Dawlatshah Samarqandi

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Dawlatshah Samarqandi
Folio of the Tadhkirat al-shu'ara by Dawlatshah Samarqandi
Folio of the Tadhkirat al-shu'ara by Dawlatshah Samarqandi
Bornc. 1438
Died1495/1507
OccupationPoet, biographer
Notable worksTadhkirat al-shu'ara
RelativesAmir Ala al-Dawla Bukhtishah (father)
Amir Radi al-Din Ali (brother)
Amir Firuzshah (cousin)

Dawlatshah Samarqandi

Transoxania
under Timurid rule.

Life

A member of the elite of the Timurid Empire, Dawlatshah was born in 1438. He was the son of Amir Ala al-Dawla Bukhtishah, who served under the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh (r. 1405–1407).[3] Dawlatshah was the cousin of Amir Firuzshah (died 1444), whose family had received the governorship of Isfahan following the death of the Timurid prince Rustam Mirza in 1423–1425.[4]

Dawlatshah had a brother named Amir Radi al-Din Ali, who served under the Timurid prince

Awfi (died 1242), which Dawlatshah did not know about.[3]

Dawlatshah's death date is uncertain; Haji Khalifa and Ismail Pasha Baghdadi report that he died in 1507, while Mohammad-Ali Borhanpuri puts his death date in 1494.[5]

Tadhkirat al-shu'ara

Contents

The Tadhkirat al-shu'ara of Dawlatshah is written in a fluid Persian prose, has an autobiographical preface, an introduction that discusses ten Arab poets (such as

Labid, died 661, al-Mutanabbi, died 965, and al-Ma'arri, died 1058), seven chapters or stages that are equivalent to the seven celestial spheres, and an epilogue that highly praises seven contemporary litterateurs that Dawlatshah considers to be as great as Abdallah Marvarid (died 1541). In the epilogue, Dawlatshah especially focused on Jami (died 1492) and Ali-Shir Nava'i (died 1501), the latter whom the work was dedicated to. It ends with a lengthy homage to Sultan Husayn Bayqara.[3]

The first four chapters focus on 76 Persian poets that lived before the Timurid era, including figures such as Rudaki (died 940/41), Ferdowsi (died 1019/25), Saadi Shirazi (died 1291/92) and Ubayd Zakani (died 1369–1371). The last three chapters focus on 59 poets of the Timurid era.[3]

In his work, Dawlatshah included sources such as the Chahar maqala of

Tarikh-i Guzida of Hamdallah Mustawfi (died after 1339/40), and the now-lost Manaqib al-shu'ara of Abu Tahir Khatuni (fl. 11th-century), the latter which was the first Persian work of the same type.[3]

Assessment and publications

The book is notable for its inaccurate reports of earlier poets,

Transoxania under Timurid rule (1370–1507).[3] While Dawlatshah focuses more on eastern poets, he also gives information about western cities such as Shiraz and Isfahan.[6]

In the middle of the 16th-century, the Tadhkirat al-shu'ara was translated into

modern Turkish version in four volumes was published by Necati Lugal published in Istanbul. In 1818, a German version was published by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall in Vienna.[5]

An edition of the Tadhkirat al-shu'ara was published by an unknown editor in

Bombay in 1887, another by Edward Granville Browne in Leiden and London in 1901, and by Mohammad Ramazani in Tehran in 1959.[5] The edition published by Edward G. Browne was based mostly on three manuscripts and the Bombay edition, and remains the most commonly distributed version. According to the modern historian Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Browne's edition "lacks a critical apparatus." He adds that this is included in the 2006 edition published by Fatima Alaqa in Tehran, which was based on nine more manuscripts.[3]

According to the Iranologist Abbas Amanat, the book is to an extent a demonstration of the awareness of a shared cultural heritage amongst pre-modern authors, before the conceptualization of the Persianate world as a linguistic and cultural space.[2]

Notes

  1. ^ Also transliterated as Daulatshah[1] and Dowlatshah.[2]
  2. ^ The Iranologist Zabihollah Safa also commented on this; "the earlier the poet, the more frequent are the errors and flaws."[5]

References

  1. ^ Subtelny 2007, p. 66.
  2. ^ a b Amanat 2019, p. 17.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Melvin-Koushki 2017.
  4. ^ Manz 2007, pp. 62, 115.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Safa 1994, pp. 149–150.
  6. ^ Manz 2007, p. 55.

Sources

  • ISBN 978-90-04-38728-7
    .
  • ISBN 978-1-139-46284-6
    .
  • Melvin-Koushki, Matthew (2017). "Dawlatshāh Samarqandī". In Fleet, Kate;
    ISSN 1873-9830
    .
  • ISBN 978-1-56859-020-2
    .
  • Subtelny, Maria (2007). Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran. Brill.
    ISBN 978-90-04-16031-6
    .
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