intellectual decolonization project in their respective countries) of learning Berber in their high school. Similarly, an Algerian, a Moroccan, a Tunisian or a Libyan should have the chance of learning Hausa, Somali or Swahili in their relevant high schools.

More than 10 million people in Egypt are Copts; for a real African and Afrocentric thinker, the absence of Departments of Coptic Language, Literature and Theology is one of the worst results of the colonial rule throughout Africa. Somalia is an entirely Muslim country; yet, a Department of Coptology would be necessary in Somalia, because only then all the Somalis would understand the historical dependence of the Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians on the Copts, the existing differences between the Amhara and the Copts of Egypt, the pseudo-Christian nature of the Amhara, the reason for which the Christian Orthodox Oromos rejected to have any connection with the Amhara and were (few years ago) directly connected to Copts (the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria), and many other similar issues.

To underscore few specific points around which Somali Education, Academic Research, and National Building become one unitary endeavor, I would say the following: if the Amhara tribe and the Abyssinian colonial state proved to be a serious problem and a real threat for Somalia and the Somalis, it is then a national obligation of the Somali government to form a small force of academic specialists, who by studying and learning Coptic language, Coptic cult, Coptic theology, and History of the Coptic Church, will be able to advise correctly on all topics related to the Amhara Abyssinians and to the reason of their hatred of Somalia, Egypt, Islam, and Coptic Christianity. Furthermore, these Somali scholars will be able to unveil to many other Christian Africans the anti-Christian nature of the Amhara and their leaders.

For this to happen, after a first 3 or 4-year curriculum (leading to a B.A.), a Somali graduate should first choose this field as the main objective of his professional academic career; at the same time, he will have to be fully conscious of the fact that his desire to study Coptic in Egypt, specialize in Coptology, and become an expert on the matter does not constitute only his own career choice, but it is also a matter of national importance for Somalia. For this to be confirmed, governmental scholarships will have to be announced and offered for a certain number of years. 

A certain perspective has to be given to similar projects leading to the preparation and the launching of a Department of Coptology in Somalia. As I already said at the end of part VI), if we calculate a) the first circle of studies that will lead to a B.A. in Somalia (during which the selection of one or two candidates for specific scholarship for Coptic Studies will take place), b) the postgraduate & doctoral studies (5-7 years) that the Somali graduates will undertake, and c) their return to Somalia in order to launch for the first time a Department of Coptology, it will take ca. 10 years until the state of Somalia establishes a pertinent educational-academic foundation in this regard.

If this is what is needed for the launching of Coptic Studies in Somalia, similar effort has to be deployed for the establishment of many other sectors of Humanities. It will be a matter of Somali students' commitment and Somali government's investment in a national and all-African cause.

---------

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Beyond Afrocentrism: Prerequisites for Somalia to lead African de-colonization and de-Westernization

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Beyond Afrocentrism: Prerequisites for Somalia to lead African de-colonization and de-Westernization

За пределами афроцентризма: предпосылки для того, чтобы Сомали возглавила африканскую деколонизацию и девестернизацию Содержание Введение I.

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Ισπαχάν: η Αυτοκρατορική Πρωτεύουσα των Σαφεβιδών (:των Σούφι Σάχηδων) που είναι ο Μισός Κόσμος

Esfahan: the Imperial Capital of Safavid dynasty (: the Sufi Shahs) which is already "Half the World"

ΑΝΑΔΗΜΟΣΙΕΥΣΗ ΑΠΟ ΤΟ ΣΗΜΕΡΑ ΑΝΕΝΕΡΓΟ ΜΠΛΟΓΚ “ΟΙ ΡΩΜΙΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΑΝΑΤΟΛΗΣ”

Το κείμενο του κ. Νίκου Μπαϋρακτάρη είχε αρχικά δημοσιευθεί την 22α Ιουνίου 2019.

Στο κείμενό του αυτό, ο κ. Μπαϋρακτάρης παρουσιάζει τμήμα ομιλίας μου στην Νουρ-σουλτάν (πρώην Αστανά) του Καζακστάν τον Δεκέμβριο του 2018 με θέμα τις μεγάλες αυτοκρατορικές πρωτεύουσες της Ασίας και της Αφρικής, καθώς και την εμφανή κατωτερότητα και αθλιότητα των δυτικο-ευρωπαϊκών πρωτευουσών αποικιοκρατικών χωρών.

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https://greeksoftheorient.wordpress.com/2019/06/22/ισπαχάν-η-αυτοκρατορική-πρωτεύουσα-τ/ ===============

Οι Ρωμιοί της Ανατολής – Greeks of the Orient

Ρωμιοσύνη, Ρωμανία, Ανατολική Ρωμαϊκή Αυτοκρατορία

Όπως και στην περίπτωση της Σαμαρκάνδης, δεν υπάρχει καμμιά ευρωπαϊκή πόλη πλην της Σταμπούλ που να μπορεί να αντιπαραβληθεί με το Εσφαχάν σε αυτοκρατορικό μεγαλείο.

Μαζί με τις προαναφερμένες δύο πρωτεύουσες, καθώς και την Σαχ Τζαχάν Αμπάντ (το λεγόμενο Παλαιό Δελχί), πρωτεύουσα των Μογγόλων αυτοκρατόρων (Γκορκανιάν) της Ινδίας, και το Πεκίνο, το Εσφαχάν είναι μία από τις πέντε μεγαλύτερες και πιο εντυπωσιακές αυτοκρατορικές πόλεις και τις πέντε πιο σημαντικές πρωτεύουσες του Παγκόσμιου Πολιτισμού και της Παγκόσμιας Ιστορίας των τελευταίων δύο χιλιετιών.

Οι Ιρανοί το λένε πιο λακωνικά κι έχουν δίκιο: το Εσφαχάν είναι ο Μισός Κόσμος. Όλη η υπόλοιπη επιφάνεια της γης είναι το υπόλοιπο μισό του κόσμου.

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Το Τζαμί του Σάχη, Εσφαχάν

Το Τζαμί του Σεΐχη Λουτφολλάχ, Εσφαχάν

Ανακτορικό Περίπτερο Αλί Καπού, Εσφαχάν

Ανάκτορο των Σαράντα Κιόνων (Τσεέλ Σοτούν), Εσφαχάν

Ανάκτορο των Οκτώ Παραδείσων (Χαστ Μπεχέστ), Εσφαχάν

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Δείτε το βίντεο:

Исфахан: имперская столица сефевидов (суфийской династии Ирана) – половина мира

https://www.ok.ru/video/1416652720749

Isfahan: the Imperial Capital of the Safavid (: Sufi) Dynasty of Iran is Half of the World

https://vk.com/video434648441_456240217

Ισπαχάν: η Πρωτεύουσα των Σαφεβιδών (της Δυναστείας των Σούφι) είναι ο Μισός Κόσμος

Περισσότερα:

Στα περσικά (φαρσί) λένε “Εσφαχάν νασφ-ε Τζαχάν”, δηλαδή ότι το Ισπαχάν είναι ο μισός κόσμος. Γνωστή ως Ασπάδανα στα αρχαία ελληνικά, το Ισπαχάν ήταν μια μικρή πόλη στα αχαιαμενιδικά (550-330), αρσακιδικά (250 π.Χ. – 224 μ.Χ.) και στα σασανιδικά (224-651) χρόνια. Όταν με την ισλαμική κατάκτηση (636-642-651), το Ισπαχάν έγινε πρωτεύουσα της χαλιφατικής επαρχίας Τζεμπάλ (: βουνά) που περιλάμβανε την οροσειρά του Ζάγρου και το δυτικό ιρανικό οροπέδιο, άρχισε μία ανέλιξη που κορυφώθηκε στα σαφεβιδικά (1501-1736) χρόνια.

Το Εσφαχάν, όπως λέγεται στα περσικά, είναι μια από τις πιο εντυπωσιακές αυτοκρατορικές πρωτεύουσες του κόσμου. Επίκεντρο της σαφεβιδικής πρωτεύουσας ήταν η τεράστια πλατεία Νακς-ε Τζαχάν (εικόνα του κόσμου), όπου από το αυτοκρατορικό περίπτερο Αλί Καπού ο σάχης παρακολουθούσε τους αγώνες πόλο που λάμβαναν χώρα. Εκεί βρίσκονται και δυο από τα ωραιότερα τζαμιά του κόσμου: το Τζαμί του Σεΐχη Λουτφολάχ και το Τζαμί του Σάχη (σήμερα: ‘ταμί του ιμάμη’).

Για τους Ιρανούς από τα πρώιμα αχαιμενιδικά χρόνια ‘κήπος’ σήμαινε ‘παράδεισος’ κι όλοι οι σάχηδες των προϊσλαμικών και των ισλαμικών χρόνων οργάνωσαν εντυπωσιακούς κήπους κι έκτισαν ανάκτορα μέσα σε κήπους με λίμνες. Το ανάκτορο Τσεέλ Σοτούν (των σαράντα κιόνων) και το ανάκτορο Χαστ Μπεχέστ (των οκτώ παραδείσων) είναι τα πιο εντυπωσιακά από όσα σώζονται.

Περισσότερα: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isfahan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naqsh-e_Jahan_Square

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80l%C4%AB_Q%C4%81p%C5%AB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chehel_Sotoun

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasht_Behesht

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Lotfollah_Mosque

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shah_Mosque

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safavid_dynasty

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Исфахан

https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ισφαχάν

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Διαβάστε:

Isfahan (اصفهان), ancient province and old city in central Iran (Middle Pers. “Spahān,” New Pers. “Eṣfahān”). Isfahan city has served as one of the most important urban centers on the Iranian Plateau since ancient times and has gained, over centuries of urbanization, many significant monuments; a number of Isfahan’s monuments have been designated by UNESCO as world heritage sites. Isfahan city, the capital of Isfahan Province, is located about 420 km south of Tehran, and is Persia’s third largest city (after Tehran and Mashad) with a population of over 1.4 million in 2004.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/isfahan

Isfahan v. Local Historiography

Isfahan is exceptional in the number and variety of works of local historiography; no other Persian city has attracted nearly as many such works. These works were written predominantly in two periods: the pre-Mongol (and in particular the pre-Saljuq) period and the 19th century; works written in the 20th century will not be dealt with extensively here. Works of local historiography about Isfahan can be classified into two distinct literary genres: the biographical dictionary and the adab-oriented local history.

Biographical dictionaries. Biographical dictionaries of local perspective were written for a large number of Persian cities in the pre-Mongol period, but only a fraction of them are extant in either the original Arabic or Persian renderings. Two biographical dictionaries about scholars from Isfahan, both written in Arabic, have come down to us. The earlier of these two, the Ṭabaqāt al-moḥaddeṯin be-Eṣfahān wa’l-wāredin ʿalayhā, by Abu’l-Šayḵ ʿAbd-Allāh b. Moḥammad (274-369/887-979), was probably written in the 350s/960s, since the latest dates mentioned do not relate to events far beyond 350 (ed. Baluši, IV, p. 230, dated 353).

The mention of dates as late as that seems to be exceptional, so they could have been added during the final stages of the process of completing the work. The second work of this genre is Ḏekr akbār Eṣfahān by the Hadith transmitter and historian Abu Noʿaym Eṣfahāni (q.v.; d. 430/1038). The latest dates in this work suggest that it was completed in the 410s/1020s.

Abu’l-Šayḵ was not necessarily the first author from Isfahan to write a biographical dictionary about the scholars who lived in, or had come to, his hometown. Among the many sources he quotes, the Hanbalite scholar Ebn Manda (d. 301/913-14) is the most prominent. On the basis of this and other later sources, it is almost certain that Ebn Manda wrote such a work. It seems that it was still known in the immediate pre-Mongol period, since the author of an analogous work on the scholars of Qazvin was apparently able to use it then (Rāfeʿi, I, p. 2).

Moreover, Abu’l-Šayḵ frequently mentions men who wrote their mašyaḵa (list of teachers with whom they studied Hadith and other Islamic sciences); thus, it would be reasonable to assume that he used a number of these in preparing his work. The transition from writing down one’s own mašyaḵa to compiling a book on the “categories” or “generations” of scholars is likely to have been a relatively smooth one.

Undoubtedly, Abu’l-Šayḵ was, in turn, one of the most important, perhaps even the single most important, source for Abu Noʿaym, who referred to him as Abu Moḥammad b. Ḥayyān. Except for a very few, all the scholars included in Abu’l-Šayḵ’s work are also mentioned by Abu Noʿaym. Abu Noʿaym did not, however, merely write a continuation (ḏayl) to Abu’l-Šayḵ’s work; rather, he used most of his material in a slightly abridged or otherwise adapted form; thus, any changes that Abu Noʿaym introduced into the text of his source can be taken to be intentional.

Other sources of comparable character were identified first by Sven Dedering in the introduction to his edition of Abu Noʿaym’s work, and have recently been discussed more comprehensively by Nur-Allāh Kasāʾi in the introduction to his Persian translation of the work. Kasāʾi also provides a detailed comparison between the respective works of Abu’l-Šayḵ and Abu Noʿaym. It is also worth mentioning that an important source for Abu Noʿaym was the (apparently lost) Ketāb Eṣfahān by Ḥamza Eṣfahāni (see below).

These two biographical dictionaries are similar in scope, but they offer a number of differences in form: Abu’l-Šayḵ arranged his entries according to the principle of ṭabaqāt (categories), whereas Abu Noʿaym adhered to alphabetical order (except for the Companions of the Prophet), using the ṭabaqāt principle only within larger groups made up of men who bore very common given names such as Aḥmad (I, pp. 77 ff.).

Both works start with an introductory chapter, that of the earlier work being much more concise. Abu Noʿaym places a perceptible stress on the good qualities of the Persians and their merits in contributing to the spread of Islam and the maintenance of its purity.

For instance, half of the section on the Companions of the Prophet is devoted to Salmān Fār(e)si (q.v.), and the stories about the Arab conquest of Isfahan provide unfavorable details about how the invaders proceeded. Both works link the early history of Isfahan back to the prophetic cycle of history by claiming that the people of Isfahan were the only ones who did not support Nimrod in his rebellion against God, but supported Abraham instead (Abu’l-Šayḵ, 1989, I, p. 150; 1987-92, I, p. 28, Abu Noʿaym, I, pp. 48 ff.).

The biographical parts of both of these works shed some light on institutions of learning and their development. The earlier work describes teaching activity taking place mainly in mosques and in private homes, whereas the later one refers to specialized institutions unknown to the earlier source, such as a “House of learning and transmission,” (bayt al-ʿlm wa’l-rewāya) mentioned in relation to someone who died in 363/973, as well as a “House of Hadith and transmission” (baytal-ḥadiṯ wa’l-rewāya )(ed. Dedering, I, pp. 156, 221).

Other matters for which contemporary scholars have found it useful to resort to using local biographical dictionaries in general, and in particular those written about Isfahan, include the office of the judge (Halm) and the spread of law schools (Melchert; Tsafrir). Scholars have also offered, on the basis of such sources, reconstructions of the rise of Sufism to a respected movement that managed to attract even some of the more prominent religious scholars (Paul, 2000a, using methods developed by Chabbi).

Both books discuss in their introductions the pleasant landscape and climate of Isfahan and its surroundings in a very similar way, thus apparently laying the foundation for further developments of the genre that treats local history and geography as closely related subjects.

