The Shahnameh
Page 29
5. EMPIRES FALL, NATIONS RISE
1. For an excellent account of the history of the Shah Tahmasp Shahnameh, see Francesca Leoni, “The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp,” http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/shnm/hd_shnm.htm. For a detailed account of the return of the fragmented pages of this Shahnameh to Iran, see the authoritative account by Hassan Habibi: http://www.tarikhirani.ir/fa/news/4/bodyView/824/%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%AC%D8%B1%D8%A7%DB%8C.%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B2%DA%AF%D8%B1%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%AF%D9%86.%D8%B4%D8%A7%D9%87%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%87%E2%80%8C.%D8%B7%D9%87%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%A8%DB%8C.%D8%A8%D9%87.%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86.%D8%A8%D9%87.%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%AA.%D8%AD%D8%B3%D9%86.%D8%AD%D8%A8%DB%8C%D8%A8%DB%8C.html (accessed August 14, 2018).
2. Mahmoud Omidsalar, Poetics and Politics of Iran’s National Epic, the Shahnameh (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), and Mahmoud Omidsalar, Iran’s Epic and America’s Empire (Santa Monica, Calif.: Afshar Publishing, 2012).
3. I have covered this European reception of the Shahnameh extensively in Hamid Dabashi, Persophilia: Persian Culture on the Global Scene (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015), 148–59.
4. For more details, see “The Shahnameh as Propaganda for World War II,” http://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2013/05/the-shahnameh-as-propaganda-for-world-war-ii.html.
5. I take these citations from an excellent master’s thesis on the reception of the Persian epic in the twentieth century by one of my former students at Columbia University, Ali Ahmadi Motlagh, “Ferdowsi in the 20th Century” (master’s thesis, Columbia University, 2008).
6. Motlagh, “Ferdowsi in the 20th Century.”
7. Motlagh, “Ferdowsi in the 20th Century.” For more details, see Isa Sadiq, ed., Hezareh-ye Ferdowsi (Tehran, 1944).
8. Motlagh, “Ferdowsi in the 20th Century.”
9. Motlagh, “Ferdowsi in the 20th Century.”
10. Motlagh, “Ferdowsi in the 20th Century.”
11. Motlagh, “Ferdowsi in the 20th Century.”
12. This is not to suggest that Muslims were not aware and conscious of “critical editions” before Europeans. Preparing the six canonical editions of the Prophet’s Hadith (Sihah Sittah) is a clear indication that Muslims were quite conscious of “critical editions.” However, with the advent of mechanized printing, a key apparatus of European Orientalism was preparing a “printed critical edition” of Arabic, Persian, or Sanskrit texts as an insignia of “modern scholarship.” It is that “modernity” that is the issue here.
13. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YrfvhfrDeU.
14. See http://iranshenakht.blogspot.com/2006/05/360_22.html.
15. See http://jadidonline.com/story/09112009/frnk/simorq_operetta.
16. Bahram Beiza’i, Sohrab-Koshi (Sohrabicide) (Tehran: Roshangaran Publishers, 1386/2007).
17. For more on Beiza’i, see Hamid Dabashi, “Bahram Beizai,” in Master and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema, 253–80 (Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 2007).
18. For more on the Green Movement in Iran, see Hamid Dabashi, Iran, the Green Movement and the USA (London: Zed Books, 2010).
19. It would be instructive to compare Moretti’s book with a far more poignant study of the relation between epics and empires, unburdened by the hubris of “the West” and “world texts”: Celia López-Chávez’s exquisite book, Epics of Empire and Frontier: Alonso de Ercilla and Gaspar de Villagrá as Spanish Colonial Chroniclers (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), in which she examines Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana (1569), about the Spanish conquest of Chile, and Gaspar de Villagrá’s Historia de la Nueva México (1610), a historical epic about the Spanish subjugation of the indigenous peoples of New Mexico. This book is a far more effective way of thinking about epics and empires. The significance of this study is seeing clearly through the dynamic of conquest and the conquered.
20. For a short account of Shahnameh stories adapted for the screen, see Hassan Mahdavifar, “Ferdowsi va Shahnameh dar Sinema” (Ferdowsi and the Shahnameh in cinema), July 2011, http://honarbedunemarz.blogfa.com/post-179.aspx.
CONCLUSION
1. Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, ed. E. E. Bertels et al., 9 vols. (Moscow: Oriental Institute, 1966–1971), 7:6.
