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The Poetry of Shāh Ismā'īl I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

MY interest in Shāh Ismā'īl's poetry was aroused thirty-six years ago, when from my Ahl-i Ḥaqq friends I learnt that the Khāṭu'ī mentioned in one of their hymns was no lessa person than the founder of the Ṣafavi dynasty: Khatā'ī-dä nāṭiq oldï, Türkistanïn pīri oldï “(Godhead) came to speech in the person of Khatā'ī, (who) became the pīr of the Turks (of Āzarbāyjān)”, according to the explanation given to me.

For some time I suspected the Ahl-i Ḥaqq doctrines to be identical with the arcana of the Safavids, but later came to the conclusion that the home of the former was in Kurdistan, in the region of Sulaymānī, and that only by a kind of alliance were they related to the Ṣafavi propaganda.

It was only in 1920, in Paris, that I could carefully study a copy of Khatā'ī's dīvān (Bibliothéque Nationale, sup. turc 1307). This time my attention was attracted by the autobiographical hintsof the crowned poet and by the dialectic peculiarities of his Turkish poems. I read a paper on Shāh Ismā'īl's poems before the Sociètè Asiatique (9th December, 1921), and started on the preparation of a selection from Khatā'ī's dīvān. My work was several times interrupted.

Type
Papers Contributed
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1942

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References

page 1006a note 1 See my Matèriaux pour servir a lètuds … es Ahl-i Ḥ aqq (in Russian), Moscow, 1911, pp. 80, 108110Google Scholar; also my Notes mr Us Ahlè-Haqq, Paris, 1922, p. 21, and my article “Khatā'ī”in Enc. of IslāmGoogle Scholar.

page 1007a note 1 Browne, E. G., A Hist, of Pers. Lit. in Modern Times, 1924, p. 12Google Scholar.

page 1007a note 2 See the Dīvān edited by P., Horn, Berlin, 1904Google Scholar(most beautifully printed but not very successfully decorated), and Horn, P., “Der Dichter Sultān Selīm I,” ZDMO., lx, 1906, pp. 97111Google Scholar. Horn does not go beyond saying that Selīm is “a complete master of the poetical technique”.

page 1007a note 3 The specimens occurring in the Silsilat al-nasab have been studied by Kasravi in his Ādharī, 1304/1926. Miller, B. sought to prove the connection of this dialect with TalishīGoogle Scholar; see K voprosu ob ynzïke iiasdeniya Azerbayiana, in Ucherïya Zapiski, I, 199228Google Scholar.

page 1008a note 1 See Nuzhat al-qulūb, 77: “In Tabriz most of the inhabitants are Sunnis of the Shāfi'ite sect.”

page 1008a note 2 The admixture of Chaghatay forms in Ismā'ī's poetry would indicate that he did not feel any one definite dialect as his own, but this admixture must have a purely literary origin (influence of Chaghatay dīvāns).

page 1008a note 3 I discuss the role of the Turcoman tribes under the Safavids in my book, A Manual of Safavid Administration (now being printed).

page 1008a note 4 Tuḥfa-yi Sāmī (957/1550), Tehran, 1314/1935, pp. 69. ’Alī-Quli Vālih, in his Riyāḍ al-shu'arā (1169/1756), speaks of a Turkish, and a Persian divan by Khaṭā’';. He quotes in Persian three verses and an inscription on Ismā'īl's signet-ring; see MSS. 57, f. 167v, and 230, f. 171, of the R.A.S. Bengal. I owe this reference to my friend, Bogdanov-Dugin, L. F. (Calcutta). The legend of the signet-ring is: buvad mihr-i 'Aliyy-o āl-i u chun jān marā dar bar\\ghulām -i shāh -i mardānast Ismā'īl bin ḤnydarGoogle Scholar.

page 1008a note 5 Cf. my article “Khaṭā'ī” in El.

page 1010a note 1 In this chapter the signs č, š, x are used for ch, sh, kh. Abbreviations: AT.- Āzarbāyjān Turkish; WT.-Western (Ottoman) Turkish; Deny, Deny-J., Grammaire de la langue turque, Paris, 1922Google Scholar.

page 1011a note 1 By analogy we may presume that such is also the case of the initial guttural stop g(k).

page 1012a note 1 See Rossi, E., Atti del XIX° Congresso dei Orientalisti, p. 207. In his MS. Sketch of Turkish, della VaUe, without any doubt, describes the dialect spoken at the court of Shāh 'Abbās IGoogle Scholar.

page 1014a note 1 This perfect (ia-üp) is still in use in AT, but in this dialect the 1 p. is not used.

page 1020a note 1 See Minorsky, , “Natsionalnīya stihotvoreniya Eminbeya,” in Drevnosti uostochnïya, II/3 and III/l, Moscow, 1903Google Scholar.Emin-bey's, M.Türkche-shi'irler was published in Stambul in 1316/1899Google Scholar.

page 1025a note 1 Hinz, Aufstieg, 16–19, 76–7, speaks briefly of the organization of the ṣafavi order, but admits that the data of his sources are very meagre (“sehr spärlich”).The more important is Khatā'ī s dīvān with its mass of authentic facts.

page 1025a note 2 In L and TZ the dīvān begins with a poem praising God for having created 'Ali.

page 1026a note 1 However, 14r, ‘Ali is called only “the shining moon of the Sun-Muḥammad”.

page 1027a note 1Ālam-ārā,489: “the fighters raised the shout Allāh-Allāh, which is the distinctive rallying cry (shi'ār) of the Qizil-bash.”

page 1028a note 1 And even in the Qor'ān, ; see Torrey, , The commercial-theological terms in the Koran. A dissertation, Leyden, 1892Google Scholar.

page 1029a note 1 Except in the final mathnavi (81r–83v).

page 1029a note 2 Cf. Qor'ān, xxxi, 26Google Scholar.