Adab-oriented local historiography. Works of local historiography written in the pre-Mongol period mostly belong to the genre of biographical dictionaries. The only extant work of this genre about Isfahan is Māfarruḵi’s Maḥāsen Eṣfahān in Arabic, which was written probably some time between 464/1072 and 484/1092 (Bulliet), when Isfahan had become the capital of the Great Saljuq empire.

Māfarruḵi includes quotes from Ketāb Eṣfahān, the lost work of Ḥamza Eṣfahāni; thus it seems that in Isfahan there was something like a tradition of writing local history in both genres. It is, however, impossible to venture a reconstruction of Ḥamza’s work based on the rather short references in Abu Noʿaym and Māfarruḵi, but it seems likely that it had a part similar to a biographical dictionary (including not only scholars, but also men of letters) and another one on antiquities (Paul, 2000b).

Another such work on “the glories of Isfahan” (fi mafāḵer Eṣfahān) may have existed in the form of ʿAli b. Ḥamza b. ʿOmāra’s Qalāʾed al šaraf, which is mentioned by Mā-farruḵi (p. 27) and Yāqut (V. pp. 200 f.) but seems to be lost. Nevertheless, it is probable that there was a tradition of writing adab-oriented local histories of Isfahan as well as biographical dictionaries of scholars.

Māfarruḵi’s work was translated into Persian in the 14th century by Ḥosayn b. Moḥammad b. Abi’l-Reżā Āvi, who rearranged it by dividing the text into eight chapters and added further material in several places, in many cases poetry, as well as praise of the Il-khanid vizier who governed Isfahan in his time. Māfarruḵi’s work is a pleasantly arranged assortment of stories, including some about storytelling itself. It was written from the vantage point of the secretarial class that focuses on the rules of good governance, which are sometimes linked to the pre-Islamic past.

This is history as a means of conveying contemporary messages; the rules are set first in a distant past, and later cases are used to illustrate that they are still valid. In its historical parts, the text certainly does not aim to recount history “as it really happened,” but tells stories of a historical nature as exempla to illustrate general rules that mostly pertain to good governance. Since these rules are grounded in a common cultural code shared by the author and his audience (and, in fact, later generations as well), the work is permeated with the values that were characteristic of the author’s time and social background. This work’s overall message is that experience (tajreba) has shown time and again that successful rulers are those who heed the advice of secretaries, viziers, and even the ordinary public. It is irrelevant that some of the stories told to convey this point of view may be fictitious.

Works written in the later 19th century; No local history of Isfahan seems to have been written under the Safavids or in the period immediately following their downfall. Local historiography resumed only in the second half of the 19th century, particularly as a response to Nāṣer-al-Din Shah’s project for a general description of the regions of Persia called Merʾāt al-boldān. Thus geography, in particular historical geography, is the focus of interest in some of these works, which are a source of information about city quarters and even about individual buildings.

One of the works written for Nāṣer-al-Din Shah was Neṣf al-jahān fi taʿrif al-Eṣfahān (in classical Arabic, the name of the city did not bear the definite article) by Moḥammad-Mahdi b. Moḥammad-Reżā Eṣfahāni. The earliest extant manuscript of this work is dated 1287/1870, but additions and revisions were made, apparently, until 1303/1885. It continued the tradition of adab-oriented historiography from the earlier periods in that it also presented a mix of history and geography, as indeed would have been what the king wanted.

The historical part takes up almost half of the text, highlighting two periods. In the section dealing with early history (pp. 139-69), the author tried to link his understanding of the results of modern (Western) scholarship (archeology and research on cuneiform texts) to the Persian (Šāh-nāma) tradition. After the legendary kings of Persia and Babylon, most of ancient and medieval history is given short shrift; but the author still manages to quote Māfarruḵi a couple of times and refers to Jean Chardin (q.v.) and Engelbert Kaempfer as witnesses to the prosperity of the country under the Safavids (pp. 178-79).

The second period focuses on the conquest of Persia by the Afghans and the ensuing period of upheaval, which he pursues as far as the reign of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah Qājār (q.v.; pp. 180 ff.). In this part, he frequently refers to European writers, among whom Sir John Malcolm’s History of Persia (1829) holds a prominent place (the references to Chardin and Kaempfer are probably also taken from here). Whenever the author has to decide whether the chronicle written by Mirzā Mahdi Khan Estrābādi (certainly the Tāriḵ-e nāderi is intended) or the English work is more reliable, he opts for the latter work.

Ḥājj Mirzā Ḥasan Khan Jāberi Anṣāri (1870-1957) wrote a history of Isfahan, which is called Tāriḵ-e Eṣfahān in the latest edition. (An earlier version, shorn of the third volume, which is a collection of biographies, is known as Tāriḵ-e Eṣfahān wa-Ray wa hama-ye jahān; the first version, called Tāriḵ-e neṣf-e jahān wa hama-ye jahān, was published in lithograph edition in Isfahan in 1914.) This is also a combination of both geography and history, and it seems particularly valuable for its detailed description of the Zāyandarud river and the system through which its waters were distributed (Lambton).

In a section consisting of biographies, dates as late as 1350/1931 are given, thus reaching far into the 20th century. The author was one of the main proponents of the constitutional movement in Isfahan, and so his perspective is also partisan. He was well informed about questions of governance and administration, since he held posts in the provincial administration under Masʿud Mirzā Ẓell-al-Solṭān for long periods, so it is not surprising that his main categoried are ʿemārat (flourishing parts) and virāni/ḵarābi (ruinous state).

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/isfahan-v-local-historiography

Isfahan vii. Safavid Period

Isfahan came under Safavid rule in 1503 following Shah Esmāʿil’s defeat of Solṭān Morād, the Āq Qoyunlu (q.v.) ruler of Erāq-e ʿAjam, near Hamadān. No contemporary source describes the conquest of the city in any detail, but we do know that it was accompanied by great brutality. In retaliation for the killing of many Shiʿite inhabitants under the Āq Qoyunlu, Shah Esmāʿil caused a bloodbath among the city’s Sunnites. The Portuguese traveler, Tenreiro, visiting Isfahan in 1524, reports seeing mounds of dirt with bones sticking out that were reportedly the remains of 5,000 people killed by the Safavids (Tenreiro, pp. 20-21).

Following the conquest, Esmāʿil appointed Dormeš Khan Šāmlu governor. Mirzā Šāh-Ḥosayn, originally a builder (bannā, meʿmār) in Isfahan, at that point started his political career by serving Dormeš Khan as vizier of the dāruḡa (“mayor”; see below and CITIES ii) of the city. He was later promoted to the post of wakil (royal deputy, the highest subject of the king) of Shah Esmāʿil, and was so influential that his enemies finally assassinated him in 1523 (Rumlu, pp. 231-32). In fact, his case is not an exception. Beginning with the reign of Shah Esmāʿil, Isfahani families occupied high positions in the Safavid administration, and at least one Safavid grand vizier, Mirzā Salmān Jāberi, appointed by Moḥammad Ḵodābanda in 1578, hailed from an Isfahani family.

Isfahan continued to be a focus of Shah Esmāʿil even as he set out to conquer other parts of the Iranian plateau. Stopping at the city from time to time, he is said to have been keen to restore the city to its pre-Mongol significance and in this regard paid particular attention to the role and function of its squares. In 1509 he ordered the enlargement of the Meydān-e Naqš-e Jahān (Royal Square) to accommodate the playing of polo, qabāq-bāzi, and other games and forms of entertainment. He used the Old Meydān (Meydān-e kohna) as the place of execution of rebels. The building of Hārun-e Welāyat, the mausoleum of a saint, at the southern end of the Old Meydān, was completed by Mirzā Šāh-Ḥosayn in 1512 (Ḵᵛāndamir, IV, p. 500; Quiring-Zoche, p. 64).

Shah Ṭahmāsb (r. 1524-76), who was born in a suburb of Isfahan in 1514, added several other buildings, mostly mosques, to the city. He incorporated Isfahan into the royal domain in 1534, and the city’s status as crown land (ḵāṣṣa) remained largely unchanged until the end of the Safavid period (Röhrborn, p. 118). The only exception is the reign of Moḥammad Ḵodābanda (1577-87), who offered Isfahan as a revenue assignment (teyul) to Ḥamza Mirzā, one of his sons and his heir.

The de-facto ruler of Isfahan, however, became his plenipotentiary (ṣāḥeb-e eḵtiār), Farhād Khan (q.v.), who did much to secure the city from the Arašlu tribe, who had taken control of the environs and were moving into the city as well. Once in power, Farhād Beg built himself a fortified residence alongside the Bāḡ-e Naqš-e Jahān (Royal Garden) and designed a new garden around it, destroying the bāḡ itself and moving its trees in the process (Afuštaʾi Naṭanzi, pp. 339-40).

During the reign of Shah Ṭahmāsb, the city twice experienced wartime disorder. The first time was during the civil war between two Qezelbāš tribal leaders, Čoḡā Solṭān Takkalu and Ḥosayn Khan Šāmlu, in 937/1530. The latter attacked Čoḡā Solṭān in a suburb of Isfahan, and Čoḡā Solṭān took refuge in the royal tent located near his camp. Ḥosayn Khan managed to kill Čoḡā Solṭān but ultimately was defeated by Takkalu reinforcements. He retreated to Isfahan and then fled to Fārs. It seems that the city itself was not thrown into disarray during this conflict (Rumlu, pp. 308-10).

The revolt of Alqās Mirzā (q.v.), Ṭahmāsb’s brother, in 1548-49 represents the second period of disorder for Isfahan. After ravaging Hamadān, Ray, and Qom, Alqās Mirzā’s troops, supported by the Ottoman Sultan Solayman, came close to Isfahan. He believed that the citizens would open the city’s gate without fighting, because no substantial Safavid force was around. Instead, the people of Isfahan, led by Šāh Taqi-al-Din Moḥammad Mir-e Mirān, a community leader (naqib), and his brother Mir Ḡiāṯ-al-Din Moḥammad, shut the city gates and put up strong resistance, strengthened in their determination by the fact that the shah had sent his own harem to Isfahan (Navidi, p. 101).

Alqās, finding it difficult to subdue Isfahan, gave up on his attempt to take the city and left for Shiraz (Rumlu, p. 434). The event became certainly the turning point of Alqās Mirzā’s revolt, which ended with his arrest and confinement in Qahqaha castle the following year (Rumlu, pp. 437-38). Although Isfahan made a great contribution to Ṭahmāsb’s cause through its fierce resistance, it does not seem to have received any royal favors in return. We only know of an order by Ṭahmāsb to abolish various taxes imposed on guilds in 1563 (Honarfar, pp. 88-90). This may simply have been part of the exemption from the tax on commerce (tamḡā), which Ṭahmāsb offered throughout the kingdom in 972/1564. The measure was apparently taken after the oracle of Ṣāḥeb-al-Amir appeared in the ruler’s dream (Qāżi Aḥmad, p. 449).

After Ḥamza Mirzā’s death in 1586, Isfahan fell to his brother, Abu Ṭāleb Mirzā. Farhād Khan lost his post and was incarcerated. Ḡolām (slave) forces loyal to him revolted, however, and managed to take hold of the city fortress with their own hostages. Long negotiations with representatives of Shah Ḵodābanda, who had meanwhile arrived in Isfahan, led to the release of the hostages but not the freeing of Farhād Khan. The ḡolāms only surrendered after royalist forces threatened to bombard the citadel.

The structure was destroyed after the rebels had left it. Shortly thereafter Moḥammad Ḵodābanda died, and Isfahan opened up its gates to the forces of the new ruler, Shah ʿAbbās I, who proceeded to grant the city and its environs to his wakil, Moršedqoli Khan, as a teyul. As city mayor he appointed Yuli Beg. The latter set out to restore the Tabarak fortress but also showed signs of autonomy. The decision of Shah ʿAbbās to visit Isfahan in 1590 led to a confrontation, with Yuli Beg retreating into the fortress with his troops.

Ultimately the shah reconciled himself with Yuli Beg, although the post of senior governor (ḥākem) went to ʿAli Beg Ostājlu (Afuštaʾi Naṭanzi, pp. 33-35, 233-38; Quiring-Zoche, pp. 80-89). Shortly thereafter, in early 1590, Isfahan was made crown land again, with the post of vizier going to Mirzā Mo-ḥammad Nišāpuri (Ḵuzāni Eṣfahāni, fol. 39b).

Isfahan as the Safavid Capital

The idea of turning Isfahan into a new capital must have come to Shah ʿAbbās shortly after his accession in 1587, for the first mention of designs for the new Isfahan occurs under 998/1588 in the Afżal al-tawāriḵ (Ḵuzāni Eṣfahāni, fol. 38v). At that early date some changes were made, among them the beginnings of the ʿĀli Qāpu palace (q.v.), but an overall new design did not come to fruition, possibly because of opposition.

The choice of Isfahan as the new administrative and cultural center was based in part on the availability of water—in the form of the Zāyandarud—but was clearly politically motivated as well. The city was located deep into the interior and thus far less exposed to the Ottoman threat than Tabriz and even Qazvin had been. It was also well positioned vis-à-vis the Persian Gulf, and thus played a pivotal role in Shah ʿAbbās’s territorial and commercial designs in that direction, which he initiated shortly after Isfahan had become the new capital (Mazzaoui).

Both Eskandar Beg Torkamān and Mollā Jalāl Monajjem tell us that the royal household moved to Isfahan and that Shah ʿAbbās proclaimed the city his capital (maqarr-e dawlat) in 1006/1597-98, giving orders for the erection of “magnificent” buildings (Eskandar Beg, tr. Savory, pp. 724; Mollā Jalāl, p. 161). Most scholars in fact consider this year as the time of transfer of the Safavid capital from Qazvin to Isfahan.

Stephen Blake’s new interpretation, which attaches crucial importance to the mentioning of the older design, is convincingly refuted by Babaie (see Blake, and the review by Babaie, pp. 478-82; for the various phases of the new design, see also Haneda, 1990). It is true that, from 1590 onward, Isfahan was often called dār al-salṭana in the sources, but we have to realize that it was not the capital in the modern sense of the word. As had always been the case among rulers of nomadic background and as would be true until the 19th century in Persia, the capital really was where the ruler happened to be.

The Dutch noted how, in the later 17th century, Isfahan’s population would swell by some 60,000 whenever the shah returned to the city. Tabriz and Qazvin were still referred to as dār al-salṭana as well, after the “transfer” of the capital, and Shah ʿAbbās stayed in Isfahan less than two months a year on average throughout his reign, less than the three months he spent in Māzandarān as of 1619.

Shah Ṣafi was absent from Isfahan for a full five years between 1631 and 1636. Still, Isfahan played a central role from the inception of Safavid rule, with members of its prominent families heavily represented in key bureaucratic positions as early as Shah Esmāʿil I’s administration (Quiring-Zoche, pp. 252-52).

That the city grew in importance throughout the 1590s is suggested by the fact that Shah ʿAbbās made the trip to and from Qazvin at least eighteen times in this period and visited Isfahan every year between 1590 and 1603 (Melville, p. 200). After it became the capital, all coronation ceremonies were held in Isfahan. The city in the course of time also gained more of a central focus as later shahs lost their appetite for campaigning. Shah ʿAbbās II was the last Safavid monarch who spent considerable time on the battlefield, as well as in the royal residence in Māzandarān.

