by Dick Davis
Qavam: See the note to pp. 74–5.
HAHAN MALEK KHATUN
pp. 138–9, O God, I beg you…/ Each new flower…/ My heart will take…
The three poems on these pages are taken from a section of Jahan Khatun’s Divan (“Collected Poems”) entitled “Elegy.” The poems gathered together under this title all apparently refer to the death of the same person, named Sultan Bakht. It was once thought that the poems lamented the death of Jahan Khatun’s stepmother, who was indeed named Sultan Bakht, and who seems to have been particularly close to the princess after the murder of her father. However, it’s now accepted that the poems refer to the death of Jahan Khatun’s daughter, who was also called Sultan Bakht (probably in honor of Jahan’s stepmother), and who died at a very young age.
pp. 140–41, I didn’t know my value then, when I
I took up lovers’ chess, / And lost so many of love’s pieces: Chess was a popular game at the medieval Persian courts, and Jahan Khatun mentions it a number of times – which suggests that it might have been one of her own pastimes – often, as here, as a metaphor for love.
pp. 142–3, Here, in his beauty’s garden, I –
like the nightingale…sings the rose: See the note to p. 8.
pp. 144–5, If you should kiss me with
I’d be your slave and wear / Your earring in my ear: A slave’s earring denoted to whom he or she belonged.
moon…cypress tree: The moon and the cypress are the commonest metaphors for a beautiful person (of either sex) in Persian poetry – the cypress for an elegant body, the (full) moon for the face.
pp. 146–7, My heart is tangled like thick curls
The stream that flows…Diminish over me: A garden and a tree, usually a cypress, beside a stream were important parts of what Jahan Khatun’s contemporaries in Europe would have called a locus amoenus – that is, a pleasant place where pleasant things can be expected to happen, and life is, for the moment, enjoyable and good. A tree shading a stream in Persian poetry can be a metaphor for patronage and protection, and the juxtaposition can often, as here, take on erotic connotations, with the tree being the masculine element and the stream the feminine (a dream recounted in Gorgani’s eleventh century romance Vis and Ramin has the same constituents, with the same implication of eroticism); the erotic dimension to the metaphor also involves the protective element of its “patronage” meaning. Obayd-e Zakani has a scurrilous version of the metaphor, which draws on and derides its romantic implications, in his poem “My prick’s a cypress that grows tall and straight” on p. 211.
pp. 150–51, From now on I have sworn
His eyebrow’s arch that’s like / The new moon in its grace: See the note to p. 15.
like the nightingale…Harangues the rose: See the note to p. 8.
pp. 152–3, How sweet sleep is! I dreamed I saw
ka’abah: the black stone in Mecca, at the geographical center of the Islamic world, towards which Moslems pray and which is circumambulated by pilgrims.
I’m not a child to whom the world / Is still unknown: There is a pun on “Jahan” (“the world,” and the poet’s pen-name) in these last lines, which mean both “I know the world” and “I know myself.”
p. 154, Come here a moment, sit with me, don’t sleep tonight
this world’s delight: As in the previous poem, there is a pun here on Jahan/world.
p. 155, How can I tell you what I want from you
How you hung on to love: “You” refers to the speaker’s heart.
Men love the world…you shun: As in “How sweet sleep is! I dreamed I saw” (pp. 152–3), Jahan again puns on her name, meaning “world,” so that these lines also mean “Men love Jahan, she’s dear to everyone – So why’s Jahan’s love something that you shun?”
pp. 156–7, At dawn my heart said I should go
But your drunk eyes don’t deign…love or drink: This stanza (line in Persian) depends on both a pun and an implied pun. The same Persian verb, which has a number of meanings, is translated as both “deign to” and “forgive.” “Drunk” can mean simply drunk, but it can also mean “drunk with love,” i.e. besotted with someone. “Drunk eyes,” apart from the literal meaning, can also mean languorously attractive eyes, what we might call, “come-to-bed eyes.” The line’s implication is, “If it’s easy for me to forgive you for being drunk, it should be easy for you to forgive me for being in love with you.”
