Pub Date : 2023-04-27DOI: 10.1163/18747167-bja10032
Nicolas J. Preud’homme
A highly interesting memoir about Iran, written by Jean-François-Xavier Rousseau (1738–1808), an agent of the French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes orientales) in Basra, apparently unpublished and unknown until now, covers the political situation of the late Zand period of the 1770s in an effort to promote French trade in the Persian Gulf. This text, entitled Situation actuelle du royaume de Perse (The Current Situation of the Kingdom of Persia), is a valuable document that sheds light on the French commercial strategy towards Iran and testifies to the social contacts between European merchants, diplomats, local rulers, and the Zand court in the eighteenth century.
法国东印度公司(Compagnie des Indes orientales)在巴士拉的代理人让-弗朗索瓦·泽维尔·卢梭(Jean-François Xavier Rousseau,1738-1808)写了一本关于伊朗的非常有趣的回忆录,该回忆录显然未出版,至今不为人知,涵盖了17世纪70年代赞德后期的政治局势,以促进法国在波斯湾的贸易。这篇题为《波斯王国的现状》的文章是一份有价值的文件,揭示了法国对伊朗的商业战略,证明了18世纪欧洲商人、外交官、地方统治者和赞德王朝之间的社会交往。
{"title":"A French Manuscript on Trade and Diplomacy in Iran during the Zand Era","authors":"Nicolas J. Preud’homme","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10032","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000A highly interesting memoir about Iran, written by Jean-François-Xavier Rousseau (1738–1808), an agent of the French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes orientales) in Basra, apparently unpublished and unknown until now, covers the political situation of the late Zand period of the 1770s in an effort to promote French trade in the Persian Gulf. This text, entitled Situation actuelle du royaume de Perse (The Current Situation of the Kingdom of Persia), is a valuable document that sheds light on the French commercial strategy towards Iran and testifies to the social contacts between European merchants, diplomats, local rulers, and the Zand court in the eighteenth century.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44090060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-27DOI: 10.1163/18747167-bja10031
Alexander Jabbari
Mohammad-Taqi Bahār’s 1942 textbook Sabkshenāsi (“Stylistics”) was a landmark text in modern Persian literary studies. It coined terms (like sabk-e Hendi or the “Indian style” of Persian poetry) and laid out a tripartite, geographical-temporal model for the history of Persian poetry which largely remain dominant today. Bahār’s articulation of a national canon of Iranian literature (comprising writings in various stages of the Persian language as well as Arabic) made Sabkshenāsi an important text not only for the nascent department of Persian literature at the University of Tehran for which it was written, but for twentieth-century Iranian nationalism in general. By combining traditional forms of knowledge with the methodologies pioneered by European Orientalists, it played an important role in modernizing Persian literary studies. The influential introduction to Sabkshenāsi is translated here into English in full for the first time, along with a preface explaining the work’s importance for Persian literary studies.
{"title":"The Introduction to Mohammad-Taqi Bahār’s Sabkshenāsi: A Translation","authors":"Alexander Jabbari","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10031","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Mohammad-Taqi Bahār’s 1942 textbook Sabkshenāsi (“Stylistics”) was a landmark text in modern Persian literary studies. It coined terms (like sabk-e Hendi or the “Indian style” of Persian poetry) and laid out a tripartite, geographical-temporal model for the history of Persian poetry which largely remain dominant today. Bahār’s articulation of a national canon of Iranian literature (comprising writings in various stages of the Persian language as well as Arabic) made Sabkshenāsi an important text not only for the nascent department of Persian literature at the University of Tehran for which it was written, but for twentieth-century Iranian nationalism in general. By combining traditional forms of knowledge with the methodologies pioneered by European Orientalists, it played an important role in modernizing Persian literary studies. The influential introduction to Sabkshenāsi is translated here into English in full for the first time, along with a preface explaining the work’s importance for Persian literary studies.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43057558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-27DOI: 10.1163/18747167-bja10030
Stanisław Adam Jaśkowski
The relations between the Islamic empires of the early modern period—the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals—have long been the subject of research, as have been the links between each of them and Europe. The present paper adopts a different approach, addressing the relations between them and Central and Eastern Europe as part of a single geopolitical continuum. This is done by focusing on the events of the late 1630s—the Safavid-Mughal conflict over Kandahar and the Ottoman-Safavid Treaty of Zohāb (1639)—and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s interest in them, as well as how these issues are reflected in the sources, including Polish intelligence reports and Safavid and Mughal chronicles. Such an examination shows not only the scope of interest of various state actors in global affairs, but also offers us a glimpse into the intertwined political relations of early modern Eurasia.