Especially the last two rulers, Solaymān and Solṭān-Ḥosayn, rarely left the confines of their palace, and Solṭān-Ḥosayn often resided at Faraḥābād, the pleasure garden built outside Isfahan (although between 1717 and 1721 the shah was absent from Isfahan, spending time in Kāšān and Qazvin and returning to the capital just a year before the fall of the capital to the Afghans; Floor, 1998, pp. 31, 36). In sum, it may be said that Isfahan gradually acquired the status of capital (Quiring-Zoche, p. 105).

Isfahan’s newly acquired status found expression in the construction of a new governmental and commercial center southwest of the existing one, in a shift in that direction that had begun under the Saljuqs (Gaube and Wirth, pp. 47, 54). A new royal square, the Meydān-e Naqš-e Jahān, measuring 524 x 158 m, formed the fulcrum of this development. The model for the meydān seems to have been the meydān of the old city, although it has been suggested that the meydān of Kermān, laid out by Ganj-ʿAli Khan in the late 16th century, served as a model as well (Galdieri, 1974, p. 385; Gaube and Wirth, p. 55).

The outline of the meydān and the adjacent Qay-ṣariya bazaar was begun in 1001—a one-year tax relief was granted for the purpose—and the Čahār Bāḡ as well as the Shaikh Loṭf-Allāh mosque were designed in 1002 (Ḵuzāni Eṣfahāni, foll. 61v, 74). In the year 1012/1603, the shops, the caravansaries, the bathhouses, and the coffeehouses around the meydān were completed (Jonā-bādi, pp. 759-60). The same year saw the first proposal to connect the waters of the Zāyandarud with those of the Kuhrang river.

This scheme came up again in 102930/161619-20 and in the 1680s, but would only be executed in the 19th century (Mollā Jalāl, p. 244; Eskandar Beg, pp. 1170-71, 1180 see i[2], above). The Masjed-e Šāh, anchoring the southern end of the square, was begun in 1020/1611. The mosque complex was virtually completed by the end of Shah ʿAbbās I’s reign, although additions and repairs continued to be made until 1078/1667 (Blake, p. 140).

Following the completion of the royal square, the Qayṣariya bazaar, with its entry gate at the north end of the square, gradually developed into a huge covered marketplace (for its development, see Gaube and Wirth, pp. 31 ff.; Blake, pp. 101 ff.). Henceforth this part of the city would be its preeminent commercial center, even if the old center continued to play an important role in social life (see x, below).

In later years more building activity took place, mostly involving palaces. A new royal palace took shape in the Naqš-e jahān garden, adjacent to the new meydān, which had been a garden retreat for Shah Esmāʿil I. The palace grew out a series of mansions, principally one owned by Farhād Khan (q.v.), but the exact stages of its construction remain unclear (Eskandar Beg, II, p. 780; tr., II, p. 977; discussion in Blake, pp. 58 ff.).

The same is true of the building of the ʿĀli Qāpu, the five-storey audience hall overlooking the meydān, which was begun under Shah ʿAbbās but not used until the reign of Shah Ṣafi (Galdi-eri, 1979). The Ṭālār-e Ṭawila, the Āyena-Ḵāna, and the Čehel Sotun (Forty columns), too, date from this period; they were all built in the period 1635-47, under the auspices and patronage of Moḥammad Sāru Taqi (Floor, 2002; Babaie, 1994, pp. 128-29; idem, 2002, pp. 23-24).

The Čehel Sotun was constructed in 1056/1646 or 1057/1647. It was rebuilt after it burned down in 1706, and the structure as it exists today dates from that time (Blake, pp. 66-69). The Pol-e Ḵᵛāju was erected under Shah ʿAbbās II as well (see x, below).

The wall that had surrounded Isfahan for centuries and that had always marked the boundary between the inner city and the suburbs continued to exist, but by the early 17th century it had lost its significance as a defense mechanism and thus was allowed to become dilapidated (Gaube and Wirth, p. 33; Haneda, 1996, pp. 370-72).

The old city anyhow was unable to accommodate ʿAbbās I’s designs for a new capital, and much of the new development took place beyond the perimeter of the wall. Southwest of the new royal palace and the area around the square, new quarters such as ʿAbbāsābād and Ḵᵛāju were developed in the western and southern suburb. Craftsmen and merchants from all over the country were urged to come to settle in Isfahan.

Most notably, the shah resettled craftsmen from newly conquered Tabriz to ʿAbbāsābād and had Armenian merchants from Julfa settle in New Julfa (Pers. Jolfā; see JULFA), which was specially built for them at the southern bank of the Zāyandarud. In the middle of these new quarters ran the long and straight avenue of Čahārbāḡ from a gate of the old city to the Hazār Jarib garden situated at the southern hill. Beautiful gardens were built at both sides of the avenue.

With its canals and their abundant water, the greenery of its parks, its wide and straight streets and its spacious layout, the urban plan of the new city suited the elite, government officials and the rich, who came to settle down there from outside of Isfahan. Thus, the character of the new city differed substantially from that of the old city, which maintained the character of a traditional Persian city with its winding streets, small houses, and little public greenery, and where most Isfahanis continued to live.

The building activities continued until nearly the end of the Safavid rule in the 18th century. Various shahs also built pleasure gardens across the Zāyandarud. Thus Shah ʿAbbās I had ʿAbbāsābād (Hazār Jarib) constructed as an extension of the Čahārbāḡ ʿAbbās II created Saʿādatābād in 1070/1659; and Shah Solṭān-Ḥosayn had Faraḥābād laid out in 1697, making further additions and embellishments in 1711 and again in the period 1714-17 (Ḵātunā-bādi, pp. 562-63; NA, VOC 1856, 15 April 1714, fol. 714; Darhuhaniyan, p. 146; VOC 1870, 9 March 1715, foll. 614-15; VOC 1870, 25 November 1714, fol. 495; VOC 1848, 13 April 1715, fol. 2280v; VOC 1897, 3 December 1716, fol. 247; Honarfar, pp. 722-25; Blake, pp. 74-81).

The Madrasa-ye Maryam Begom was built and turned into waqf (endowment) property by Maryam Begom, Shah Solṭān-Ḥosayn’s great aunt, in 1703 (Honarfar, pp. 662-67). The Madrasa-ye Čahārbāḡ, the blue, lofty dome of which can be seen from anywhere in Isfahan, was also built under the reign of Solṭān-Ḥosayn, begun in 1704-05 and finished in 1706-07 (Ḵātunābādi, p. 556; Herdeg). Isfahan and its buildings are always associated with the name of Shah ʿAbbās I. In reality, however, they are the cooperative work of many people, royal, religious, military and civil, throughout the Safavid period (see x, below).

Various Western observers claimed that 17th-century Isfahan was the largest city in all of Safavid Persia (Schillinger, p. 228). According to Jean Chardin (q.v.), Isfahan had 162 mosques, 48 madrasas, 1,802 caravansaries, 273 public baths, and 12 cemeteries within its walls (for an overview of the city’s caravansaries, see Vademecum of Caravanserais in Isfahan). The exact number of its population is not known, but clearly grew over time, especially after the city gained the status of capital.

Don Juan of Persia for the 1590s estimated 80,000 households and 360,000 inhabitants (Don Juan, p. 39). Thomas Herbert (q.v.), visiting in 1627-29, calculated 70,000 households and a total of 200,000 people (Herbert, p. 126). Adam Olearius in 1637 gives a figure of 500,000 inhabitants (Olearius, p. 553).

Chardin confirms this by suggesting that in the late 17th century the population of Isfahan was almost as numerous as that of London, then the biggest city in Europe with an estimated population of 500,000. Three-quarters of the population may have lived within the city walls, and one-quarter outside of them (Blake, p. 38). This would have made late Safavid Isfahan one of the biggest cities in the world, besides London, Istanbul, Šāhjahānābād (Delhi), Beijing, and Edo (Tokyo).

Administration

The post of ḥākem as the local governor of Isfahan goes back to the period before the Safavids. In the 16th century, the ḥākem was often an individual of high rank in the larger administration. Thus two of the ḥokkām were also preceptors of rulers, Durmiš Khan for Sām Mirzā, and Mohammad Khan for the young Moḥammad Ḵodā-banda. In the early reign of Shah ʿAbbās I, Farhād Khan served as ḥākem (Quiring-Zoche, p. 138). Another one of Isfahan’s principal administrators was the dāruḡa. In the 16th century the dāruḡa may have been appointed by the ḥākem, but later on it was the shah who appointed him, something that is reflected in the rather frequent mention of the position in the Persian chronicles.

In the European sources, the dāruḡa is often equated with the post of mayor (Chardin, X, p. 28; Fryer, III, p. 23; Kaempfer, p. 110). The jurisdiction is not always clear, but it seems that, as a rule, the dāruḡa was not in charge of fiscal matters. Initially the function may have had a military aspect, but, as it evolved in the 17th century, the dāruḡa mostly dealt with issues of law and public security (Fryer, III, p. 23; Minorsky, pp. 82, 149; Floor, 2001, p. 118). The association of the function of dāruḡa with crown domain (Floor, 2001, pp. 116-17) is not fully borne out by the evidence. Already in the 15th century we hear of a dāruḡa in Isfahan (Quiring-Zoche, pp. 130, 134).

In the Safavid period we have Mirzā Jān Beg, who was appointed dāruḡa in 1530-31, three or four years before the conversion of Isfahan to crown land (Haneda, p. 80). The appointment of Georgians to the post also goes back further than 1620, for Bižan Beg Gorji acceded to the post in 998/1590 and Kostandil (Constantine), the son of the Georgian King Alexander II, was appointed dāruḡa in 1602-03 (Ḵuzāni Eṣfahāni, foll. 40b, 148; Maeda, pp. 261-62). Still, several non-Georgians were appointed in later years, for instance, Tahtā Khan Beg and Bektāš Beg Ostājlu, and only in 1620 did the post become the prerogative of a son of the governor of Georgia, in an arrangement made by Shah ʿAbbās (Della Valle, II, p. 176; Chardin, X, p. 29; Kaempfer, pp. 110-11).

From that moment until the end of Safavid rule, the dāruḡa was always a Georgian. From the moment Isfahan turned into crown domain, a vizier was appointed as well (Quiring-Zoche, p. 145). Typically a ḡolām, this official was assigned to the divān-e ḵāṣṣa (office of the crown lands) and as such charged with the fiscal administration of the town. The vizier also had a judicial function in that, once a week, he had petitions read to him from people with grievances (Pacifique de Provins, p. 393).

However, the position was fluid. Thus in 1046/1636 the post of vizier was combined with that of the wazir-e mawqufāt (minister of property endowments) in the person of Moḥammad-ʿAli Beg Eṣfahāni, but the two were divided again two years later, when Mirzā Taqi Dawlatābādi became vizier and Mir Ṣafi-al-Din Mo-ḥammad was appointed wazir-e mawqufāt (Eskandar Beg, 1938, p. 296).

The kalāntar was another city official. He may have taken over from the raʾis in the 16th century as a representative of the local population, as part of a development whereby local notables made room for centrally appointed bureaucratic officials, who were often outsiders. He should not be confused with the Armenian kalāntar of New Jolfā. Although appointed by the shah, he was chosen in consultation with the people and served as an intermediary between them and the authorities.

One of his tasks was to defend the populace against tyranny, including the tyranny of unscrupulous vendors, examine their complaints and the grievances of merchants. He also acted as a mediator with the guilds, and appointed the heads of city wards, the kadḵodās. Collecting rent and taxes appears to have been among his responsibilities as well (Minorsky, p. 82; Rafiʿā, p. 73; Thevenot, p. 103; Fryer, III, p. 24; Sanson, p. 29; Quiring-Zoche, pp. 162-67; Aubin, p. 37; Floor, 2000, p. 46).

A Multi-lingual, Multi-ethnic City

In the course of Shah ʿAbbās I’s reign Isfahan developed into a lively, cosmopolitan city, home to Muslims, Armenians, Georgians, and Jews, Indians, as well as representatives of European religious orders and agents of trading companies. The center of town, the Meydān-e Naqš-e Jahān, was frequently the scene of popular games such as polo and qabāq-andāzi, an archery game; and there ram fighting, bull fighting, wolf baiting, and other forms of entertainment were performed (examples in Della Valle, I, pp. 709-10, 713-14; Chick, p. 184; Fi-gueroa, II, pp. 58 f.; Gaudereau, pp. 71-72).

Following a military victory, on holidays, and on the occasion of visits by important foreign envoys, the Meydān and the bazaar were illuminated and performances of jugglers and rope dancers staged (Jonābādi, pp. 805, 829-31; Della Valle, I, pp. 821, 829; II, pp. 7-8, 36; Chardin, IX, pp. 329-30). People mingled in the coffeehouses that flanked the square, lined the Čahār-bāḡ, and were also spread around various other neighborhoods, or sought oblivion in the many establishments concentrated around the Old Meydān that served an opium drink called kuknār (Matthee, 2005, p. 108). Seventeenth-century Isfahan was also home to reportedly 12,000 prostitutes, who occupied the porticos around the Meydān-e Naqš-e Jahān and also served their clientele in an area between the Madrasa-ye Ṣafaviya and the Fatḥ-Allāh mosque (Matthee, 2000).

By the middle of the 17th century, most people in Isfahan had become Shiʿite Muslim as a result of Safavid Shiʿite propaganda policy. They occupied without doubt the most important part of the urban society. There were two kinds of Shiʿite Muslims: Persian speakers and Turkic speakers.

People living in the old city of Isfahan were mostly Persian-speaking. Government officials and their servants, merchants, artisans and their apprentices, professors and students, all spoke Persian. Business and preaching were usually done in Persian. Persian was without doubt the most popular language in the city.

Turkic-speaking people were mainly found at the royal court. Even in the 17th century, when the influence of the turcophone Qezelbāš had diminished considerably, people at the court continued to speak in Turkic. In the 16th century, the wives and mothers of the king had usually been of Turkish origin. Therefore it is not surprising that people spoke Turkic there in and around the royal palace. However, in the 17th century, as most women in the harem were of Georgian origin, they still retained the habit of speaking in Turkic.

In the city itself, the use of Turkic must have been very limited. However, in caravansaries visited by people from Azerbaijan, for example, the common language was Turkic. Members of Turkish tribes coming to the city for commerce would have spoken Turkic as well. Thus, Turkic would have been the second popular language. It was, however, only a colloquial language and never was used as a literary language.

Isfahan was home to many Armenians as well. The city’s Armenians became concentrated in Jolfā as part of a resettlement under Shah ʿAbbās II. Jolfā had an estimated 20,000 inhabitants in the mid-17th century, a number that may have gone up to 30,000 by the end of the century (Herzig, p. 81). These spoke Armenian and for the most part belonged to the Armenian Orthodox church. Most of them were merchants engaged in the trade of Persian silk and precious metals. They had their own networks with compatriots in Europe and India. In their dealings with other merchants in Isfahan they must have spoken Persian.

Further, many of the city’s inhabitants were of Georgian, Circassian, and Daghistani descent. Engelbert Kaempfer, who was in Persia in 1684-85, estimated their number at 20,000 (Kaempfer, p. 204). Following an agreement between Shah ʿAbbās I and Taimuraz Khan, Georgia’s last independent ruler, whereby the latter submitted to Safavid rule in exchange for being allowed to rule as the region’s wāli and for having his son serve as dāruḡa of Isfahan in perpetuity, a Georgian prince converted to Islam served as governor (Chardin, X, p. 29; Kaempfer, pp. 110-11).