pp. 158–60, Suppose a breeze should bring to me
The Persian New Year falls at the spring equinox (March 20 or 21) and is traditionally a time of pleasure, picnics, and open-air festivities. The comparisons Jahan makes between flowers and different features of her beloved are all traditional, as is the notion that the flowers and trees will be abashed by his beauty and so be ashamed to show themselves. Violets are compared to dark, thick, glossy hair; narcissi are compared to eyes because their flowers have white outer petals with a dark brown center; the pinkish blossoms of the Judas tree (called in America the red-bud) are a metaphor for an attractive complexion, and so on. The picture of the spring blossoms drifting down on the lovers is also traditional, as is the notion of falling blossoms as tribute scattered before a prince, though the combination of the two images seems to be Jahan’s own.
pungent musk / From Tartary: Musk, which was one of the most valued of medieval perfumes, is a glandular secretion of the musk deer; the most prized musk was imported from Tartary, the steppes of northern and central Asia.
p. 161, O God be kind, and open wide your door
This is clearly a poem written after Jahan’s family’s fall from power, as is made plain by the line “In one night, sovereignty abandoned me.”
p. 162, My friend, who was so kind and faithful once
world’s lord: “World” is a pun on the poet’s name “Jahan,” so that “world’s lord” (i.e. God) also means “Jahan’s lord” (i.e. the beloved addressed in the poem, who is implicitly compared to God, because for her, the phrase implies, he is like God).
p. 163, Have all your feelings for me gone?
world-destroying flower: a pun that also means “Jahan-destroying flower.”
pp. 164–5, It will be God who opens up
Jahan Khatun’s more religious poems, like this one, were probably written after her family’s fall from power.
O world: This is a pun, as it also means “O Jahan,” addressing herself.
pp. 166–7, How sweet those days when we were still
This poem would seem to have been written after Jahan’s family’s fall from power, when she was looking back on her lost youth, a time when she had been a pampered and relatively carefree princess.
famed / for our buildings’ / bold magnificence: The north African traveler Ibn Battuta, who visited Shiraz during Abu Es’haq’s reign, remarked on how the city’s ruling families would compete with one another in the splendor of the buildings they erected (a situation very similar to that found in parts of medieval Europe, especially Italy).
We spread our light throughout the world: the poet’s habitual pun on her name, Jahan/world.
pp. 168–9, How would it be, my soul’s love, if you healed
You’ll certainly upset the world: the poet’s habitual pun on her name, Jahan/world.
p. 171, Why is it you neglect me so? Why is it
This poem is addressed to the conqueror of Shiraz and destroyer of the poet’s family, Mobarez al-din (the “Mohammad Ghazi” of line 11). At its opening the poem looks as if it will be a conventional love poem, of a kind that is common in Jahan Khatun’s Divan, complaining to a lover that he won’t visit her, so that the shift to politics and anger, and the revelation of the real addressee as the poem progresses, is all the more effective because initially unexpected.
It’s been suggested that this poem must have been written after the death of Mobarez al-din, (otherwise how could Jahan Khatun have dared to write it, given Mobarez al-din’s known violence?). But the last lines suggest that Mobarez al-din
is still alive and enjoying his power at the time of writing. It may be that the poet had left Shiraz, and was safely beyond her enemy’s reach when the poem was written. The twice repeated pun on Jahan/world in the last stanza makes the poem not only mean “the world has deceived you and will see you are punished,” but also, by implication, “I, Jahan, have deceived you and will see you are punished.”
p. 172, Most people in the world want power and money
A poem that obviously refers to the political turmoil in Shiraz during the poet’s lifetime; it was probably written after her family’s fall from power. Towards its end the poem contains an example of the “swerve” (see note to pp. 74–5) sometimes found in medieval Persian poetry; the “Your,” and the cypress, of the last four lines refer primarily to God rather than to an earthly deliverer, though the ambiguity is likely to be deliberate.
pp. 177–8, I am still drunk that you were here,
musk deer come / from Tartary: See the note to pp. 158–60.
