Messianic Oeuvres in Interaction: Misattributed Poems by Shah Esmāʿil and Nesimi

This paper discusses the philological, literary and cultural-historical background of 23 poems that can be found in manuscript copies of the respective divān of both Nesimi (d. 1407), the most prominent poet of the Horufi tradition, and Shah Esmāʿil, the founder of the Safavid state (r. 1501-24) who was also known for his popular Turkic poetry with a heavily messianic veneer. One possible reason for this textually detectable confluence and intermixture might be the partially oral, ritual, homiletic context with fluid notions of authorship in which these poems were performed, but there was also a broader socio-religious context of interaction between various popular messianic traditions of the day, the Horufis, the Bektashis, the Safavids and others.