He was accompanied by a certain number of soldiers, and they spoke in Georgian among themselves. There must also have been some Georgian Orthodox Christians. The royal court had a great number of Georgian ḡolāms as well as Georgian women. Although they spoke Persian or Turkic, their mother tongue was Georgian.

Isfahan was home to a large Indian community as well. Their presence was particularly important from the commercial point of view. There were two kinds of Indians, Muslim and Hindu. Indians formed a large ethnic community in Isfahan, and their numbers is given as between ten and fifteen thousand (Tavernier, I, pp. 421-22; Thevenot, p. 217). Merchants were engaged in the trade of various Indian goods, such as textiles, indigo (a dyestuff, q.v.), sugar, and tobacco.

Hindu moneylenders had a good business, because Islamic law prohibits Muslims from lending money for interest. The moneylending business was almost an Indian monopoly. They spoke various languages, including Urdu (q.v. at iranica.com), Hindi, and Gujarati (q.v.). Insofar as commerce in Isfahan was concerned though, they certainly spoke in Persian. Hindus often served European companies as interpreters and as brokers (Dale, pp. 70 ff.).

Besides these large groups, there were small communities of Persian-speaking Zoroastrians and Jews. Catholics and Protestants, monks, merchants, and court artisans, were present in small numbers, too. Most of them came from Europe and returned there after several years. There were, however, several monks like Raphael du Mans of the Capuchin order, who lived in Isfahan almost fifty years and died there.

Social divisions were expressed in the distinction between the elite and the common people, but also found expression in traditional rivalries in the old city, where two groups, the Ḥaydari and Neʿmati (q.v.), representing the two quarters of the old city, Dardašt and Jubāra, periodically engaged in communal fighting (Chardin, VII, pp. 289-93; Perry, pp. 107-18).

Isfahan in Crisis

Isfahan’s population is said to have grown by one-fifth or even one-fourth between 1645 and 1665 (Richard, ed., II, p. 262). But thereafter, conditions grew worse for the city as part of an overall deterioration in political management and economic wellbeing in Safavid territory in the second half of the 17th century. In 1662, the city was struck by famine, causing people to assemble in front of the dawlat-ḵāna demanding measures against hoarding (Waḥid Qazvini, p. 307). In 1668-69, famine struck again.

Its main cause was a drought, but hoarding by bakers and grain merchants exacerbated the misery of Isfahan’s residents, and the situation got even worse when, following Shah Solaymān’s coronation, the court and its huge entourage returned to the city before adequate provisioning measures were taken (Chardin, IX, p. 571; X, pp. 2-4; NA, VOC 1266, 8 November 1668, foll. 155, 923v, 941; IOR, G/36/105, 14 August 1668, fol. 36). In the latter part of the 1670s the high cost of living and growing deprivation caused a bread riot in the city, with people pelting political officials with rocks. From early 1678 until mid-1679 in Isfahan alone, more than 70,000 people are said to have died from a terrible famine. In 1678 the common people of the city rose in revolt against inflation and famine (Matthee, 1999, p. 177).

In the second half of the 17th century, the position of religious minorities in the city also worsened. Clerically inspired campaigns put pressure on Jews to convert to Islam; the authorities took various measures to curb wine-drinking and vices associated with coffeehouses, and several decrees were issued restricting the activities of Armenian merchants and Catholic missionaries (Moreen; Matthee, 2006a, pp. 84-94; idem, 2006b). The local Armenian population was made more vulnerable to political and religious pressure by internal splits in the community between Catholics and Schismatics (Ghougassian, passim; Baghdiantz-McCabe, passim).

A new crisis hit Isfahan at the beginning of the 18th century as part of a deepening malaise that affected all of Persia. In 1713 the Isfahan region was made unsafe by Baḵtiāri and Lor brigands, so that no caravans could leave or enter the city unless accompanied by large contingent of soldiers (NA, VOC 1856, 9 October 1713, foll. 494-95). Too years later, famine struck again. Exacerbated by a grain monopoly by harem eunuchs and high-ranking clerics, this crisis pushed bread prices in the city so high that it caused people to riot on 20 February 1715. Cursing the shah and his ministers, the rioters threw rocks at the ʿĀli Qāpu and damaged the gate of the royal kitchen. They also assailed the residence of chief cleric Mollā Moḥammad Bāqer Majlesi.

The shah (Solṭān-Ḥosayn) thereupon dismissed the current city dāruḡa, Qurčišāh Beg, who combined his function with that of supervisor of the city’s victuals (moḥtaseb), and appointed Emāmqoli Khan Zangana, the amirāḵor-bāši and a son of grand vizier Šāhqoli Khan, in his stead. The monarch also had officials dispatched to the residence of Mir Moḥammad-Bāqer to order him to offer a large volume of grain on the royal square. This did not quell the unrest, however.

On 16 June 1715 the people forced the shah, who intended to leave Isfahan, to stay in the city, and the next day they crowded together in front of the royal palace and threatened to plunder and set fire to it (Floor, pp. 26-27; Matthee, 2004, pp. 187-88). From that moment until the fall of the city to the Afghans, the post of moḥtaseb was rotated with increasing speed, but to little avail. Food prices remained sky-high, and the misery in the city continued, with theft, burglaries, and murder becoming common (NA, VOC 1897, 14 November 1716, fol. 237; ibid., 3 December 1716, fol. 268). Beggars were said to be ubiquitous in the city and poverty had reached such levels that the poor would quickly strip the flesh of any dead camel, mule, or horse left out on the street (Worm, p. 293).

The Afghans arrived in Golnābād on 8 March 1722 and defeated the Persian army, which, at about 40,000 men and an additional 30,000 infantry troops, was at least twice as large as that of the Afghans. The Georgian contingent, the only one to fight, was decimated. Losing some 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers on the battlefield, the remainder of the Safavid army sought refuge in the city (Lockhart, pp. 130-43; Floor, 1998, p. 87).

Maḥmud Ḡilzāi with his Afghan tribal forces then moved to Faraḥābād, which he took without meeting any resistance. He next seized Julfa, where the inhabitants welcomed him with food and wine and accepted him as their new ruler. After a few days of panic in which the Afghans could have taken Isfahan proper, the inhabitants quickly reinforced the defenses, and a long siege ensued. The city soon ran out of food, and, especially toward the end of the summer, the misery grew to the point at which people first took to eating tree bark, leaves, and dried excrement and eventually resorted to cannibalism.

After a six-month siege, the city fell to Maḥmud on 23 October 1722 (IOR, G/29/15, 20 October 1722, fol. 80; 30 November 1722, fol. 83; diary of the siege in Floor, 1998, pp. 83-176). Isfahan suffered greatly during the assault and the ensuing occupation. It lost a large part of its population, many of its buildings lay in ruins, and its economy was destroyed. The city survived but its revival would take until the 19th century, and it never regained its former importance.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/isfahan-vii-safavid-period

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Κατεβάστε την αναδημοσίευση σε Word doc.:

https://www.slideshare.net/MuhammadShamsaddinMe/ss-250750290

https://issuu.com/megalommatis/docs/esfahan.docx

https://vk.com/doc429864789_622448190

https://www.docdroid.net/EP63uxd/ispakhan-i-autokratoriki-proteuoysa-ton-safevidwn-docx

Φερντοουσί, ο Παραδεισένιος: Εθνικός Ποιητής Ιρανών και Τουρανών, Θεμελιωτής του Νεώτερου Ευρασιατικού Πολιτισμού

Ferdowsi, the Paradisiacal: National Poet of all Iranians and Turanians, Founder of Modern Eurasiatic Civilization

ΑΝΑΔΗΜΟΣΙΕΥΣΗ ΑΠΟ ΤΟ ΣΗΜΕΡΑ ΑΝΕΝΕΡΓΟ ΜΠΛΟΓΚ “ΟΙ ΡΩΜΙΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΑΝΑΤΟΛΗΣ”

Το κείμενο του κ. Νίκου Μπαϋρακτάρη είχε αρχικά δημοσιευθεί την 28η Αυγούστου 2019.

Στο κείμενό του αυτό ο κ. Μπαϋρακτάρης παραθέτει στοιχεία από ημερήσιο σεμινάριο στο οποίο παρουσίασα (Πεκίνο, Ιανουάριος 2018) τα θεμέλια της ισλαμικής και νεώτερης παιδείας και πολιτισμού όλων των Τουρανών, Ιρανών και πολλών άλλων, μουσουλμάνων και μη, Ασιατών.

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https://greeksoftheorient.wordpress.com/2019/08/28/φερντοουσί-ο-παραδεισένιος-εθνικός-π/ ============

Οι Ρωμιοί της Ανατολής – Greeks of the Orient

Ρωμιοσύνη, Ρωμανία, Ανατολική Ρωμαϊκή Αυτοκρατορία

Πολύ λίγοι αντιλαμαβάνονται ότι, αν ο γνωστός Αλβανός χριστιανός και μετέπειτα μουσουλμάνος ηγεμόνας Γεώργιος Καστριώτης επονομάσθηκε από τους Οθωμανούς Σκεντέρμπεης (1405-1468), αυτό οφείλεται στον Πέρση Φερντοουσί, τον εθνικό ποιητή Ιρανών και Τουρανών που αφιέρωσε κάποιες από τις ιστορίες που αφηγήθηκε στον Μεγάλο Αλέξανδρο – ή μάλλον στο τι από τον Αλέξανδρο (ποια πλευρά του χαρακτήρα του βασιλιά) παρουσίασε μέσα στο έπος του.

Αυτές οι ιστορίες έτυχαν περαιτέρω επεξεργασίας και αναπτύχθηκαν περισσότερο μέσα σε έπη μεταγενεστέρων ποιητών, όπως ο Αζέρος Νεζαμί Γκαντζεβί, για να διαδοθούν απ’ άκρου εις άκρον του ευρασιατικού χώρου.

Αυτή ήταν η αξία του μύθου: επηρέασε μακρινούς λαούς και μεταγενέστερες περιόδους, μέσω των ηθικών προτύπων και των συμβολισμών, πολύ περισσότερο από όσο η θρησκεία και η ιστορία.

Μέσω του Σαχναμέ του Φερντοουσί, το οποίο είναι το μακροσκελέστερο έπος όλων των εποχών (μεγαλύτερο από όσο η Ιλιάδα κι η Οδύσσεια μαζί), οι Οθωμανοί αλλά και πολλοί άλλοι, Γεωργιανοί, Μογγόλοι, Ινδοί, Αρμένιοι, Κινέζοι, Τουρανοί (Turkic) και Πέρσες, Τάταροι και Ρώσσοι, όπως και πολλοί βαλκανικοί λαοί έμαθαν ένα πλήθος από ηρωϊκά πρότυπα των οποίων φέρουν οι ίδιοι τα ονόματα ως προσωπικά και τα ανδραγαθήματα ως πρότυπο ζωής.

Οι ιστορίες του Σαχναμέ έγιναν παραμύθια για τα μικρά παιδιά, διδακτικές ιστορίες για τα σχολεία, και παραδείγματα για τους προετοιμαζόμενους στρατιώτες, έτσι διαπερνώντας την λαϊκή παιδεία σχεδόν όλων των εθνών της Ασίας, μουσουλμάνων και μη.

Τα ονόματα των ηρώων του Φερντοουσί που είναι τουρανικά κι ιρανικά βρίσκονται σήμερα ως προσωπικά ονόματα ανάμεσα σε Βόσνιους κι Ινδονήσιους, Μογγόλους της Ανατολικής Σιβηρίας κι Ινδούς, Τατάρους της Ρωσσίας και Πέρσες, κοκ.

Το να γνωρίζεις τις ιστορίες του Φερντοουσί είναι απόδειξη ανώτερης παιδείας είτε βρίσκεσαι στο Αζερμπαϊτζάν, είτε είσαι στο Μπάνγκλα Ντες, είτε ζεις στο Καζάν, είτε μένεις στην Ανατολική Σιβηρία.

Πόσες είναι οι ιστορίες του έπους; Σχεδόν 1000!

Η παραπάνω αναφορά στον Σκεντέρμπεη είναι ένα μόνον από τα πάμπολλα παραδείγματα της απέραντης, υστερογενούς επίδρασης του Φερντοουσί η οποία εξικνείται σε πολύ μακρινά σημεία της γης και ανάμεσα σε λαούς που δεν είχαν καν διαβάσει το τεράστιο έπος.

Αλλά οι αναγνώστες του έπους είχαν επηρεαστεί πολύ περισσότερο όσο υψηλά και αν ευρίσκονταν.

Γράφοντας στον Σάχη Ισμαήλ Α’ στις παραμονές της μάχης του Τσαλντιράν (1514), δηλαδή σχεδόν 500 χρόνια μετά τον θάνατο του Φερντοουσί, ο Σουλτάνος Σελίμ Α’ περιέγραψε τον εαυτό του ως ‘θριαμβεύοντα Φερεϊντούν’, κάνοντας έτσι μια αναφορά σε ένα από τους πιο σημαντικούς και πιο θετικούς ήρωες του Σαχναμέ.

.Το δείπνο που παρέθεσε στον γιο του Φερεϊντούν ο βασιλιάς της Υεμένης. Από σμικρογραφία χειρογράφου

Για να αναφερθεί στον αντίπαλό του, Ιρανό Σάχη, ο Σουλτάνος Σελίμ Α’ έκανε περαιτέρω χρήση των ιστοριών του ιρανικού – τουρανικού έπους:

απεκάλεσε τον θεμελιωτή της δυναστείας των Σαφεβιδών “σφετεριστή της εξουσίας Δαρείο των καιρών μας” και “κακόβουλο Ζαχάκ της εποχής μας”.

Και αυτοί οι όροι παραπέμπουν σε κεντρικά πρόσωπα των ιστοριών του Σαχναμέ, έπος στο οποίο ο Φερντοουσί αναμόχλευσε και ανασυνέθεσε την Παγκόσμια Ιστορία κάνοντάς την να περιστρέφεται όχι γύρω από περιστασιακά ιστορικά πρόσωπα (όπως αυτά έχουν μείνει γνωστά) αλλά γύρω από διηνεκείς χαρακτήρες οι οποίοι, καθώς επαναλαμβάνονται από το ένα ιστορικό πρόσωπο στο άλλο και ενόσω κυλάνε οι αιώνες, αποκτούν πολύ μεγαλύτερη σημασία ως ηθικοί παράγοντες ενός αέναου παρόντος

Ο Φερεϊντούν συντρίβει τον Ζαχάκ.

Θα αναφερθώ στον Φερντοουσί και στο Σαχναμέ σε πολλά επόμενα κείμενα. Εδώ όμως παρουσιάζω ένα βίντεο – εκλαϊκευτική συζήτηση (στα αγγλικά) ειδικών για το έπος Σαχναμέ (ανεβασμένο σε τρία σάιτ με εισαγωγικό σημείωμα σε αγγλικά, ρωσσικά κι ελληνικά) και μια βασική ενημέρωση (στα αγγλικά) για την ζωή του Φερντοουσί, του οποίου το έργο απετέλεσε την κοινή ιστορική δεξαμενή αξιών και ηθικών αρχών της ευρασιατικής παράδοσης και την πολιτισμική βάση πάνω στην οποία βρίσκονται όλα τα έθνη κατά μήκος των ιστορικών Δρόμων του Μεταξιού.

