The Adventures of Amir Hamza

by Ghalib Lakhnavi

  After several days, Quraisha arrived into the presence of the Holy Prophet with a huge army and asked for her father’s murderer. The Holy Prophet showed Quraisha the lofty status attained by Amir Hamza and said, “O Quraisha, had your father not been martyred, he would not have found such a lofty station in Heaven, and God would not have promoted him to the rank of a holy personage. Thus you must obey my advice and shun all thoughts of revenge.”

  The narrator has said that that was the occasion when Sura-e Jinn22 was revealed to the Holy Prophet and it comforted Quraisha’s heart. Thus she was persuaded by the Holy Prophet to refrain from seeking revenge for her father’s death. She did not speak another word about seeking vengeance but took her leave and departed for her land.

  One tradition holds that it had displeased God that the Holy Prophet had not said the words “God willing” when stating that his uncle Hamza could rout the infidels alone and that this was why Amir Hamza’s body was cut into seventy pieces and the Holy Prophet lost a tooth in the battle.

  Yet another tradition maintains that Prophet Muhammad’s wife, Ayesha (peace be upon her soul), was darning and patching her clothes when the Holy Prophet entered her room and the lamp was accidentally extinguished, and the thread came out of her needle. As the Mother of the Faithful sat worrying in darkness, the Holy Prophet smiled and, in the light that emanated from his holy teeth, she was able to thread the needle. The tradition holds that the Almighty God was displeased when the Holy Prophet said, “Regard, O Ayesha, my teeth are so luminous that you were able to thread your needle in their light, and my teeth performed the work of a lamp.” This tradition holds that it was on account of the Holy Prophet’s claim that his tooth was broken in the battle.

  In the same battle, Prophet Muhammad’s cousin, Ali bin Abu Talib, was wounded by an arrowhead that had lodged in his foot. The surgeon tried his best to remove the arrowhead but was unsuccessful. When Ali prostrated himself during prayers, the Holy Prophet said, “Draw out the arrowhead from Ali’s foot.” Then some champions removed the arrowhead with forceps, but Ali did not feel a thing. After he finished with his prayers, he noticed blood at his feet and asked, “Where has this blood come from, and when did I receive this wound?” His companions gave him a complete account, and then asked, “Your Honor, did you not know?” He answered, “By God, I did not know I was pierced by the arrow!”

  May the beneficent God bless this translator23 and transcriber as a sacrifice of Prophet Muhammad’s (praise be unto him) martyred tooth and the wounded foot of Ali (may God have mercy on his soul); may He release him from dependence on everyone in this world and grant him His munificence by divine will; and may the truth and fiction of this tale be attributed to the inventors of the legend.

  FOR AZHAR ABIDI

  SORCERER OF THE ANTIPODES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My understanding of the many facets of the dastan literature has been shaped by the Urdu language’s foremost writer and critic, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi. His unparalleled insight into the poetics of Urdu’s classical literature in his monumental study Sahiri, Shahi, Sahibqirani, which analyzes the known Urdu and Persian versions of the Dastan-e Amir Hamza and their sources, has laid the foundations of a serious study of the dastan genre and was immensely useful during my work.

  In the course of translating this text, I have been fortunate to have had the help and encouragement of many other friends as well. At a very early stage of this translation, Professor Muhammad Umar Memon published an excerpt from it in the Annual of Urdu Studies. Mr. Salimur Rahman read that excerpt and offered his valuable advice. Professor C. M. Naim’s testimonial underlined the importance of this book’s publication. Ms. Elham Eshraghi helped in translating the Persian verses and phrases. My wife, Michelle, put up with me during the time it took to finish the translation and let me clutter up the living room with dictionaries and printouts.

  The publication of this work owes a great deal to Frances and Bill Hanna of Acacia House Publishing Services, who placed this work with the Modern Library. My editor at the Modern Library, Judy Sternlight, deserves special thanks for her thoughtful editing advice and all her help in seeing this project to completion. Thanks are also due to Rebecca Shapiro and to production editor Evan Camfield. Lastly, a big thank-you to Medi Blum for her truly marvelous copyediting work. For any remaining shortcomings in the translation, I alone am responsible.

  THE HISTORY OF THE LEGEND

  Musharraf Ali Farooqi

  The dastan is an oral narrative genre, and the word itself means “tale” or “legend.” The dastan of Amir Hamza has a rich folk history.