{"title":"The Safavids and “Candechar, King of the Indies”: Polish-Lithuanian Intelligence on Safavid-Mughal Relations","authors":"Stanisław Adam Jaśkowski","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10030","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The relations between the Islamic empires of the early modern period—the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals—have long been the subject of research, as have been the links between each of them and Europe. The present paper adopts a different approach, addressing the relations between them and Central and Eastern Europe as part of a single geopolitical continuum. This is done by focusing on the events of the late 1630s—the Safavid-Mughal conflict over Kandahar and the Ottoman-Safavid Treaty of Zohāb (1639)—and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s interest in them, as well as how these issues are reflected in the sources, including Polish intelligence reports and Safavid and Mughal chronicles. Such an examination shows not only the scope of interest of various state actors in global affairs, but also offers us a glimpse into the intertwined political relations of early modern Eurasia.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43763972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1163/18747167-bja10029
Jane Mikkelson
{"title":"Franklin D. Lewis (1961–2022)","authors":"Jane Mikkelson","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10029","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44013528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-26DOI: 10.1163/18747167-bja10007
Alyssa Gabbay
This article explores the Shāh-nāma’s recounting of the tragic myth of Prince Siyāvash and analyzes the implications of Siyāvash’s supranational ethical sense in an epic often closely associated with proto-nationalism and a concrete sense of Iranian identity. It proposes that Ferdowsi’s depiction of Siyāvash’s evolving sense of identity—one that contains elements of what we would associate today with supranationalism (or cosmopolitanism) and hybridity—creates a subtext that promotes ideals running counter to the proto-nationalist tendencies outwardly espoused by the epic. This subtext helped facilitate the long-held view of Siyāvash as a figure of great spiritual import whose plight has larger resonance than that merely of nation and homeland. The supranational aspects of the story likewise make it highly relevant for today, when exile, refugees, and the question of nationalism versus supranationalism abound in both literary and political discourse.
{"title":"“The Earth My Throne, The Heavens My Crown”: Siyāvash as Supranational Hero in Ferdowsi’s Shāh-nāma","authors":"Alyssa Gabbay","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article explores the Shāh-nāma’s recounting of the tragic myth of Prince Siyāvash and analyzes the implications of Siyāvash’s supranational ethical sense in an epic often closely associated with proto-nationalism and a concrete sense of Iranian identity. It proposes that Ferdowsi’s depiction of Siyāvash’s evolving sense of identity—one that contains elements of what we would associate today with supranationalism (or cosmopolitanism) and hybridity—creates a subtext that promotes ideals running counter to the proto-nationalist tendencies outwardly espoused by the epic. This subtext helped facilitate the long-held view of Siyāvash as a figure of great spiritual import whose plight has larger resonance than that merely of nation and homeland. The supranational aspects of the story likewise make it highly relevant for today, when exile, refugees, and the question of nationalism versus supranationalism abound in both literary and political discourse.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43562978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-22DOI: 10.1163/18747167-bja10027
Sabaheta Gačanin
Numerous Bosnian intellectuals during the centuries of Ottoman rule were authors of works in the Persian language. Mostly, they produced poems and divāns (poetic anthologies) under the strong influence of the Persian literary canon. After a brief and introductory overview of the Persian literary canon, its origins, and its presence in the Ottoman realms, this article presents selections of verses (mostly translated into English for the first time) of selected poets, while contextualizing their work within Ottoman Bosnia. In addition, this study surveys Persian works in manuscript collections in the libraries of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It can clearly be seen that the Persian cultural ādāb (literature) of the past has continued to reverberate intellectually and culturally even today in Bosnia and its environs.