Ο σφετεριστής της εξουσίας Δαρείος κάθεται στον θρόνο και από τα χέρια ενός αυλικού δέχεται το στέμμα που του εξασφάλισε η μητέρα του.

Σχετικά με τις σμικρογραφίες ενός χειρογράφου του Σαχναμέ, διαβάστε:

Το Σαχναμέ του Σάχη Ταχμάσπ (1524-1576): οι πιο Όμορφες Σμικρογραφίες Χειρογράφου στον Κόσμο

https://greeksoftheorient.wordpress.com/2019/08/19/το-σαχναμέ-του-σάχη-ταχμάσπ-1524-1576-οι-πιο-όμ/

Δείτε το βίντεο:

Ferdowsi, the National Poet of Iran and Turan – Shahnameh, the Book of the Kings

https://vk.com/video434648441_456240281

Ferdowsi was a Persian Iranian. I make this clarification here because there has never been an Iranian nation; Iran, both in pre-Islamic and Islamic times was composed of many different nations. And so it is today. As a matter of fact, the Azeris and the Persians are the most populous nations currently living in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Ferdowsi was born around 940, just over 300 years after Mohammed’s death in Medina (632) and some 200 years after the rise of the Abbasid dynasty, the foundation of Baghdad, and the transfer of the Islamic Caliphate’s capital from Damascus to Baghdad (750). About 100 years before Ferdowsi was born, the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258) had reached its historical peak, and then a slow decline began.

Ferdowsi’s real name is Abu ‘l Qassem Tusi, since he was born in Tus, northeastern Iran. He was often called “hakim” (‘philosopher’ or more correctly ‘the wise man’). ‘Ferdowsi’ is what we today would call ‘pen-name’ or ‘nickname’ (Farsi and Arabic. ‘lakab’). It literally means ‘Paradisiacal’ (the word ‘Ferdows’ in Farsi comes from the ancient Iranian word ‘paradizah’ which, like the corresponding ancient Greek word, comes from the Assyrian Babylonian word ‘paradizu’ which means ‘paradise’). Ferdowsi completed the writing of Shahnameh on March 8, 1010.

The composition of Shahnameh (the Book of the Kings), the greatest epic poem of all time, lasted 33 years (977-1010) and was Ferdowsi’s main occupation in life. As per one tradition, the Sultan Mahmud of Gazni (the Gaznevid dynasty controlled lands in today’s Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and northern India) promised Ferdowsi as many gold coins as the verses he would deliver.

The payment of 60,000 gold coins was opposed by the sultan’s top courtier (who considered Ferdowsi a heretical Muslim or even a Parsi), and so 60,000 silver coins were sent instead – unbeknownst to the sultan. Ferdowsi refused to receive them, and this reaction enraged the sultan, who did not know what exactly had happened. Then, the poet went into exile to escape. When the sultan finally found out what the courtier had done, he executed him and sent 60,000 gold coins to Ferdowsi, who had just returned to his hometown, Tusi. However, the caravan carrying the sum reached the city gate when the funeral procession headed for the cemetery because the poet had just died (1020).

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Фирдоуси, Национальный поэт Ирана и Турана – Шахнаме, Книга Царей

https://www.ok.ru/video/1490059004525

Фирдоуси был персом из Ирана. Я делаю это разъяснение здесь, потому что никогда не было иранской нации; Иран, как в доисламский, так и в исламский период, состоял из множества разных народов. И так сегодня. На самом деле, азербайджанцы и персы – самые густонаселенные народы, в настоящее время живущие в Исламской Республике Иран.

Фирдоуси родился около 940 года, немногим более 300 лет после смерти Мухаммеда в Медине (632 год) и примерно через 200 лет после подъема династии Аббасидов, основания Багдада и переноса столицы Исламского халифата из Дамаска в Багдад (750). , Приблизительно за 100 лет до того, как Фирдоуси родился, Халифат Аббасидов (750-1258) достиг своего исторического пика, и затем начался медленный спад.

Настоящее имя Фирдоуси – Абу Кассем Туси, так как он родился в Тусе на северо-востоке Ирана. Его часто называли «хаким» («философ» или, точнее, «мудрец»). «Ferdowsi» – это то, что мы сегодня называем «псевдоним» (фарси и арабский. «Лакаб»). Это буквально означает «райский» (слово «Фердоус» на фарси происходит от древнего иранского слова «парадизах», которое, как и соответствующее древнегреческое слово, происходит от ассирийского вавилонского слова «парадизу», что означает «рай»). Фирдоуси завершил написание Шахнаме 8 марта 1010 года.

Шахнаме (Книга Царей) – величайшая эпическая поэма всех времен. Написание эпопеи длилось 33 года (977-1010) и было главным занятием Фирдоуси в жизни. Согласно одной из традиций, султан Махмуд Газни (династия Газневидов контролировала земли в сегодняшнем Афганистане, Таджикистане, Кыргызстане, Пакистане и северной Индии) обещал Фирдоуси столько золотых монет, сколько стихов, которые он напишет.

Оплате 60 000 золотых монет воспротивился высший придворный султана (который считал Фирдоуси еретиком-мусульманином или даже парсом), и поэтому вместо этого было отправлено 60 000 серебряных монет – без ведома султана. Фирдоуси отказался их принимать, и эта реакция разозлила султана, который не знал, что именно произошло. Затем поэт отправился в изгнание, чтобы сбежать. Когда султан наконец узнал, что сделал придворный, он казнил его и отправил 60 000 золотых монет Фирдоуси, который только что вернулся в свой родной город Туси. Однако караван с суммой достиг городских ворот, когда похоронная процессия направилась на кладбище, потому что поэт только что умер (1020).

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Φερντοουσί / Ferdowsi, Εθνικός Ποιητής του Ιράν & Τουράν – Σαχναμέ / Shahnameh, Βιβλίο των Βασιλέων

Ο Φερντοουσί ήταν Πέρσης Ιρανός. Σημειώνω εδώ ότι δεν υπήρξε ποτέ ιρανικό έθνος κι ότι το Ιράν, και στα προϊσλαμικά και στα ισλαμικά χρόνια, όπως άλλωστε και σήμερα, απετελείτο κι αποτελείται από πολλά και διαφορετικά έθνη.

Σήμερα, οι Αζέροι κι οι Πέρσες είναι τα πολυπληθέστερα έθνη που κατοικούν την Ισλαμική Δημοκρατία του Ιράν.

Ο Φερντοουσί γεννήθηκε γύρω στο 940, δηλαδή λίγο περισσότερο από 300 χρόνια μετά τον θάνατο του Μωάμεθ στην Μεδίνα (632) και περίπου 200 χρόνια μετά την άνοδο της δυναστείας των Αβασιδών στο Ισλαμικό Χαλιφάτο, την θεμελίωση της Βαγδάτης και τη μεταφορά της πρωτεύουσας του χαλιφάτου από την Δαμασκό στην Βαγδάτη (750).

Περίπου 100 χρόνια πριν γεννηθεί ο Φερντοουσί, τοποθετείται ιστορικά ο κολοφώνας της ισχύος του Αβασιδικού Χαλιφάτου (750-1258), κι έκτοτε αρχίζει μια αργή αποδυνάμωση και παρακμή.

Το πραγματικό όνομα του Φερντοουσί είναι Αμπού ‘λ Κάσεμ Τουσί, δεδομένου ότι είχε γεννηθεί στο Τους του βορειοανατολικού Ιράν.

Συχνά απεκαλείτο και Χακίμ, δηλαδή ‘φιλόσοφος’ (ή πιο σωστά ‘σοφός’). ‘Φερντοουσί’ είναι αυτό που θα λέγαμε σήμερα ‘καλλιτεχνικό ψευδώνυμο’ ή ‘παρατσούκλι’ (φαρσί και αραβ. ‘λακάμπ’).

Σημαίνει κυριολεκτικά ‘Παραδεισένιος’ (η λέξη ‘φερντόους’ στα φαρσί προέρχεται από την αρχαία ιρανική λέξη ‘παραντιζά’ η οποία, όπως και η αντίστοιχη αρχαία ελληνική λέξη, προέρχεται από την ασσυροβαβυλωνιακή λέξη ‘παραντιζού’ που σημαίνει ‘παράδεισος’).

Ο Φερντοουσί ολοκλήρωσε την συγγραφή του Σαχναμέ ακριβώς στις 8 Μαρτίου 1010.

Η συγγραφή του Σαχναμέ, του μεγαλύτερου επικού ποιήματος όλων των εποχών, διήρκεσε 33 χρόνια (977-1010) και ήταν η κύρια απασχόληση του Φερντοουσί κατά την ζωή του.

Κατά μία παράδοση, ο Σουλτάνος Μαχμούντ του Γαζνί (η δυναστεία Γαζνεβιδών έλεγχε εκτάσεις στα σημερινά κράτη Αφγανιστάν, Τατζικιστάν, Κιργιζία, Πακιστάν και βόρεια Ινδία) του υποσχέθηκε κατά την παράδοση τόσα χρυσά νομίσματα όσα κι οι στίχοι.

Στην καταβολή 60000 χρυσών νομισμάτων αντιτάχθηκε ο κορυφαίος αυλικός του σουλτάνου (που θεωρούσε τον Φερντοουσί αιρετικό μουσουλμάνο ή ακόμη και παρσιστή), οπότε απεστάλησαν 60000 αργυρά νομίσματα – εν αγνοία του σουλτάνου.

Ο Φερντοουσί αρνήθηκε να τα παραλάβει, αυτό εξαγρίωσε τον σουλτάνο (που δεν ήξερε τι ακριβώς συνέβη), κι ο ποιητής έφυγε στην εξορία για να γλυτώσει.

Όταν τελικά ο σουλτάνος έμαθε τι έκανε εν αγνοία του ο αυλικός, τον εσκότωσε, και απέστειλε 60000 χρυσά νομίσματα στον Φερντοουσί, ο οποίος είχε μόλις επιστρέψει στην γενέτειρά του, Τους.

Όμως, το καραβάνι που μετέφερε το ποσό έφθασε στην πύλη της πόλης, όταν έβγαινε η νεκρώσιμη πομπή με κατεύθυνση το νεκροταφείο, επειδή ο ποιητής είχε μόλις πεθάνει (1020).

Σημειώνω εδώ ότι αποδόσεις του ονόματος στα ελληνικά ως Φερδούσι ή Φιρδούσι είναι λαθεμένες, οφείλονται σε άγνοια των φαρσί (συγχρόνων περσικών), και δείχνουν επιφανειακό κι επιπόλαιο διάβασμα αγγλικών κειμένων για το θέμα.

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Οι πολλές ιστορίες του Εσκαντέρ (Μεγάλου Αλεξάνδρου) στο Σαχναμέ του Φερντοουσί

Ο Εσκαντέρ (Μέγας Αλέξανδρος) και το Ομιλούν Δένδρον

Ο Εσκαντέρ (Μέγας Αλέξανδρος) και το Ομιλούν Δένδρον

Δείχνουν στον Εσκαντέρ (Μεγάλο Αλέξανδρο) το πορτρέτο του.

Ο Εσκαντέρ (Μεγάλος Αλέξανδρος) στο νεκρικό κρεβάτι του

Ο Εσκαντέρ (Μεγάλος Αλέξανδρος) επισκέπτεται το ιερό Κααμπά στην Μέκκα φορώντας ενδύματα προσκυνητή (χατζή).

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Ferdowsi Abu’l-Qāsem (حکیم ابوالقاسم فردوسی)

Life

Apart from his patronymic (konya), Abu’l-Qāsem, and his pen name (taḵallosá), Ferdowsī, nothing is known with any certainty about his names or the identity of his family. In various sources, and in the introduction to some manuscripts of the Šāh-nāma, his name is given as Manṣūr, Ḥasan, or Aḥmad, his father’s as Ḥasan, Aḥmad, or ʿAlī, and his grandfather’s as Šarafšāh (Ṣafā, Adabīyāt, pp. 458-59). Of these various statements, that of Fatḥ b. ʿAlī Bondārī, who translated the Šāh-nāma into Arabic in 620/1223, should be considered the most creditable. He referred to Ferdowsī as “al-Amīr al-Ḥakīm Abu’l-Qāsem Manṣūr b. al-Ḥasan al-Ferdowsī al-Ṭūsī” (Bondārī, p. 3).

It is not known why the poet chose the pen name Ferdowsī, which is mentioned only once in text and twice in the satire (ed. Khaleghi, V, p. 275, v. 3, ed. Mohl, I, p. lxxxix, vv. 4, 6). According to a legend recorded in the introduction to the Florence manuscript, during the poet’s visit to the court of the Ghaznavid Sultan Maḥmūd, the latter, pleased with his poetry, called him Ferdowsī “[man] from paradise” (Khaleghi, 1988, p. 92), which became his sobriquet. According to Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (text, p. 75, comm., p. 234) his birthplace was a large village named Bāž (or Pāz, Arabicized as Fāz), in the district of Ṭābarān (or Ṭabarān) near the city of Ṭūs in Khorasan.

All sources agree on his being from Ṭūs, the present-day Mašhad. The precise date of his birth was not recorded, but three important points emerge from the information the poet gives on his own age. First, in the introduction to the story of Kay Ḵosrow’s great war Ferdowsī says about himself that he became a poor man at the age of 65, and he twice repeats this date; he then states that when he was 58 and his youth was over Maḥmūd became king (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleqi, IV, p. 172, vv. 40-46).

This statement is a more reliable guide than the three occasions on which the poet refers to himself as 65 or 68 years old; and since Maḥmūd succeeded to the throne in 387/997, the poet’s birth date was 329/940. Second, a point occurs in the story of the reign of Bahrām III (q.v.), when the poet refers to himself as being 63, and approximately 730 lines later repeats this reference to his age as 63, adding that Hormazd-e Bahman (the first of the month of Bahman) fell on a Friday (Šāh-nāma, Moscow, VII, p. 213, v. 9, p. 256, vv. 657-59).

According to the research of Shapur Shahbazi (1991, pp. 27-29), during the years which concern us, only in the Yazdegerdi year 371, that is 1003 C.E., did the first of Bahman fall on a Friday. If we subtract 63 from this date, we arrive at 329/940 as the poet’s birth date. The third point occurs at the end of the book when the poet refers to his own age as being 71, and to the date of the Šāh-nāma’s completion as the day of Ard (i.e., 25th) of Esfand in the year 378 Š. (400 Lunar)/8 March 1010 (see calendar), which again establishes his birth date as 329/940 (Šāh-nāma, Moscow, IX, pp. 381-82; see further Ṣafā, Adabīyāt, pp. 459-62; idem, Ḥamāsa, p. 172, n. 1; Shahbazi, pp. 23-30).

We have little information on the poet until he began writing the Šāh-nāma in approximately 367/977, apart from the fact that he had a son who was born in 359/970 (see below). Therefore the poet must have married in the year 358/969 or earlier. No information concerning his wife has come down to us. Some commentators, e.g., Ḥabīb Yāḡmāʾī (p. 30), Moḥammad-Taqī Bahār (p. 39), and Ḏabīḥ-Allāh Ṣafā (Ḥamāsa, p. 178), have considered the woman referred to in the introduction to the story of Bēžan/Bīžan and Manēža /Manīža (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, IV, pp. 303-6) to be the poet’s wife.