  Storytellers brought the dastans to the Arabian peninsula via Persia as early as the seventh century C.E. It is related that a pagan named Nazr bin al-Haris of Mecca preferred Persian dastans to the message of Allah and turned men away from Prophet Muhammad’s preaching. The Quran denounced him and others of his ilk, who preferred idle tales to life’s realities.1

  The hero of the Dastan-e Amir Hamza is based on Prophet Muhammad’s uncle, Hamza bin Abdul Muttalib, who was renowned for his bravery. He was martyred in the battle of Uhad in 625 by a hired spearsman. But aside from the ancestral reference, there are no similarities between the Amir Hamza of this legend and the historic Hamza bin Abdul Muttalib.

  The dastan relied heavily on familiar characters, icons, and legends to create scenes and situations. By using Amir Hamza’s legend to describe the hero’s bravery, using the names of idols and legendary villains of Islamic history to denote his enemies, using the rivalry between the Arab and Persian cultures to set up the conflict, using holy Khizr, the green-clad guide of legend, to be Amir Hamza’s helper, and so forth, the story constantly evokes certain historical, cultural, and religious identifiers that allow it to narrate action without creating new histories and legends.

  Like Amir Hamza, these characters, too, have no history beyond what is attributed to them by the story itself. The narrative discarded the real histories of the characters it chose, and sometimes even their legendary histories, and reassembled their legends.2 To supernatural creatures such as jinns, which are part of the religious belief system, the story added devs and peris—creatures borrowed from the cultural belief system of folklore.3

  But the name of Prophet Muhammad’s brave uncle seemed to have stuck in people’s imagination. Over time, folk legends continued to be grafted onto this legend. The seemingly contradictory claims about the origins of the story attest to this phenomenon.

  According to one folk record, the dastan of Amir Hamza started as a commemorative account of the bravery and valor of the historic Hamza after his martyrdom, narrated by the women of Mecca. When Prophet Muhammad passed by the house of his uncle, he would stay awhile to hear these accounts of his bravery.4

  Another source maintains that the legend was composed by the brother of the historic Hamza, Abbas bin Abdul Muttalib, who used to recite the legend of Hamza to Prophet Muhammad whenever the prophet grew nostalgic about the memory of his martyred uncle. According to the same source, two men compiled it into a book when Prophet Muhammad’s followers were reviled in the time of the Umayyad dynasty (660–750). They composed this tale with help from historic and travelers’ accounts as a rejoinder to the calumniators of Prophet Muhammad’s companions and progeny. They recited it in the bazaars and in gatherings at coffee-sellers.5

  Another legend has it that one of the caliphs of the Abbasid dynasty (750–1258) came down with delirium and remained incurable. Seven wise men—who were as wise as Aristotle himself—authored this dastan, and some of them were then deputed to read this story in the presence of the sick man night and day, until he was fully cured.6

  Yet another tradition tells us that this story grew from the exploits of an early-ninth-century Persian adventurer named Hamza bin Abdullah, who belonged to the Kharjiite sect, which had rebelled against the Abbasid caliph Haroonur Rasheed—of Arabian Nights fame. Hamza bin Abdullah’s legend, called the Maghazi-e Hamza, was supposed to
be the origin of this story.7

  The author of one of the Urdu versions of this dastan, Khalil Ali Khan Ashk, asserts that the tale was composed by “narrators of sweet speech” in the time of the Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud of Ghazna (971–1030).8 Ghalib Lakhnavi, the original author of the present text, attests to Ashk’s account, adding that the legend was composed because it described “all manner of humanity, and was an inspiration for plans of battle, capturing castles, and conquering countries.”9

  Other Indian narrators of Amir Hamza’s legend give a different account. According to Ahmed Husain Qamar, one of the five authors of a longer version of Dastan-e Amir Hamza, this legend was first written by the Indian poet Amir Khusrau (1253–1325) in seven long manuscript volumes, and also by Emperor Akbar’s poet laureate, Faizi (1547–1595).10 Qamar also mentions that the Qajar king Nasiruddin Shah of Persia (1831–1896) sent for the seven books of Amir Hamza’s legend from India and had them compiled at his court and published in two volumes in Persian.11

  These are just a few of the more prominent names given as the sources of Amir Hamza’s legend. What these seemingly contradictory accounts reveal is the legend’s popularity over a long period of time, and the many sources from which it flowed down to the storytellers and their audiences.