2. Mahmoud Omidsalar makes a strong case that these narratives incorporating Alexander into the dynastic families of Iran and Egypt were invented by his own propaganda. See Mahmoud Omidsalar, Iran’s Epic and America’s Empire (Santa Monica, Calif.: Afshar Publishing, 2012), 12–40. Be that as it may, Ferdowsi’s incorporation of Alexander into his epic fits perfectly in his narrative scheme.
3. David Damrosch, ed., World Literature in Theory (Chichester, U.K.: Wiley Blackwell, 2014).
4. Damrosch, World Literature in Theory, 518.
5. Damrosch, World Literature in Theory, 521.
6. Emily Apter, Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (New York: Verso, 2013).
7. David Damrosch, review of Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability, by Emily Apter, Comparative Literature Studies 51, no. 3 (2014): 504–8.
8. Apter, Against World Literature, 8.
9. Damrosch, review of Against World Literature, 508.
10. Damrosch, review of Against World Literature, 508.
11. David Damrosch, What Is World Literature? (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003).
12. Hamid Dabashi, The World of Persian Literary Humanism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), 251–55.
13. Wai Chee Dimock and Lawrence Buell, eds., Shades of the Planet: American Literature as World Literature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007), 5. In What Is a World? On Postcolonial Literature as World Literature (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2016), Pheng Cheah correctly zooms in on the question of “World” in “World Literature” and makes the cogent argument that any emerging literature carves out its own world by virtue of its widening readership. Pheng Cheah’s excellent point, however, is limited to the world in which a body of literature is received, while in my argument in this book I dwell on two other interrelated worlds of the Shahnameh—the world in which it was created and the inner world of the epic itself.
14. Enrique Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, trans. Aquilina Martinez and Christine Morkovsky (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1985), 3.
15. Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, 3.
16. Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, 3.
17. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Death of a Discipline (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 6.
18. Spivak, Death of a Discipline, 7.
19. Spivak, Death of a Discipline, 9.
20. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 1.
21. Mehdi Akhavan-e Sales, Behtarin-e Omid (The best of Omid) (Tehran: Mihan Publishers, 1969), 307–19. This original version of “Khan-e Hashtom” is reprinted a number of other times along with its sequel, “Adamak” (The little man, March 1968), for example, in Bagh-e bi-Bargi (The fruitless garden: Mehdi Akhavan-e Sales memorial volume), ed. Morteza Kakhi (Tehran: Agah Publishers, 1991), 544–58. All translations and abbreviations from the Persian original are my own.
22. Gholamreza Takhti (1930–1968) was a deeply loved and admired world champion wrestler known for his nationalist (anticolonial) politics.
23. Rakhsh is the name of Rostam’s horse.
24. Sam, Zal, Rostam, Sohrab, Faramarz, and Borzu are all among the Shahnameh heroes.
>
25. As I do in Dabashi, World of Persian Literary Humanism.
26. See, for example, Mohammad Ali Islami Nodushan, Zendegi va Marg Pahlavanan dar Shahnameh (The life and death of heroes in the Shahnameh) (Tehran: Intishar Publications, 1969), and Mostafa Rahimi, Tragedy-ye Qodrat dar Shahnameh (The tragedy of power in the Shahnameh) (Tehran: Nilufar Publishing House, 1990).
INDEX
Page numbers refer to the print edition but are hyperlinked to the appropriate location in the e-book.