If this conjecture is correct, it is probable that his wife was both literate and able to play the harp, that is, she, like the poet himself, was from a landed noble family (dehqān; q.v.) and had benefited from the education given to girls by such families, including learning to read and write and the acquisition of certain of the fine arts (cf. the story of the daughters of the dehqān Borzēn, Šāh-nāma, Moscow, VII, pp. 343-44; Khaleghi, 1971, pp. 102-3, 129, 200-2; Bayat-Sarmadi, pp. 188-89).

Another point which emerges from the introduction to the story of Bēžan and Manēža is that in his youth the poet was relatively wealthy. Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (text, p. 75) also confirms this detail. Not only the content of this introduction, but also the diction and the less skillful poetry of the story itself, as compared to the rest of the Šāh-nāma, clearly indicate that it was a product of the poet’s youth, which he later included in the Šāh-nāma (Mīnovī, 1967, pp. 68-70; Ṣafā, Adabīyāt, pp. 462-64; idem, Ḥamāsa, pp. 177-79). This story, however, cannot have been the only literary work produced by the poet before 367/977, when he was thirty-eight years years old. Up to this time the poet must have produced poetry which has since been lost.

The poems (in the qaṣīda, qeṭʿa, and robāʿī forms) attributed to him in biographical dictionaries (taḏkeras), some of which may well not be by him, are probably from this period. Hermann Ethé (q.v.) collected these poems in the last century and printed them with a German translation (see also Taqīzāda, pp. 133-34; Šērānī, pp. 130-35). The narrative poem Yūsof o Zolayḵā is certainly not by Ferdowsī (Qarīb; Šērānī, pp. 184-276; Mīnovī, 1946; idem, 1967, pp. 95-125; Nafīsī, 1978, pp. 4-5; Ṣafā, Adabīyāt, pp. 488-92; idem, Ḥamāsa, pp. 175-76; Storey/de Blois, V, 576-84). According to legends found in the introductions to a number of Šāh-nāma manuscripts, the poet had a younger brother, whose name was Masʿūd or Ḥosayn (see Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, editor’s Intro., p. xxxiii).

At all events, according to his own statement, the poet began work on the composition of the Šāh-nāma after 365/975 (Šāh-nāma, Moscow, IX, p. 381, v. 843), and since Ferdowsī specified in the exordium to the poem that he began this task after the death of Abū Manṣūr Daqīqī (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 13) the composition of the poem must have begun in 366-67/976-77.

At first the poet intended to travel to the Samanid capital Bokhara (q.v.; ibid., I, p. 13, vv. 135-36) in order to continue Daqīqī’s work, using the copy of the prose Šāh-nāma of Abū Manṣūr b. ʿAbd-al-Razzāq (q.v.), which had been used by Daqīqī (qq.v.), and which probably belonged to the court library; but since a friend (identified as Moḥammad Laškarī in the introduction to Bāysonḡorī Šāh-nāma, q.v.) from his own city placed a manuscript of this work at his disposal (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 14, vv. 140-45), he gave up this idea and started work in his own town, where he also benefited from the support of Manṣūr the son of Abū Manṣūr Moḥammad.

According to the poet himself, this man was extremely generous, magnanimous, and loyal; he had a high opinion of the poet and gave him considerable financial help (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, pp. 14-15; khaleghi-Motlagh, 1967, pp. 332-58; idem, 1977, pp. 197-215; also, after the death of Īraj [ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 121, vv. 513-14], where Ferdowsī moralizes and reproaches the killer of an innocent king, it is probably that by such a king he means Manṣūr). In the whole of the Šāh-nāma this is the only moment at which the poet speaks explicitly of having received financial help from anyone, and since he wrote this after the death of Manṣūr, there is no reason to believe that it was written in order to please the object of his praise.

Further, that he did not remove his praise of Manṣūr from the Šāh-nāma even after he added that of Sultan Maḥmūd to the poem’s introduction indicates the extent of his attachment to Manṣūr (and before him to his father Abū Manṣūr), as well as his sympathy for the political and cultural tendencies of Abū Manṣūr (Khaleghi, 1977, pp. 207-11). The year 377/987, in which Manṣūr was arrested in Nīšāpūr and taken to Bokhara, where he was then executed, was a turning point in Ferdowsī’s life; in the Šāh-nāma from this moment onward there is no mention of anything to indicate either physical comfort or peace of mind, rather we find frequent complaints concerning his old age, poverty, and anxiety.

Nevertheless, Ferdowsī was able to complete the first version of the Šāh-nāma by the year 384/994, three years before the accession of Maḥmūd (tr. Bondārī, II, p. 276; khaleghi-Motlagh, 1985, pp. 378-406; idem, 1986, pp. 12-31). The poet, however, continued to work. In 387/997, when he was 58 or a little older, composed the story of Sīāvaḵš (ed. Khaleghi, II, p. 202, v. 12) and a year later wrote a continuation of the former narrative, the “Revenge for Sīāvaḵš” (“Kīn-e Sīāvaḵš”; ibid., ed. Khaleghi, II, p. 379, v. 7).

He was then a quite different poet from the pleasure-loving and wealthy young man depicted in the introduction to the story of Bēžan and Manēža. He complained of poverty, old-age, failing sight, and pains in his legs and looked back on his youth with regret. Even so, he hoped to live long enough to bring the Šāh-nāma to its conclusion. In 389/999, he started work on the reign of Anōšīravān (q.v.) and once again complained of old age, pains in his legs, failing sight, and the loss of his teeth and looked back to his youth with regret (Moscow, VIII, p. 52). The poet was, nevertheless, very active during this year.

By the time he was 61, in 390/1000, he had composed almost 4,300 of the almost 4,500 verses of the story of Anōšīravān. The poet complained that at his age drinking wine gave no pleasure and he prayed that God would grant him sufficient life to finish the Šāh-nāma (Moscow, VIII, pp. 303-4, vv. 4277-86). Two years later, in 392/1002, the poet was busy writing the narrative of the reigns from Bahrām III to Šāpūr II (four reigns in all, covering 76 years in little more than 700 verses). It is not clear what occurred during this year to make the poet more content, as both at the opening of the first reign and also at the end of the fourth reign he expresses the desire to drink wine (Moscow, VII, p. 213, v. 9, p. 256, vv. 657-59; in the first of these verses the word rūzbeh is used, which can be interpreted as either “fortunate” or as a person’s name, and which appears in the Šāh-nāma with both meanings. In the second case Rūzbeh is probably the name of Ferdowsī’s servant). This period of happiness passed quickly.

Two years later, in 394/1004, at the beginning of the story of Kay Ḵosrow’s great war, during the course of a panegyric on Maḥmūd, he complains in accents of despair of his poverty and weakness; he points out the value of his work to Maḥmūd and asks Maḥmūd’s vizier, Fażl b. Aḥmad Esfarāyenī (q.v.), to intercede on his behalf so that some help may be forthcoming from Maḥmūd (ed. Khaleghi, IV, pp. 169-74).

The year 396/1006, when the poet was 67, was the worst period of his life. In this year his 37-year-old son died. The poet describes his grief in extremely simple and personal language, complaining to his son that he has gone on ahead and left his father alone, and asks God’s forgiveness for him (Moscow, IX, pp. 138-39, vv. 2,167-84). What is most striking in this elegy is the hemistich: hamī būd hamvāra bā man dorošt (“He was always rude to me”; ibid., v. 2,175). Was there a disagreement between father and son? And if so over what? No answer to this question can now be given.

The poet inserts this elegy into the narrative of the reign of Ḵosrow Parvēz. Approximately 1,500 lines further on, at the end of this reign, he writes that he has now completed his sixty-sixth year (Moscow, p. 230, v. 3681). This does not seem to accord with his previous statement, but if one takes into account the exigencies of rhyme and the fact that the poet was not always 100 percent accurate over figures, even in such a case, one can draw the conclusion that the reign of Ḵosrow Parvēz (a little more than four thousand verses) was written during the years 395-96/1005-6, when the poet was 66 or 67 years old. This obvious contradiction over the exact age of the poet, however, is not found in the variant “I was sixty five and he was thirty-seven” (marā šast o banj o verā sī o haft) found in certain manuscripts.

In the course of the history of Ḵosrow Parvēz, the poet complains that, due to the calumny of rivals, Maḥmūd has not given his attention to the stories of the Šāh-nāma, and the poet asks the king’s sālār (general), Maḥmūd’s younger brother Naṣr, to intercede for him and turn Maḥmūd’s attention toward the poet (Moscow, IX, p. 210, vv. 3,373-78). From this it is clear firstly that no payment from Maḥmūd had ever reached Ferdowsī, and secondly that Ferdowsī had sent some of the narratives of the Šāh-nāma separately, before he either took or sent the whole poem to Ḡazna (q.v.).

The poet mentions his poverty many times during the course of the Šāh-nāma, and frequently praises Maḥmūd, his brother Naṣr, and his governor of Ṭūs, who would seem to have been Abu’l-Ḥāreṯ Arslān Jāḏeb (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, pp. 25-27; Eqbāl), but there is nowhere any suggestion that he had ever received any assistance from these individuals.

On the contrary, as has been indicated, he everywhere complains of the king’s indifference to his work. At the end of the Šāh-nāma (Moscow, IX, p. 381) he also writes that the powerful came and copied out his poetry for themselves, and the sole profit to the poet from them was their saying “well done” (aḥsant). He only mentions two individuals, ʿAlī Deylam Bū Dolaf and Ḥoyayy b. Qotayba, who helped him. In certain manuscripts, ʿAlī Deylam and Bū Dolaf are mentionedd as the names of two people, which agrees with the statement of Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (text, pp. 77-78, comm. pp. 465-66) that the first was a copyist of the Šāh-nāma and the second its reciter (rāwī).

If this statement of Neẓāmī ʿArūżī’s is correct, then these two individuals did not give the poet any monetary assistance. Instead, as a copyist and reciter of sections of the Šāh-nāma for the nobility of the town of Ṭūs, they each profited from the poet’s work. In this case line 849 (Moscow, IX, p. 381) of the Moscow edition is incorrect and should be mended according to the variant readings of the line and the reference in the Čahār Maqāla. Ḥoyayy b. Qotayba, in his capacity as financial controller of Ṭūs, sometimes remitted the poet’s taxes.

Finally, in his seventy-first year, on 25 Esfand 400/8 March 1010, Ferdowsī finished the Šāh-nāma (Moscow, IX, pp. 381-82). According to Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (text, pp. 75) and Farīd-al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (Elāhī-nāma, p. 367; Asrār-nāma, p. 189, v. 3,204), the total time spent on the composition of the Šāh-nāma was twenty-five years. In the satire, however, there is thrice mention of thirty years and once of thirty-five years (ed. Mohl, Intro., p. lxxxix, v. 11, p. xc, vv. 11, 20, p. xci, v. 4).

If we place the beginning of work on the Šāh-nāma in 367 and its completion in 400 the time spent on its composition is thirty-three years, and if we extend the poet’s work to the period before 367—the composition of Bēžan and Manēža—and add to this time spent on revision after 400, the figure of thirty-five years is closer to the truth.

There are lines in the Šāh-nāma which, according to some scholars, refer to events of the year 401/1011 (Moscow, VII, p. 114, vv. 18-20; Taqīzāda, 1983, p. 100, n. 3; Mīnovī, 1967, p. 40). Aḥmad Ateş has gone even further than this and claims that since Ferdowsī, during the course of his praise of Maḥmūd in the introduction to the Šāh-nāma, mentions Kašmīr and Qannūj among his territories, and since Maḥmūd first conquered these regions in 406/1015 and 409/1018, Ferdowsī must have made the final revision of the Šāh-nāma and sent it to Ḡazna in 409/1018 or 410/1019.

He also draws the conclusion that Maḥmūd sent the poet a financial reward but that this reached Ṭūs in 411/1020, after the poet’s death (Ateş, 159-68). The names Kašmīr and Qannūj, which appear in this panegyric beside other names such as Rūm (the West), Hend (India), Čīn (China), etc. and which occur many more times throughout the Šāh-nāma, is no indication of a conquest by Maḥmūd of these two areas. Their occurance in the panegyric is simply due to poetic license and leads to no historical conclusions.

Our information on the poet’s life after 400/1010 is limited to the matters reported by Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (text, pp. 75-83). According to him, after the completion of the Šāh-nāma, ʿAlī Deylam prepared a manuscript of it in seven volumes and Ferdowsī went to Ḡazna with his professional reciter Abū Dolaf. There, with the help of Maḥmūd’s vizier Aḥmad b. Ḥasan Meymandī he presented the book to Maḥmūd, but because of the calumny of those who envied him, and the poet’s religious orientation, it was not favorably received by the king. Instead of 60,000 dinars (q.v.), payment was fixed at 50,000 dirhams (q.v.), and finally at 20,000 dirhams.

Ferdowsī was extremely upset by this and went to a bathhouse; upon leaving the bathhouse he drank some beer and divided the king’s present between the beer seller and the bath attendant. Then, fearing punishment by Maḥmūd, he fled from Ḡazna by night. At first he hid for six months in Herāt in the shop of Esmāʿīl Warrāq, father of the poet Azraqī (q.v.), and then he took refuge in Ṭabarestān with Espahbad Šahrīār, a member of the Bavandid dynasty (the report of the poet’s journey to Baghdad, which appears in the introductions to the a number of manuscripts of the Šāh-nāma, is merely a legend; similarly, the story of the poet’s journey to Isfahan is based on interpolated passages; see Ṣafā, Adabīyāt, pp. 474-76; Mīnovī, 1967, pp. 96-98; khaleghi-Motlagh, 1985, pp. 233-36).

While in Ṭabarestān, the poet composed 100 lines satirizing Maḥmūd, but the amir of Ṭabarestān bought the satire for 100,000 dirhams and destroyed it, so that only six lines survived by word of mouth, and these Neẓāmī ʿArūżī recorded. Later, due to events described by Neẓāmī ʿArūżī, Maḥmūd regretted his behavior toward the poet and on the recommendation of the above mentioned vizier had camel loads of indigo to the value of 20,000 dinars sent to Ferdowsī, but as the camels were entering Ṭūs by the Rūdbār gate Ferdowsī’s corpse was being borne out of the city by the Razān gate.

In the cemetery the preacher of Ṭābarān prevented his being buried in the Muslim cemetery on the grounds that Ferdowsī was a Shiʿite, and so there was no choice but to bury the poet in his own orchard. Neẓāmī ʿArūżī tells how he visited the poet’s tomb in 510/1116 (on this site, see Taqīzāda, 1983, pp. 120-21). According to Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (pp. 47-51), Ferdowsī left only one daughter, and the poet had wanted the king’s payment as a dowry for her.

But after the poet’s death, his daughter would not accept the payment and, on Maḥmūd’s orders, the money was used to build the Čāha caravansary near Ṭūs, on the road which goes from Nīšāpūr to Marv. The year of the poet’s death is given by Dawlatšāh Samarqandī (ed. Browne, p. 54) as 411/1020, and by Ḥamd-Allāh Mostawfī (p. 743) and Faṣīḥ Ḵᵛāfī (p. 129) as 416/1025. According to the first date, Ferdowsī was eighty-two years old when he died, and according to the second report he was eighty-seven.

Many details of Neẓāmī ʿArūżī’s account are inaccurate or even merely legendary (see, e.g., Qazvīnī’s introducton to Čahār maqāla, pp. xiv ff.). For example, he claims that only six lines survived of the satire, but in some manuscripts of the Šāh-nāma the number of lines is as many as 160. Some scholars considered the satire to be genuine (Nöldeke, pp. 29-31; Taqīzāda, pp. 114-16).