p. 179, I know you think that there are other friends for me than you
You strike me like a harp, play on me like a flute: This line suggests that the addressee is sometimes brusque, or worse, with his beloved (the word translated as “strike” is the usual word for playing a stringed instrument, but it’s also the usual word for hitting someone – how literally this is meant is not clear), and sometimes playful and cajoling; but whichever approach he takes, she accepts his behavior. Jahan is implying: “I put up with every kind of behavior from you, so what’s the evidence that I’m tired of you, as you claim?”
p. 180, How long will heaven’s heartless tyranny
This poem was probably written shortly after the conquest of Shiraz by Mobarez al-din. The “cypress” referred to in lines 7–8 is almost certainly Abu Es’haq, Jahan Khatun’s uncle, and the king whom Mobarez al-din defeated and then had executed.
p. 181, Last night I dreamed I saw with Fortune’s eyes
A poem in which Jahan Khatun remembers her family’s lost power, and her own youth.
p. 182, Here, in the corner of a ruined school
The specificity of this, describing the poet waiting in a “ruined school” while her enemies, who are within earshot (presumably in the next room), decide what is to be done with her, is rare in Persian medieval poetry, and is all the more striking for that reason. Its most likely context is the events that happened in the aftermath of Mobarez al-din’s victory. The extent of the school’s ruins (“More ruined even than my heart”) stands in for the destruction wrought on Shiraz by its rulers’ constant squabbles and warfare (see the note to p. 16).
p. 188, My heart, if you have words you need to say
It is likely that this and the second poem on this page (“What has this life we long for given me? Tell me”) were written after Jahan’s family fell from power.
five times a day: referring to the five designated times each day for Moslem prayer.
p. 189, A picnic at the desert’s edge, with witty friends
I’ll grill his liver with my body’s fiery heat: The image here can at first sight seem a little outré/off-key in English. The comparison of the feelings of someone in love to meat in the process of being grilled is a relatively common trope in Persian poetry. It’s especially apt here for two reasons: 1) the liver is seen as the seat of the affections and of animal vitality (hence “I’ll grill his liver” means, “I’ll drive him crazy with desire”); and 2) the food at a picnic like the one described in the opening lines would certainly include grilled liver, which is still a tasty feature of outdoor meals in Iran. So Jahan Khatun is playing with the two kinds of “liver”; this works without a problem in Persian, but whether it does so or not in English, I leave to the reader to decide.
p. 191, Pity the wretch, forced from her native land
This poem appears to have been written soon after Mobarez al-din killed her uncle, and Jahan’s own life was in danger.
p. 192, Laughing, the rose said to the nightingale one day
The rose said to the nightingale: See the note to p. 8.
p. 193, My enemies’ glib lies are never done
As in the Bible, the story in the Qur’an of Joseph’s being sold into slavery by his brothers includes a detail of the brothers’ telling their father that Joseph had been killed by a wolf.
OBAYD-E ZAKANI
pp. 196–7, I’ve set out from Shiraz, I’ve put
Obayd-e Zakani, who had a reputation for debauchery in a city where debauchery was fairly commonplace, not surprisingly left Shiraz during the reign of Mobarez al-din. This poem describes his reluctant journey from the city he had come to love more than his own hometown.
Like a nightingale…like a rose: See the note to p. 8.
pp. 199–200, The breeze of Mosalla, and Roknabad’s
A poem in praise of Obayd-e Zakani’s adoptive town, Shiraz. For Mosalla and Roknabad, and for Shirin and Farhad (here used as emblematic of a man hopelessly in love with an unapproachable princess), see the note to p. 32. The volte face at the poem’s end, apparently rejecting the pleasures the poem has thus far celebrated, is an example of how Persian medieval poems are quite likely to end in a completely different place from where they seem to have been for most of their course (see also the note to pp. 74–5). This strategy is less common in western poetry but is not unknown (for example, the way that the final couplet in a Shakespeare sonnet can often turn away from or contradict everything that has been said before). In this poem, the turn appears as a compliment, and so it could be addressed to a patron or a lover, someone who by implication concentrates on purer things than mere sensual pleasure.
