Abstract
It is an undisputed fact that Nizami and his fellow Western Iranian poets of the twelfth century made extensive use of vocabulary and images derived from contemporary knowledge about the exact sciences.1 Nizami himself repeatedly declares his overwhelming interest in science, as in the following verse where he tells us that happy slumber eludes him if he has not first forced open the door of a new science:
na-khoftam shabī shād bar bastarī/ke nagushādam ān shab ze-dānesh
darī
(SN 7,88)2
I don’t fall asleep—happy—at night on my bed, have I not [first] that night opened one of science’s doors.
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Notes
J. E. Bencheikkh, Poétique arabe, Paris, 1975, p. ii.
L. P. Ellwell-Sutton, The Persian Metres, Cambridge, London, New York, Melbourne, 1976, p. vii.
J. E. Bencheikkh, op. cit., p. 83.
See, for example D. Urvoy, Les Penseurs libres dans l’Islam classique, Paris, 1995, pp. 163–65.
As shown by J. S. Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry, Princeton, 1987, p. 158.
Ibnn Al-Ἁwam, Ketāb al-Felāha, Le Livre de l’Agriculture, trans. J. J. Clement-Mullet, 3 vols., Paris, 1864–67, vol. 2, pp. 253–54 (my English translation after the French translation of Clement-Mullet).
See, for example, HP 4, 26–32. In this passage, however, Nizami apparently names Bokhārī and Tabarā as two of his sources, though opinions diverge on this point. See J. S. Meisami, Nizami. Haft Paykar. A medieval Persian Romance, Oxford, 1995, note 4:28, p. 276.
C. van Ruymbeke, op. cit., pp. 164–75.
J. S. Meisami, op. cit., p. 217, translates this difficult verse: “To say nought of the drinker’s sweet, the pomegranate; for those breasts with pomegranates filled the house.”
See, for example, C. van Ruymbeke, “Le vin. Interdiction et licence dans la poésie persane,” in Acta Orientalia Belgica, Bruxelles and Leuven, 1997, pp. 173–86. See also D. S. Feins, recent doctoral thesis on wine-drinking in Islam, presented in Edinburgh, 1997. My heartiest thanks to Professor R. Hillenbrand for making me aware of this reference.
See C. van Ruymbeke, op. cit., p. 113.
See C.-H. de Fouchécour, La description de la nature dans la poésie lyrique persane du XIè siècle. Inventaire et analyse des thèmes, Paris, 1969, pp. 60–61.
See, for example, J. S. Meisami, op. cit., chapter V.
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© 2000 Kamran Talattof and Jerome W. Clinton
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van Ruymbeke, C. (2000). Nizami’s Poetry Versus Scientific Knowledge: The Case of the Pomegranate. In: Talattof, K., Clinton, J.W. (eds) The Poetry of Nizami Ganjavi: Knowledge, Love, and Rhetoric. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09836-8_8
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