But Maḥmūd Šērānī established that many of the lines are spurious or are taken from the Šāh-nāma itself, and he therefore rejected the authenticity of the satire. The spuriousness of many lines in the satire, however, does not establish that the satire never existed at all. Besides, there are excellent lines in the satire which are not taken from the Šāh-nāma. Generally, it appears that in his article Šērānī was mainly seeking to vindicate Maḥmūd (Khaleghi, 1984, p. 121; Shahbazi, 1991, pp. 97-103).

There is a line in the satire (Mohl’s edition, Intro., p. lxxxix, v. 10) in which the poet refers to his age as being almost eighty. According to this line, the poet composed the satire before 409/1018. But it is very probable that the vizier who was Ferdowsī’s benefactor was Abu’l-ʿAbbās Fażl b. Aḥmad Esfarāyenī, whom Ferdowsī praised in the Šāh-nāma, and not, as Neẓāmī ʿArūżī writes (p. 78), Aḥmad b. Ḥasan Meymandī.

The latter, although holding an important position at Maḥmūd’s court, is never mentioned in the Šāh-nāma. In the legends written in some of the introductions to Šāh-nāma’s manuscripts, Meymandī has been mentioned among Ferdowsī’s adversaries at Maḥmūd’s court. This vizier was a fanatical Sunni, strongly opposed to heretics and the Qarmaṭīs, and it is possible that he was influential in the removal of Esfarāyenī from office in 401/1011 and his murder in 404/1014, and also in the execution of Ḥasanak Mīkāl in 422/1031, who was accused of harboring qarmaṭī tendencies.

In like fashion, after he became vizier in Esfarāyenī’s place in 401/1011, he directed that the language of the court records, which Esfarāyenī had caused to be kept in Persian, be changed back to Arabic. Meymandī was vizier until 412/1025. He was then removed from office and imprisoned, and the vizierate was transferred to Ḥasanak Mīkāl. Thus the vizier who is said to have caused Maḥmūd to regret his treatment of Ferdowsī, if the story is to be believed, was probably Ḥasanak and not Meymandī. If Neẓāmī ʿArūżī’s story is true, 416/1025 is therefore the more probable date of Ferdowsī’s death (see Taqīzāda, 1983, pp. 111-13).

Certain other details of Neẓāmī ʿArūżī’s version of events are confirmed by various sources. For example, the author of the Tārīḵ-e Sīstān (ed. Bahār, pp. 7-8) also gives a report of Ferdowsī’s journey to Ḡazna and his encounter with Maḥmūd. Similarly, Neẓāmī Ganjavī (Haft Peykar, p. 15, v. 47; idem, Eqbāl-nāma, p. 22, v. 14; idem, Ḵosrow o Šīrīn, pp. 24-25, vv. 21-22) and ʿAṭṭār (Elāhī-nāma, p. 367, vv. 11-13; Asrār-nāma, pp. 188-190, vv. 3,203-26; Moṣībat-nāma, p. 367, v. 8) frequently refer to the differences between the poet and the king, to Maḥmūd’s ingratitude toward Ferdowsī, and even to the incident of the poet’s drinking beer and giving the king’s gift away.

ʿAṭṭār also refers to the preacher’s refusing to say prayers over the body of Ferdowsī. Further, in the introduction to the Bāysonḡorī Šāh-nāma, a statement in Nāṣer-e Ḵosrow’s Safar-nāma is quoted to the effect that in 437/1045 on the road from Saraḵs to Ṭūs, in the village of Čāha, Nāṣer-e Ḵosrow saw a large caravansary and was told that this had been built with the money from the gift that Maḥmūd had sent to the poet, which, since he had already died, his heir refused to accept.

This report is absent from extant manuscripts of the Safar-nāma, but Sayyed Ḥasan Taqīzāda (1983, pp., 120-21) is of the opinion that it is probably genuine. Theodore Nöldeke (1920, p. 33) at first considered it spurious but later changed his mind (1983, p. 63, n. 1). Although it is possible to doubt some of the details in Neẓāmī ʿArūżī’s account, we do not at the moment have any absolute reasons to reject all the particulars in his narrative.

Social background

In the introductions to various manuscripts of the Šāh-nāma, Ferdowsī’s father is referred to as a dehqān (q.v.) who was a victim of oppression by the financial controller of Ṭūs. Even though this account may be no more than a legend, there is no doubt that Ferdowsī belonged to the landed nobility, or dehqāns. According to Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (p. 75), Ferdowsī was one of the dehqāns of Ṭūs and in his own village “had considerable possessions, such that with the income from his properties he was able to live independently of others help.”

According to the same account (p. 83), “within the city gate there was an orchard belonging to Ferdowsī,” where he was buried (see further, Bahār, pp. 148-49). The dehqāns were preservers of traditional civilization, customs, and culture, including the national legends (see Mohl’s introduction to the Šāh-nāma, p. vii; Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser, p. 440; Ṣafā, Ḥamāsa, pp. 62-64).

On the one hand, in the Šāh-nāma dehqān appears along with the āzāda (freeborn) with the meaning of “Iranian,” and, on the other, beside mōbad (Zoroastrian priest), with the meaning of “preserver and narrator of the ancient lore.” In the Šāh-nāma, a legend concerning a dehqān by the name of Borzēn (Moscow, VII, pp. 341-46) gives us an opportunity to glimpse, to some extent, the nature of the life of this class. By comparing this with the story of a farmer’s wife in the same reign (ibid., pp. 380-84), the difference between the life of a dehqān and that of a simple farmer is apparent.

At all events, Ferdowsī belonged to one of these reasonably wealthy dehqān families, which in the second and third centuries of the Islamic era accepted Islam mainly as a way of preserving their own social position, and for this reason, contrary to what is usually the case with new converts, not only did they not turn their backs on the culture of their forefathers but made its preservation and transmission the chief goal of their lives.

The basis of Ferdowsī’s character and the national spirit of his work were founded in the first place on this class consciousness of the poet and the milieu in which his genius was nurtured. Khorasan had been a center of political, religious, national, and cultural movements at least since the rise of Abū Moslem (q.v.; killed in.137/755).

With the compilation and translation of the prose Šāh-nāma known as the Šāh-nāma-ye abū manṣūrī, which later became Ferdowsī’s major source, on the orders of Abū Manṣūr Moḥammad b. ʿAbd-al-Razzāq in 346/957, the national language and culture, which had been lacking in previous movements in Khorasan, found a special place in Abū Manṣūr’s political ambition (Mīnovī, 1967, pp. 52-55).

The young Ferdowsī, who was no more than seventeen years old when the Šāh-nāma of Abū Manṣūr was completed, must have been profoundly affected by this national and cultural movement. It was in these years that the education of a dehqān together with the poet’s national sentiment were able to mature in a congenial environment and to take shape, and thus become the foundation of the whole of his poem, so that, as Nöldeke put it (1920, pp. 36, 40-41), the poet’s attachment to Iran is clear in every line of the Šāh-nāma.

The effects of Ferdowsī’s love for Iran must be considered not only in the transmission of the culture, mores, customs, and literature of ancient Iran to Islamic Persia but also in the spread of Persian as the national language. In this way the struggle for the preservation of Iranian identity while Persia was in danger of being Arabized in the name of the Islamic community—although the movement had begun before Ferdowsī’s time with the Šoʿūbīya movement—finally bore fruit through Ferdowsī’s efforts. In this way Persia is deeply indebted to Ferdowsī, both as regards its historical continuity and its national and cultural identity.

Education

Since Ferdowsī, unlike many other poets, did not make his work a showcase for his own erudition, discussion of his education is a difficult matter. On the other hand, the intellectual quality of the Šāh-nāma shows that we do not deal simply with a great poet but with someone who judges many of the vicissitudes of life with wisdom and understanding, and this would not have been possible if he had not been in possession of a knowledge of the sciences of his time.

However, Nöldeke (1920, p. 40) thought that Ferdowsī had not received formal education in the sciences of his time, especially in scholastic theology, but considered him simply to be a reasonably educated person in such matters (for Ferdowsī’s world view, see Ḵāleḡī Moṭlaq, 1991, pp. 55-70).

Nöldeke also believed that Ferdowsī did not know Pahlavi (1920, p. 19, n. 1). Taqīzāda (p. 126) and Šērānī (pp. 170-71), on the other hand, believe that Ferdowsī was completely conversant with the sciences of his own time. Badīʿ-al-Zamān Forūzānfar (q.v.; pp. 47-49) and Aḥmad Mahdawī Dāmˊḡānī (p. 42) believe that Ferdowsī even had a thorough knowledge of Arabic prose and verse.

Similarly, Saʿīd Nafīsī (1978, pp. 9-10), Ḥabīb Yāḡmāʾī (p. 6), and Lazard (pp. 25-41) believe that Ferdowsī knew Pahlavi. However, Moḥammad-Taqī Bahār (pp. 96-135) and Shapur Shahbazi (pp. 39-41) agree with Nöldeke on the matter of Ferdowsī’s knowledge of Pahlavi.

In a later article on Ferdowsī, Nöldeke, following Taqīzāda, wrote that he had previously underestimated the poet’s knowledge of Arabic (1983, p. 63), but it appears that he did this mainly to satisfy the amour-propre of Persians. Certainly, it is probable that Ferdowsī learnt Arabic in school. The problem of Pahlavi in his time and for a person like him lay mainly in the difficulty of its script; thus if a person read a text in this language to the poet, he could probably understand it in the main. But in the Šāh-nāma there is nowhere any direct indication that Ferdowsī knew either Arabic or Pahlavi. In the exordium to the story of Bēžan and Manēža, he says that his “loving consort” (mehrbān yār) read a “Pahlavī book” (daftar-e pahlavī; ed. Khaleghi, III, p. 305, v. 19, p. 306, v. 22). But Ferdowsī refers to Šāh-nāma-yeabū manṣūrī as being in Pahlavi (ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 14, v. 143), and thus it could be interpreted as meaning “Pahlavānī” or “eloquent/heroic Persian.” There is, however, no evidence in the Šāh-nāma to indicate that Ferdowsī could read Pahlavi.

Religion

Ferdowsī was a Shiʿite Muslim, which is apparent from the Šāh-nāma itself (ed. Khaleghi, I, pp. 1o-11) and confirmed by early accounts (Neẓāmī ʿArūżī, text, pp. 80, 83; Naṣīr-al-Dīn Qazvīnī, pp. 251-52). In recent times, however, some have cast doubt on his religion and his Shiʿism. Some have simply called him a “Shiʿite” (Yāḡmāʾī, pp. 23, 28); others, such as Bahār (p. 149), have raised the question of whether Ferdowsī was an adherent of Zaydī Shiʿism, Ismaiʿli Shiʿism, or Twelver Shiʿism. Nöldeke (1920, p. 40) believed that he was a Shiʿite but did not consider him to be a member of any of the extremist Shiʿites (ḡolāt; q.v.). Šērānī (pp. 111-26) called Ferdowsī a Sunni or Zaydī Shiʿite, but Šērānī was mainly concerned with defending Maḥmūd’s Sunnism. Moḥīṭ Ṭabāṭabāʾī (pp. 233-40) also considered Ferdowsī to be a Zaydī Shiʿite. ʿAbbās Zaryāb Ḵoʾī (pp. 14-23) argued that he was an Ismaʿili Shiʿite, while Aḥmad Mahdawī Dāmˊḡānī (pp., 20-53) believed him to be a Twelver Shiʿite (see also, Shahbazi, pp. 49-53).

The basic supporting evidence for the view that Ferdowsī was a Sunni or Zaydī Shiʿite has been the lines that appear in many manuscripts of the Šāh-nāma, in the exordium to the book, in praise of Abū Bakr, ʿOmar, and ʿOṯmān, but these lines are later additions, as is apparent for lexicographic and stylistic reasons, and also because they interrupt the flow of the narrative (Nöldeke, 1920, p. 39; Yāḡmāʾī, p. 27; khaleghi-Motlagh, 1986, pp. 28-31); with the excision of these lines no doubt remains as to Ferdowsī’s Shiʿism.

One must also take into account the fact that Ṭūs had long been a center of Shiʿism (Nöldeke, 1920, p. 39) and that the family of Abū Manṣūr Moḥammad b. ʿAbd-al-Razzāq were also apparently Shiʿites (Ebn Bābawayh, II, p. 285). On the one hand, Ferdowsī was lenient as regards religion. As Nöldeke remarks, Ferdowsī remembered the religion of his forbears with respect, and, at the same time, nowhere did he show any signs of a deep Islamic faith.

Indeed, to the contrary, here and there are moments in the Šāh-nāma (e.g., Moscow, IX, p. 315, v. 56) which, even if they were present in his sources, should not strictly have been given currency by the pen of a committed Muslim (Nöldeke, 1920, pp. 38-39). On the other hand, however, Ferdowsī showed a prejudice in favor of his own sect and, as is apparent from the exordium to the Šāh-nāma, considered his own sect to be the only true Islamic one.

The explanation for this contradiction, in the present writer’s opinion, lies in the fact that during the first centuries of Islam, in Persia, Shiʿism went hand in hand with the national struggle in Khorasan, or very nearly so, such that the caliphate in Baghdad and its political supporters in Persia never made any serious distinction between the “Majūs” (i.e., Zoroastrians), “Zandīq” (i.e., Manicheans), “Qarmaṭīs” (i.e., adherents of Ismaʿili Shiʿism), and Rāfeẓīs (i.e., Shiʿites in general; see Baḡdādī, tr. pp. 307 ff.).

Ferdowsī was, as Nöldeke remarks, above all a deist and monotheist who at the same time kept faith with his forbears (Nöldeke, 1920, pp. 36-40; Taqīzāda, 1983, pp. 124-25). Ferdowsī attacks philosophy and those who attempt to prove the reality of the Creator, believing that God can be found neither by the eye of wisdom, nor of the heart, nor of reason, but that His existence, unity, and might are confessed only by the existence of His creation; thus he worshipped Him, remaining silent as to the whys and wherefores of faith (khaleghi-Motlagh, 1975, pp. 66-70; idem, 1991, pp. 55-57).

According to his beliefs, everything, good or evil, happens to an individual only through the will of God, and every kind of belief in the benign or evil influence of the stars is a derogation of the reality, unicity, and might of God. This absolute faith in the unicity and might of God is disturbed in the Šāh-nāma by a fatalism that is possibly the result of Zurvanite influences from the Sasanian period, and this, here and there, has produced a self-contradictory effect (Khaleghi, 1983, 2/1, pp. 107-14; idem, 1991, pp. 55-68; 1983, 2/1, pp. 107-14; Banani, pp. 96-119; Shahbazi, pp. 49-59).

Due to his upbringing as a dehqān, Ferdowsī was acquainted with the ancient culture and customs of Iran, and he deepened this knowledge by his study of ancient lore so that they became part of his poetic world view. There are many instances of this in the Šāh-nāma, and here as an example one can mention the custom of drinking wine. According to the poet, in accordance with Iran’s ancient beliefs, wine shows the essence of a man as he really is (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, V, pp. 3-4); one must drink at times of happiness (ibid., Moscow, VII, p. 192, vv. 658-59), but it is happiness that is to be sought in drinking wine, not drunkenness (ibid., Moscow, VIII, p. 109, vv. 964-65), and he reproaches the Arabs who are strangers to the custom of drinking wine (ibid., Moscow, IX, p. 320, v. 113).