Abbasid Empire (750–1258), 40, 41–42, 54–55, 68, 143–44
Abi al-Khayr, Abu Sa’id, 68
“Abraham in Fire” (Shamlou), 137–38
Abu Mansur Muhammad ibn Abd al-Razzaq, 44, 50, 71, 107
Abu Salik Gorkani, 42
Abu Taleb, Muhammad Taher ibn, 114
Abu Taleb Isfahani (Mirza Abu Taleb Mir Fendereski), 113–14
Achaemenid Empire (550–330 B.C.E.), 39–40, 55, 190
adab (literary humanism), 42, 105–6, 218
“Adamak” (The little man) (Sales), 212, 213–14
Aeneid (Virgil): Eurocentric theorization of “comparative literature” and, 145; imperialist projections of, 98; Quint on, 18, 53–54; Shahnameh and, 52, 57, 89, 215–16
Afshar, Iraj, 231n7
Against World Literature (Apter), 197–99
Agha Hashar Kashmiri, 37
Ahmad Samani, Amir Nasr ibn, 68
“Akhar-e Shahnameh” (The end of the Shahnameh) (Sales), 173
Al-Ahmad, Jalal, 212–13
Alavi, Bozorg, 168
Alexander Nevsky (film), 58, 59, 147–49, 154–55, 180
Alexander Romance, 88–89, 132, 193–94, 223
Alexander the Great, 40, 55, 89, 190–91, 193–94, 222–23
Ali Afandi, 101–102
Ali-nameh (Rabi’), 113, 154, 165
Anushirvan the Just (Khosrow I), 49
Apter, Emily, 197–99
Arab, Hossein Aqa, 115
A’rabi, Sohrab, 175
Arabic language, 99, 101–102
Araucana, La (Ercilla), 18, 53, 237n19
Ardashir I, 48, 190
Aristotle, 223
Arnold, Matthew, 15, 37, 166
Arsacid Empire (Persian Ashkanian, 250 B.C.E.–226 C.E.), 39–40, 190
Asadi Tusi, Abu Mansur Ali ibn Ahmad, 46–47, 50–51
Ash’arites, 41–42
Asiri, 114
Asjadi, 68
Atashi, 114
Attenborough, Richard, 148
Aubigné, Théodore-Agrippa d,’ 18, 53
Avesta (religious text), 44
Ayadgar-e Zareran (Memorial of Zarir), 48
Azad Belgrami, Mirza Qolam Ali, 114
Babak Khorramdin (ca. 795–838), 76
Bahar, Mehrdad, 161
Bahman-nameh (Persian epic), 50–51
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 112–13
Balkhi, Abu Ali Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-, 50
Balkhi, Abu al-Moayyad, 50
Banani, Amin, 25
Bani-Sadr, Abolhassan, 16
Banu Goshasp-nameh, 50–51
Barmecides (Barmakids), 54–55
bazm (banquet), 52, 188
Beiza’i, Bahram, 175–76
Benjamin, Walter, 84–87, 147
Bertels, E. E., 15
Birth of a Nation, The (Griffith), 154–55
Bizhan, 74, 80–84, 140–41, 157
Bizhan and Manizheh (film), 186
Bizhan-nameh (Persian epic), 50–51
Borzu-nameh (Persian epic), 50–51
Braudel, Fernand, 201–202
Browne, E. G., 100
Buell, Lawrence, 202
Bundari, Qawam al-Din Fath ibn Ali ibn Muhammad al-, 82, 101–102
Byzantine Empire (ca. 330–1453), 39, 55
Callisthenes of Olynthus, 193–94
Camões, Luís de, 18, 53
Canby, Sheila, 142
Cantos, The (Pound), 149
Casanova, Pascale, 201
Cassin, Barbara, 198
Chahar Maqaleh (Four treatises) (Nezami Aruzi), 67
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 19–20
“Chavoshi” (Sales), 174
Cheah, Pheng, 238n13
Chubak, Sadegh, 161
cinematography, 110–12, 115–16, 147–48, 151, 154–55, 185–86
collective consciousness, 46
collective unconscious, 122, 124, 153
colonial modernity, 151, 162, 176–80, 187
colonial nationalism, 97–103
Comparative Literature and Classical Persian Poetics (Davidson), 25
“Conjectures on World Literature” (Moretti), 196
Constitutional Revolution (1906–1911), 45–47, 160–61, 168
Cyropaedia (Xenophon), 55, 193–94, 223
Cyrus the Great, 44, 193–94, 223
Daghighi (ca. 935–980), 42
Damrosch, David, 195–96, 197, 199–201
Daneshvar, Simin, 91, 161, 174
Dante, 107–8
Daqiqi (Abu Mansur Muhammad ibn Ahmad Daqiqi Tusi), 37–38, 47–48, 68, 101, 104, 144
Darius III, 190, 223
Darwish, Mahmoud, 173–74
Dastan Ali Akbar, 114
Davidson, Olga, 25
Davis, Dick: on Shahnameh, 25, 88–89; translation of Shahnameh by, 15, 55, 80–83, 163, 165, 229n1, 229n3, 230n8, 232n23
Death of a Discipline (Spivak), 204–5
deferred defiance, 134–38, 226
Deleuze, Gilles, 5–6, 19–20, 133, 134–38
Delgosha-nameh (Azad Belgrami), 114
desires, 133–34
Dickson, Martin B., 142
Dimock, Wai Chee, 202