p. 203, Devil and then angel / I’m off to stroll through the bazaar…
Both the poems on this page demonstrate Obayd’s equal-opportunity lasciviousness, one that is just as interested in girls as in boys. Because most more “serious” poets of the period, like Hafez and Jahan Khatun, are very rarely erotically specific, so that the gender of a partner in one of their poems is usually left unstated, in the original Persian, even by implication (see pp. xxiii–xxiv), Obayd’s poems are useful as examples of how the poetic conventions of the period can be used for talking about both sexes. It doesn’t do to be dogmatic about the gender of a partner in a medieval Persian lyric poem. With a very few exceptions, it’s usually impossible to say categorically that any given poem is about a boy or a girl; as Obayd insists, it might well be about either or both.
p. 207, Where is Shiraz’s wine, that burned our grief away?
A poem presumably written after Mobarez al-din closed the wine-shops, and also clamped down on the use of “pretty boys.”
p. 211, My prick’s a cypress that grows tall and straight
Part of the effect of this poem is that it uses an elegant cliché of lyric poetry, the cypress growing by a stream (see the note to pp. 146–7), in a scabrous, mocking way.
p. 211, Ramadan’s come – the time for passing wine around has gone
Ramadan: See the note to pp. 16–17.
pp. 214–15, The Lesson to be Learned from the End of King Sheikh Abu Es’haq
The poem begins as though it is in the middle of a typical example of a praise poem to a ruler, an extremely common medieval Persian poetic form. However, the tone changes from praise to lament halfway through, and we realize that it is an elegy, rather than simply a praise poem to a living ruler, written in hopes of a monetary reward. The subject of the poem is the overthrow by Mobarez al-din of King Abu Es’haq, the uncle of Jahan Khatun, and the patron of both Hafez and Obayd. Obayd assimilates the praise and lament to a third kind of Persian poem, that of versified advice. As is typical of works by Shirazi poets, the advice in question is to take the fall of kings as negative exempla, admonitions to stay far from courts, renounce ambition, and keep one’s head down.
The names in the first half of the poem are of Persian kings notable for their splendor and power, to whom Abu Es’haq, while he was at the height of his glory, is being c
ompared.
Qobad and Afrasyab: Legendary pre-Islamic kings who figure prominently in the eleventh-century epic The Shahnameh; Qobad ruled Iran while Afrasyab ruled Turan – that is, Central Asia. Obayd is implying that Abu Es’haq ruled both Iran and Central Asia; the fact that in reality he ruled little more than Fars, the province of which Shiraz was the capital, was no hindrance to this kind of hyperbole in court praise poetry.
An Ardavan, a Sanjar: Ardavan was almost the only Parthian king whose name had come down to medieval Iran (the Parthians ruled Iran from the mid-third century BCE to the mid-third century CE); Sanjar (1085–1157) was the most successful ruler of the Seljuk Empire in Iran. Obayd perhaps brackets these two together because they both had the reputation of uniting the whole country.
Khosrow…Anushirvan: These were seen as the most ethically admirable of the kings whose exploits are chronicled in the legendary and historical sections of The Shahnameh, respectively. Anushirvan (the historical Sasanian king Nushin-Ravan, 501–79) was famous for his justice, and he was commonly called Anushirvan the Just. Another name for Anushirvan was Kasra, which is how Hafez refers to him in one of his poems (see the note to pp. 60–61) lamenting the fall of the Inju family. Interestingly, in these two poems, when they are condemning Mobarez al-din, Obayd and Hafez associate the same two pre-Islamic monarchs – Khosrow and Anushirvan/Kasra – with the defeated Inju kings.
that haunt of nightingales…whelping bitches: The court is implicitly compared to the “good place,” the locus amoenus, of pleasure and safety, of which nightingales were usually a constituent part in medieval Persian poetry. A further implication is that Abu Es’haq was known as a patron of poets, including Obayd, and the “nightingales” of the court are his poets. The “black-hearted crow” is Mobarez al-din. Owls traditionally haunt ruins, and are seen as harbingers of death; the topos of animals giving birth in an abandoned palace is a common one in the poetry of the medieval period to indicate degradation and ruin. The dog is an unclean animal in Islamic societies, and the fact that it is dogs that are “whelping” in Abu Es’haq’s palace indicates how low it has fallen.