{"title":"The Persian Literary Tradition in Ottoman Bosnia and Its Environs","authors":"Sabaheta Gačanin","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10027","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Numerous Bosnian intellectuals during the centuries of Ottoman rule were authors of works in the Persian language. Mostly, they produced poems and divāns (poetic anthologies) under the strong influence of the Persian literary canon. After a brief and introductory overview of the Persian literary canon, its origins, and its presence in the Ottoman realms, this article presents selections of verses (mostly translated into English for the first time) of selected poets, while contextualizing their work within Ottoman Bosnia. In addition, this study surveys Persian works in manuscript collections in the libraries of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It can clearly be seen that the Persian cultural ādāb (literature) of the past has continued to reverberate intellectually and culturally even today in Bosnia and its environs.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":"346 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41281291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.1163/18747167-bja10026
Roxane Haag-Higuchi
{"title":"Bert G. Fragner (1941–2021)","authors":"Roxane Haag-Higuchi","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10026","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48658122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-04DOI: 10.1163/18747167-bja10024
Pushkar Sohoni
Bilingual inscriptions in Marathi and Persian are known through the period of the Deccan sultanates. This paper investigates whether the inscriptional programs, usually with Persian as the dominant language, can provide greater cultural context and meaning to processes such as translation and multilingualism in the period. Bi- and multi-lingual inscriptions are intended usually for public display and demonstrate the relative prestige and power of languages and cultures. The corpus of Persian and Marathi bilingual inscriptions will be analyzed to examine whether they are actually translations that achieve equivalence of content or whether localized texts were created to address the needs of the audiences in different languages, perhaps as “idiomatic bilinguals.”
{"title":"Cultural Translation and Linguistic Equivalence: Persian–Marathi Bilingual Inscriptions","authors":"Pushkar Sohoni","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10024","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Bilingual inscriptions in Marathi and Persian are known through the period of the Deccan sultanates. This paper investigates whether the inscriptional programs, usually with Persian as the dominant language, can provide greater cultural context and meaning to processes such as translation and multilingualism in the period. Bi- and multi-lingual inscriptions are intended usually for public display and demonstrate the relative prestige and power of languages and cultures. The corpus of Persian and Marathi bilingual inscriptions will be analyzed to examine whether they are actually translations that achieve equivalence of content or whether localized texts were created to address the needs of the audiences in different languages, perhaps as “idiomatic bilinguals.”","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45949322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-04DOI: 10.1163/18747167-bja10025
M. Ranganathan
While the study of the history of print culture in India is still at an early stage, languages moribund in India, like Persian, have been all but ignored in this narrative. Persian newspapers of the nineteenth century, especially from its first half, played an important role in the development of the Indian public sphere. To a certain extent, they continued in the vein of the pre-British akhbārs, while on the other hand, they took on gradually the character of a modern newspaper. Bombay (Mumbai), for historical and geographical reasons, emerged as a center of Persian language activity during this period and its rapidly burgeoning printing infrastructure facilitated the development of Persian, as a language for books and newspapers. Using a range of contemporary government records and newspapers, an attempt is made here to reconstruct the history of these early Persian newspapers. Over a dozen Persian newspapers are identified, most of them for the first time; a preliminary attempt is made to understand the impact of these newspapers and the motivations of their Parsi, Hindu, and Muslim editors.
{"title":"Retrieving Lost Texts: Early Persian Newspapers of Bombay","authors":"M. Ranganathan","doi":"10.1163/18747167-bja10025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-bja10025","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000While the study of the history of print culture in India is still at an early stage, languages moribund in India, like Persian, have been all but ignored in this narrative. Persian newspapers of the nineteenth century, especially from its first half, played an important role in the development of the Indian public sphere. To a certain extent, they continued in the vein of the pre-British akhbārs, while on the other hand, they took on gradually the character of a modern newspaper. Bombay (Mumbai), for historical and geographical reasons, emerged as a center of Persian language activity during this period and its rapidly burgeoning printing infrastructure facilitated the development of Persian, as a language for books and newspapers. Using a range of contemporary government records and newspapers, an attempt is made here to reconstruct the history of these early Persian newspapers. Over a dozen Persian newspapers are identified, most of them for the first time; a preliminary attempt is made to understand the impact of these newspapers and the motivations of their Parsi, Hindu, and Muslim editors.","PeriodicalId":41983,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Persianate Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48399206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}