  If these accounts are accurate, the legend of Amir Hamza could have arrived on the Indian subcontinent around the tenth or eleventh century with Mahmud of Ghazna. However, the earliest known illustrated Indian manuscript of the legend dates from the late fifteenth century.12

  It was the Quran itself that provided the first clue to the nature of the dastan, calling it “idle tales” aimed at escaping reality. Nearly a millennium later, the Mughal emperor Babur (1483–1530) condemned the Hamzanama, an early Persian version of the story. Discussing his chief justices, Babur wrote: “One was Mir Sar-e Barahna; he was from a village in Andijan and appears to have made claim to be a sayyid. He was a very agreeable companion, pleasant of temper and speech. His were the judgment and rulings that carried weight among men of letters and poets of Khurasan. He wasted his time by composing, in imitation of the story of Amir Hamza, a work that is one long, far-fetched lie, opposed to sense and nature.”13

  The phrase “one long, far-fetched lie, opposed to sense and nature” describes the development in this ideal. The “idle tale” has become even idler; it distorts reality, has a dynamic that does not follow the rules of cause and effect, and displays supernatural elements.

  The Mughal emperor Akbar, disregarding his grandfather Babur’s bias against the story, commissioned the celebrated illustration project of the Hamzanama around 1562–77. These miniatures reveal how contemporary reality was being woven into legends. We see anachronistic elements like firearms in these miniatures, as in this book. Other examples are seen in the details of clothes, jewelry, makeup, and cuisine in the story.

  Amir Hamza’s legend continued to spread in India. In the Indo-Muslim culture, the dastan literature played a vital role in the development of Urdu into a literary language. Four versions of Dastan-e Amir Hamza are known in Urdu. The longest version, printed between 1883 and 1917, combined many different traditions contributed by Urdu dastan narrators and comprised forty-six volumes and approximately forty-four thousand pages. It is considered the crown jewel of Urdu literature.

  The true heroes of the Dastan-e Amir Hamza were the countless unknown and unsung dastan-gos (dastan narrators) whose imaginations made this legend grow and expand and leave a powerful imprint on world literature. Beside Urdu, it is known to exist in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Sindhi, Malay, Javanese, Georgian, Balinese, Sudanese, Pashto, Bengali, and Hindi versions.

  In nineteenth-century India, the popularity of Dastan-e Amir Hamza was widespread. Dastan-gos were employed at the regional courts and dastan narration was a greatly sought-after entertainment in public gatherings. Many dastans were also written and published during this period.

  The tradition of dastan narration came to an end with the death of the last famous dastan narrator, Mir Baqir Ali, in 1928. The writing and publication of the dastans slowly ceased.

  Over the next few decades, the vibrant Indo-Muslim civilization that had cultivated these legends underwent the catastrophic events of partition, and the communalization of the Indo-Muslim cultural heritage, which had begun as a project of the British colonial regime, was perpetuated for political gain by the new leadership of both India and Pakistan. Neither side was willing to commit to preserving the Indo-Muslim heritage. In this atmosphere, scholars, writers, and critics on both sides disregarded the dastan genre, and slowly the dastan literature was obliterated from the literary and cultural consciousness of the people of the subcontinent.

  Recently, there has been reason for hope. The publication of the voluminous dastan study Sahiri, Shahi, Sahibqirani by Urdu’s greatest living scholar, novelist, and critic, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, was a landmark event in dastan scholarship. It bridged the huge gap in our knowledge of this genre and the many intricacies of this particular dastan. There is also a newfound interest in dastan narration. Mahmood Farooqi and Danish Husain in India are reviving dastan narration in a new format. Their performances have been great successes in both India and Pakistan, where new editions of the dastan are also being published. It suddenly seems possible that the Dastan-e Amir Hamza will soon reclaim its rightful place in the canon of Urdu literature.

  NOTES

  1. The Holy Quran: English Translation of the Meanings and Commentary (Medina: King Fahd Holy Quran Printing Complex, A.H. 1410), 31:6.

  2. An example of this is the legend of the green-clad Khizr, who is traditionally considered a guide for the lost traveler. In the story, he was declared a prophet, shown to be the brother of Ilyas (Elias), and even had a mother, Asifa Ba-Safa. Moreover, he is shown killing the devs of Qaf to help Amir Hamza.