Divine Comedy, The (Dante), 107–8
Dolatabadi, Mahmoud, 174, 179
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 112–13
Dussel, Enrique, 202–3
Eco, Umberto, 153, 174
Eisenstein, Sergey, 58, 59, 147–49, 154–55, 180
Eliot, T. S., 149, 179
“Emergence of Weltliteratur, The” (Pizer), 196
Enjavi Shirazi, Seyyed Abu al-Qasem, 230n6
Epic and Empire (Quint), 18–19, 21, 23, 52–59, 147–49, 156
Epic and Sedition (Davis), 25, 88–89
Ercilla, Alonso de, 18, 53, 237n19
eros, 140–41
Esfandiar, 94, 132–38, 154, 157, 184–85, 226
Eslami Nadushan, M. A., 24
Ethé, Carl Hermann, 100
ethos, 140–41
European Romanticism, 16
Faiz, Faiz Ahmad, 173–74
Fanon, Frantz, 208, 227
Farrokhi, 46–47, 68
Fath Ali Khan “Saba” Kashani, Malik al-Shu’ara, 38–39, 51, 114
Fath Ali Shah, 38–39
Faust (Goethe), 142, 149, 179
Ferdowsi (Hakim Abolqasem Ferdowsi Tusi): apocryphal and hagiographic stories on, 11–12, 73–79, 218–19; biography of, 2–3, 11, 64–67, 70–79; historical context of, 67–70; immortality and, 70; name of, 70–71; narrative voice of, 65–67, 80–84; Persian language and, 69–70; “redeemed mankind” and, 84–87; Shi’ism and, 75–78, 146, 152–54, 165, 169, 170, 184; as storyteller and history teller, 103–10. See also Shahnameh (Ferdowsi)
Ferdowsi (Shahbazi), 25
Ferdowsi (film), 186
“Ferdowsi and the Art of Tragic Epic” (Banani), 25
Ferdowsi va She’r-e Ou (Ferdowsi and his poetry) (Minovi), 24
Fereydun, 6, 107, 121–26
filicide, 59–62, 92, 131, 134–37, 188, 226
Ford, John, 148, 151, 154–55, 174, 185, 186
Foruzanfar, Badi’ al-Zaman, 100
Foucault, Michel, 223
Four Rightly Guided Caliphs (632–650), 40
Freud, Sigmund, 134–38, 153
Gabri, Richard, 234n29
Game of Thrones (TV series), 147
Garshasp-nameh (Asadi Tusi), 46–47, 50–51
Gerusalemme liberata (Tasso), 18,
53–54
Gharbzadeghi (Westoxication) (Al-Ahmad), 212–13
Gharibpour, Behrouz, 174–75
Ghaznavid Empire (977–1186): Ferdowsi and, 11–12, 55, 74–75; history of, 11; panegyric poetry and, 44; Shahnameh and, 141, 144–45, 152
God (Khodavand), 2
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 15, 17, 181–82, 196, 200–201, 206. See also Faust (Goethe)
Gordafarid, 60, 61, 160, 188
gosan (minstrels), 47
Griffith, D. W., 154–55
Guattari, Félix, 133
Hafez, 91, 100
Hajibeyov, Uzeyir, 37
hamaseh sura’i (epic poetry), 38–39, 52
Hamaseh Sura’i dar Iran (Epic poetry in Iran) (Safa), 24
Hamleh-ye Haidari (Persian epic), 113–14
Hamleh-ye Haidari (Raji), 114
Hamlet (Shakespeare), 62
Hanzaleh Badghisi, 42
Hedayat al-Mutu’allemin (Persian medicine book), 42
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 23, 178, 217–18, 223–24
Hekmat, Nazem, 173–74
heteroglossia, 112–13
Heyrati, 114
Historia de la Nueva México (Villagrá), 237n19
Homer, 52, 53, 57, 132, 145, 215–16
Houghton, Arthur Jr., 142
Houshang, 118
How Green Was My Valley (film), 185
Hudud al-Alam (Persian geography text), 42
Hugo, Victor, 15
Ibn Hisam (Maulana Muhammad ibn Hisam al-Din). See Khavaran-nameh (Ibn Hisam)
Ibn Khaldun, 219
Iliad (Homer), 52, 53
infinity, 157–58, 187, 225–26
Iran: Muslim conquest of, 13, 39–42; proto-Zoroastrian uprisings in, 41–42, 76; use of term, 8. See also Islamic Republic of Iran (1979–); specific empires
Iranian cinema, 115–16
Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1906–1911), 45–47, 160–61, 168
Iranian Studies (journal), 25
Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), 16, 168
iranische Nationalepos, Das (The Iranian national epic) (Nöldeke), 25
Iran’s Epic and America’s Empire (Omidsalar), 25
Iran Without Borders (Dabashi), 192
Iskandar-nameh (Persian epic), 51
Islamic Republic of Iran (1979–), 14, 162, 163–66, 168–69, 170
Jacir, Emily, 199
Jami, Abd al-Rahman, 100
Jamshid, 4, 57, 95, 119–21, 123, 217
Jang-nameh (Atashi), 114
Japanese medieval theater, 185–86
Javanshir, F. M. (Farajollah Mizani), 168