The most important of the poet’s ethical attitudes include maintaining a chastity of diction (Nöldeke, 1920, p. 55, n. 2), honesty (ed. Khaleqi, III, p. 285, vv. 2,879-80; Moscow, VIII, p. 206, vv. 2,626-27; Ṣafā, Ḥamāsa, p. 203; Yāḡmāʾī, pp. 14-15), gratitude toward his predecessor Daqīqī and, at the same time, frank criticism of his poetry (ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 13, V, pp. 75-76, 175-76). With the same kind of frankness the poet admonishes kings to act justly (Moscow, VII, p. 114, vv. 29-31; VIII, p. 62, vv. 161-66). His belief in the permanence of a good reputation (ed. Khaleghi, I, pp. 156-57, vv. 1,061-62), in fine speech (ibid., II, p. 164, vv. 574-76), and in fairness toward enemies (ed. Khaleghi, III, p. 163, vv. 937-38, IV, p. 64, v. 1,014) in so far as this is compatible with the heroic code of behavior, are all apparent.

But when it comes to the domination of Iran by her enemies, especially at the end of the Šāh-nāma, he is violently opposed to both Arabs and Turks (Nöldeke, 1920, pp. 37, 41). Certainly, these attitudes were in the poet’s sources, but he incorporated them into his work with complete conviction. Generally, it seems as though the ethical values of the poet’s sources and of the poet himself reciprocally acted on one another.

In this way, certain ethical values of the Šāh-nāma, such as praise for effort, condemnation of laziness, recommendation of moderation, condemnation of greed, praise for knowledge, encouragement of justice and tolerance, kindness towards women and children, patriotism, racial loyalty, the condemnation of haste and the recommendation of deliberation in one’s actions, praise for truthfulness and condemnation of falsehood, the condemnation of anger and jealousy, belief in the unstableness of the world, which is everywhere evident throughout the Šāh-nāma especially at the ends of the stories, and so forth, are considered also to be values held by the poet himself (see adab; Eslāmī, pp. 64-73).

Other opinions of the poet are his belief in the genuineness of the narratives in his sources (Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 12, vv. 113-14) and his strong belief in the lasting values of his own work, a subject referred to frequently in the Šāh-nāma (e.g., ed. Khaleghi, IV, pp. 173-74, vv. 66-68; for other examples, see Yaḡmāʾī, pp. 15-17; Nöldeke, 1920, pp. 34-35).

Finally it seems as though he was a man who was fond of pleasantries and witticisms (e.g., concerning Rūdāba, see ed. Khaleghi, p. 243, v. 1,158; Manūčehr’s joking with Zāl, ibid., p. 253, vv. 1,283-88; Sām’s and Sīndoḵt’s joking with each other, ibid., p. 262, vv. 1,407-9; the joking of the young shoemaker’s mother before the king, Moscow, VII, p. 325, vv. 336-46). The sum of such heartfelt, mature, and eloquently expressed views and ethical precepts regarding the world and mankind have led to his being referred to, from an early period, as ḥakīm (philosopher), dānā (sage), and farzāna (learned); that is, he was considered a philosopher, though he was not attached to any specific philosophical school nor possessed a complete knowledge of the various philosophical and scientific views of his time.

Ferdowsī and Sultan Maḥmūd

In various places in his work the poet devoted in all some 250 lines—some of which are very hyperbolic—to the praise of Maḥmūd, and the name Maḥmūd and his patronymic Abu’l-Qāsem are mentioned almost thirty times; but that sincerity which is apparent in the ten lines Ferdowsī wrote in praise of Manṣūr in his introduction to the Šāh-nāma is never visible in the lines on Maḥmūd, though in many places he either directly or by implication offers Maḥmūd moral advice (e.g., Moscow, VII, pp. 114-15, vv. 29-40; VIII, pp. 153-54, vv. 1,700-04, p. 292, vv. 4,080-81).

The climactic point of these allusions addressed to Maḥmūd must be considered to occur at the end of the Šāh-nāma in the letter of Rostam, the Sasanian general, to his brother on the eve of the battle of Qādesīya. In particular, the line in which it is prophesied that a talentless slave will become king (Moscow, IX, p. 319, v. 103) is like a bridge that takes us from the hyperbolic praise of Maḥmūd in the Šāh-nāma to the hyperbolic contempt for him of the satire.

The poet’s hopes of a monetary reward from Maḥmūd must be considered one reason for his praise of Maḥmūd (Nöldeke, 1920, p. 34), but, as indicated above, there is no sign anywhere in the Šāh-nāma that any assistance from Maḥmūd ever reached the poet (Nöldeke, pp. 27-29). The praise of Maḥmūd must be considered an entirely calculated gesture, forced on the poet by his poverty (Eslāmī, pp. 59-60). With Maḥmūd’s assumption of power in Khorasan, the Shiʿite Ferdowsī had, at the least, until he had finished work on the Šāh-nāma, to include him in the poem.

This being the case he could not, according to the usual custom in Persian narrative poems, wait until the end of the poem and then write a single panegyric to be used in the preface, but was forced to compose separate passages of praise, or to place them at the head of a story that was then sent to Ḡazna. Other passages of praise may well have been placed at the beginning of sections of the seven-volume Šāh-nāma. But the closer he got to the end of the Šāh-nāma, with there still being no sign of Maḥmūd’s paying him any attention, the more pointed his sarcastic allusions to Maḥmūd became, until finally in the satire he took back virtually all his praise.

In the satire the poet frequently speaks “of this book” (az in nāma) and this led Nöldeke (1920, p. 29) to conclude that the satire was composed as a supplement to the Šāh-nāma and that the poet’s intention was to take back his praise of Maḥmūd with this satire, that is, the Šāh-nāma was no longer dedicated to Maḥmūd, as the poet himself states in the satire (Mohl’s Intro., p. lxxxix, vv. 3-4). Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (text, pp. 49-50), also makes the same statement (see also Shahbazi, 1991, pp. 83-105)

Ferdowsī the poet and storyteller

The Šāh-nāma has not received its rightful attention in works written in Persian on the art of poetry (e.g., al-Moʿjam of Šams-al-Dīn Rāzī), which works consider eloquence and poetic style largely as a matter of particular figures of speech. So far there has been little serious work on Ferdowsī’s poetic artistry, and our discussion of this subject will not therefore go beyond general principles.

In discussing Ferdowsī’s achievement one must consider, on the one hand, the totality of the Šāh-nāma as a whole and, on the other, his artistry as a storyteller. Throughout the entire Šāh-nāma, a balance is masterfully maintained between words and meaning, on the one hand, and passion and thought, on the other. Ferdowsī’s poetic genius in creating a lofty, dynamic epic language that is brief but to the point and free from complexity greatly contributes to the strength of his style.

The most important figures of speech in the Šāh-nāma include: hyperbole, paronomasia, repetition, comparisons (similes and metaphors), representative images, proverbial expressions, parables, and moral advice. Hyperbole, which is the most important principle of epic language, is present in order to increase the reader’s emotional response. Some kinds of paronomasia are used to create a verbal rhythm that is to increase linguistic tension by acoustic means.

The most commonly used kinds of paronomasia include those that involve a complete identity of two words (be čang ār čang o may āḡāz kon “Bring in your hand [čang] a harp [čang] and set out the wine”; Moscow, V, p. 7, v. 19) and those that involve alliteration (šod az raḵš raḵšān o az šāh šād “He became radiant [raḵšān] because of Raḵš [the name of Rostam’s horse] and happy [šād] because of the king [šāh]”; ed. Khaleghi, II , p. 125, v. 93; kolāh o kamān o kamand o kamar “Cap and bow and lariat and belt”; ed. Khaleghi, III, p. 147, v. 676).

This effect is sometimes achieved by the repetition of one word (bed-ū goft narm ay javānmard, narm! “He said to him: Gently o young man, gently!”; ed. Khaleghi, II, p. 222, v. 683; makon šahrīārā javānī, makon! “Do not, o prince, do not act childishly!; ed. Khaleghi, p. 363, v. 846).

There are also comparisons used to render the language representational, that is, to construct an image visually. Among the kinds of comparison used in the Šāh-nāma one must mention short comparisons which do not use words that indicate a comparison is being made (brief metaphors) and explicit comparisons (i.e., similes; For other examples, see Nöldeke, 1920, pp. 69-71; Ṣafā, Ḥamāsa, pp. 267-77).

Sometimes Ferdowsī uses personification as an image (be bāzīgar-ī mānad īn čarḵ-e mast “This drunken wheel [i.e., of the firmament] is like a juggler; ed. Khaleghi, III, p. 56, v. 474), sometimes proverbial expressions (hamān bar ke kārīd ḵod bedravīd “As you sow so shall you reap!”; ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 114, v. 383), and sometimes parables, that is, the explanation of a situation by another exemplary situation (e.g., ibid., p. 216, vv. 770-73). In each of these three figures of speech, the image is constructed by reason.

Another example of this is the elaboration of language as moral maxims (tavānā bovad har ke dānā bovad! “knowledge is power”; ibid., p. 4, v. 14). On the other hand, Ferdowsī avoids those figures of speech which involve complex language or which take language far from the intended meaning. For this reason, complex metaphors, ambiguities of grammatical construction, riddles, and academic phraseology are rarely found in his work (Nöldeke, 1920, pp. 64-65). Metaphors such as “dragon” for a “sword”; “narcissus” and “magician” for “eyes”; “coral,” “garnet,” and “ruby” for “lips”; “tulip” for “a face”; “pearls” for “tears,” “teeth,” and “speech”; “cypress” for “stature”; and so on, that have since been parts of the conventional themes, motives, and images used in Persian poetry.

The most important descriptive passages of the Šāh-nāma are descriptions of war, the beauty of people, and the beauty of nature. Although Ferdowsī himself had probably never taken part in a battle and the descriptions of scenes of warfare are in the main imaginary, as Nöldeke says (1920, p. 59), they are described so variously, with such liveliness and to so stirring an effect that, despite their brevity, the reader seems to see them pass before his eyes. The story of Davāzdah Roḵ (q.v.; ed. Khaleghi, IV, pp. 3-166) is particularly a case in point (Nöldeke, ibid). Ferdowsī does not simply introduce his heroes, he lives with them and shares their sorrows and joys.

He grieves at the death of Iranian heroes, but he does not rejoice at the demise of Iran’s enemies; his sincerity conveys his own emotions to the reader. When he describes the beauty of people, he is at his best when the subject is a women (see, e.g., ed. Khaleghi, I, pp. 183-84, vv. 287-93). As a dehqān, Ferdowsī lived in close contact with nature; for this reason the descriptions of nature in his poetry have the lively coloring of nature itself, not the coloring of decorative effects as in the poetry of Neẓāmī.

Of his descriptions of nature particularly noticeable are those concerned with the rising and setting of the sun and moon, placed at the opening of many sections of individual stories, and of the seasons of the year, in particular of spring, situated in the introductions to stories (see, e.g., ed. Khaleghi, V, pp. 219-20, vv. 1-9).

Ferdowsī’s poetic artistry go hand in hand with his skill as a storyteller. Major stories usually begin with a preamble (ḵoṭba) which includes moral advice, a description of nature, or an account of the poet himself. In the examples that involve moral advice there is normally a connection between the contents of the preamble and the subject of the story that follows, as in the introductions to the stories of Rostam and Sohrāb, of Kāvūs’ expedition to Māzandarān, and of Forūd (q.v.), the son of Sīāvaḵš.

Such a connection is sometimes also found in introductions containing descriptions of nature (Ḵāleqī Moṭlaq, 1975, pp. 61-72; idem, 1990, pp. 123-41). Thereafter begins the story and proceeds quickly. In the important stories of the Šāh-nāma, events are neither given in so direct a manner as to join the opening of the story to its conclusion in the shortest possible manner, nor with such ramifications that the main story line is lost.

But the attention of the poet to certain details of the incidents described, without the story ever straying from its main path, fills the narrative with action and variety (e.g., see the quarrel between the gatekeeper of Mehrāb’s castle and Rūdāba’s maids in Šāh-nāma, ed. Khaleghi, I, p. 196, vv. 468-77; Nöldeke, 1920, p. 17).

Many of the narrative poets who followed Ferdowsī were more interested in the construction of individual lines than of their stories as a whole.

In such narrative poems, the poet himself speaks much more than the characters of his poem, and even where there is dialogue, there is little difference between the attitudes of the various characters of the story, so that the speaker is still the author, who at one moment speaks in the role of one character and the next moment speaks in the role of another.

The result is that in such poems, with the exception of Faḵr-al-Dīn Gorgānī’s Vīs o Rāmīn and to some extent the poems of Neẓāmī, the characters in the story are less individuals than types.

In contrast, the dialogues in the Šāh-nāma are realistic and frequently argumentative, and the poet uses them to good effect as a means of portraying the inner life of his characters.

This is so to such an extent that it is as if many of the characters of the Šāh-nāma lived among us and we knew them well.

Since these characters are developed as distinct, genuine individuals, it is inevitable that sometimes differences between them should lead to conflicts that make each episode extremely dynamic and dramatic.

An instance is the conflict in the story of Rostam and Esfandīār (q.v.), which has been described as “the deepest psychological struggle in the whole of the Šāh-nāma, and one of the deepest examples of its kind in the whole of world epic” (Nöldeke, 1920, p. 59).

Ferdowsī is also very skillful in creation of tragic and dramatic moments, such as the dialogue between Sohrāb and his father, Rostam, when Sohrāb is on the point of death (ed. Khaleghi, II, pp. 185-86, vv. 856-65), Sām’s reaction upon receiving Zāl’s letter (ibid., I, p. 208, vv. 656-66), the disobedience of Rostam’s loyal horse, Raḵš, and his risking his life for Rostam (ibid., II, pp. 26-27, v. 345-46, the anger of the natural world when Sīāvaḵš’s blood is spilled (ibid., II, pp. 357-58, vv. 2,284-87), the minstrel Bārbad’s cutting off his fingers and burning his instruments while mourning for Ḵosrow II Parvēz (Moscow, IX, pp. p. 280, vv. 414-18), and so on.

The final part of Ferdowsī’s elegy for his son and the Bārbad’s elegy on the death of Ḵosrow II Parvēz together with certain of the preambles to various stories and other descriptive passages show that Ferdowsī was also a master as a lyric poet (Nöldeke, 1920, p. 64).

Such moments in the Šāh-nāma distinguish it from other epics of the world (ibid., p. 63); due to their simplicity and brevity, however, they do not harm the epic spirit of the poem, rather they give it a certain musicality and tenderness; in particular, due to the descriptions of love in the poem, these lyric moments take it beyond the world of primary epic (ibid., p. 54, n. 2).

Since the greater part of the epic poetry before Ferdowsī’s time, and even his own main source, the Šāh-nāma-ye abū manṣūrī, have disappeared, it is difficult to judge how far Ferdowsī’s artistry is indebted to his predecessors.

From the thousand lines of Daqīqī in the Šāh-nāma, from certain other scattered lines by poets who had preceded him, and also from the Arabic translation of Ṯaʿālebī, it can be seen that Ferdowsī was not an innovator but rather someone who continued an extant tradition, both in his epic style and in his narrative method.

At the same time, as Nöldeke has said (1920, pp. 22-23, 41-44), it can be shown by reference to these same works that Ferdowsī not only succeeded in preserving his poetic independence, but also that Persian epic poetry is indebted to him for its finest flowering.

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