  3. It should be pointed out that the concept of jinns itself was brought into the Islamic belief system from the Arab folklore tradition.

  4. Haji Qissa-Khvan Hamdani, Zubdat-ur Rumuz (manuscript, c. 1613–14; Khda Bakhsh Library, Patna), 2.

  5. Kitab-e Rumuz-e Hamza (Tehran: A.H. 1274–76 [1857–59]; British Museum Library), 2–3.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Suhail Bukhari, Urdu Dastan: Tahqiqi va Tanqidi Mutaliah (Islamabad: Muqtadira Qaumi Zaban, 1987); Suhail Bukhari, “Urdu Dastan Ka Fanni Tajziyah,” Nuqush 105 (April–June 1966), 84–99.

  8. Khalil Ali Khan Ashk, Dastan-e Amir Hamza (Lahore: Seth Adamji Publishers Bumbai Walay, n.d.), 2. Originally published 1801.

  9. Mirza Aman Ali Khan Bahadur Ghalib Lakhnavi, Tarjuma-e Dastan-e Sahibqiran Giti-sitan Aal-e Paighambar-e Aakhiruz Zaman Amir Hamza bin Abdul Muttalib bin Hashim bin Abdul Munaf (Calcutta: Hakim Sahib Press, 1855), 2–3.

  10. Ahmed Husain Qamar, Tilism-e Hoshruba, volume 6 (Kanpur: Naval Kishore Press, 1916), 924.

  11. Ibid., 1373.

  12. This manuscript is in the collection of Sitzung Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Tübingen, Germany. See Karl Khandalavala and Moti Chandra, New Documents of Indian Painting: A Reappraisal (Bombay: Board of Trustees of Prince of Wales Museum, 1969), 50–55.

  13. Milo Cleveland Beach, The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1981), 58.

  LIST OF CHARACTERS, HISTORIC FIGURES, DEITIES, AND MYTHICAL BEINGS

  Names starting with honorifics such as Amir and Malik should be looked for under the proper name. For example, Malik Alqash can be found at Alqash. Among these honorifics are the following:

  Amir: Title used for a commander or leader. In this book the title is used for the hero, Hamza.

  Bibi: Title used for a respectable woman

  Hakim: Title used for a wise man, or someone with a knowledge of medicine

  Khusrau: Title used for a majestic king. In this book it is used for Landhoor bin Saadan.

  Khvaja: Title used for a man of distinction, usually conferred on dignitaries

  Malik: Title of royal
ty. Also a title conferred on viziers, as in the case of Malik Alqash.

  Mehtar: Title conferred on a chief or commander

  Also note that the loyalties of characters change often. Their affiliations as described here are not permanent.

  AADAM: Adam. In the dastan, he is given the rank of a prophet.

  AADI CHOB-GARDAAN: Warrior in Emperor Naushervan’s service

  AADI MADI-KARIB: Bandit who is defeated by Hamza and joins his cause. He is Hamza’s foster brother and a voracious eater.

  AADIYA BANO: Wet nurse of Amir Hamza, Muqbil Vafadar, and Amar Ayyar; mother of Aadi Madi-Karib

  AASHOB (OR JAHANDAR QALANDAR): Brother of Bahlol; an orphan whom Amir rescues from a dev in Qaf

  AASMAN PERI: Daughter of Emperor Shahpal bin Shahrukh of Qaf

  AATISH: Commander of Emperor Naushervan’s ayyars

  ABA SAEED KHARQA-POSH: Acolyte of Amar Ayyar

  ABDUL AZIZ: King of Egypt and father of Zehra Misri

  ABDUL MUTTALIB: Chieftain of the Banu Hashim tribe of Arabia; father of Hamza

  ABDUR RAHEEM JINN: Minister of Rashid Jinn

  ABDUR RAHMAN JINN: Vizier of Emperor Shahpal bin Shahrukh of Qaf

  ABU JAHAL: Literally, “father of folly.” His real name was Amar bin Hashsham and he was one of Prophet Muhammad’s sworn enemies in the city of Mecca.

  ABU SAEED LANGARI: Acolyte of Amar Ayyar

  ABU SUFYAN: Abu Sufyan bin al-Harith was one of Prophet Muhammad’s cousins and foster brothers. He remained his enemy until his conversion to Islam late in life.

  ABUL-ALA: See Hamza