Abstract
There is an episode in the Iqbāl-nāmah, the first part of Iskandar-nāmah, that raises the question of the role of music and musicians in Nizami’s poetry. In the section entitled “Plato’s Music Making,” the philosophers of Alexander’s court are vying for superiority, and the competition intensifies between Aristotle and Plato. Plato becomes so indignant at Aristotle’s claim to superiority over all the other philosophers that he leaves the court in search of the music of the universe. In doing so he invents the organun (arghanon) with which he is able to make other beings, human or animal, sleepy or alert, or induce whatever mood in them that he desires. When Aristotle hears of Plato’s invention he strives to match his creativeness, and although he is able to induce sleep in his subjects, he is unable to wake them up. Aristotle feels humiliated. He confesses his own shortcomings, apologizes to Plato for his arrogance, and seeks his guidance on the science of music.2 In this episode Nizami demonstrates the supernatural potency of music and its superiority to logic—a quality that might be extended to include Nizami’s own art, that is, poetry, since it, too, is often characterized as appealing to the emotions rather than to reason.
The inspiration for this chapter came when I was attending one of the weekly sessions reading Nizami at Prof. K. Allin Luther’s house in 1994 in Ann Arbor.
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Notes
Nizami Ganjavī, Iskandar-Nameh, ed. V. Dastgirdī (Tehran, 1954), 85–92. J. E. Bügel discusses this story as well in chapter 6 of the present work. C.f. p. 129 [editors].
Nizami Ganjavī, Khusraw va Shīrīn, ed. Bihraz Sarvatyiān (Tehran, 1987), 339–344.
Ibid., 585–617.
Fakhr al-Dīn As’ad Gurgānī, Vās u Rāmīn, ed. Muhammad Ja’far Maḥjub (Tehran, 1959), 220.
V. Minorsky in his article on Vīs u Rāmīn has shown that this eleventh-century poem is of Parthian origins. See V. Minorsky, “Vīs u Rāmīn: A Parthian Romance,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1946, XI,4, 745.
Mary Boyce, “The Parthian Gosān and Iranian Minstrel Tradition,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, XVIII (1957), 10–45.
Jerome W. Clinton has a brief survey of the tradition of court poetry in Iran in the first chapter of his book, The Dīvān of Manūchihrī Dāmghānī: A Critical Study (Minneapolis, 1972), pp. 1–21.
Boyce, op. cit., 17–18.
Ibid., 20.
Ibid., 27.
Clinton, op. cit., 1–21.
On the iconographical evidences of Sassanid court, see Klaus-Peter Koch, “Persia,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1995), 550.
In Tarjumah-i chand matn-e pahlavī, trans. Malik al-Shu’ārā’ Bahār, ed. Muhammad Gulbun (Tehran, 1968), 98–104.
Abd al-Malik b. Muhammad Tha’ālibi, Shāhnāmah’ kuhan: parsī-I tarīkh-i ghurar al-siyar, trans. Muḥammad Ruḥani (Mashhad, 1994), 395.
For a partial list of sources that mention Barbad, see E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, vol. I (London, 1909), 14–15. A more exhaustive list is to be found in A. Tafazzolī, “Barbad,” Encyclopedia Iranica, ed. E. Yārshāṭ er, vol. III (New York), 757–58.
Ibid., 17–18.
Ibid.
Ibn Khurdādhbih, Kitāb al-lahw wa al-malāhī, ed. I. A. Khalifa (Beirīt, 1964), and see the following note.
For published selections from Ibn Khurdādhbih’s treatise, see “Mukhtār min kitāb al-lahw wa al-malāhī,” Al-Mashriq, vol. 54, no. 2 (Summer 1960), 134–67. For his citation of Barbad’s song, see p. 139.
Ibid., 138.
Tha’ālibi, op. cit., 392.
Ibī Muḥammad Ἁbdullah b. Muslim b. Qutayba al-Dīnavarī, Kitāb ’uyīn alakhbār (Qāhira, 1925), vol. I, 98.
Abī Uthman Ἁmr b. Baḥr al-Jāḥiz, Kitāb al-ḥayawān, ed. Abd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārun (Qāhirah, 1945), vol. I, part IV, 113.
Muhammad b. Ἁbd Rabbih, Al-’iqd al-farīd, ed. A. Amīn, A. Zayn, and I. Al-Abiyārī (Qāhira, 1956), vol. II, 182.
Abī al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-aghanā (Qāhira, 1932), vol. V, 280–81.
Ibn al-Faqīh al-Hamadhānī, Kitāb al-buldān, ed. M. J. De Goeje (Leiden, 1967), 2nd ed., 158–59.
Tha’ālibi, op. cit., 388–89.
Browne, op. cit., 17–18. For the original Arabic version see M. Murād ibn Ἁbdu al-Raḥmān, Āthar al-bilād wa akhbār al-’ibād (Tehrān, 1994), ed. Sayyid M. Shāhmuradī, 88.
Browne also mentions this story on pp. 16–17 of his book, but I draw attention to it, because it is relevant to the ultimate conclusions of my paper about poet-musicians in Persian literature. For the story, refer to Nizami Ἁrūzī Samarqandī, Chahār maqālah, corrected by Allameh M. Qazvīnī, ed. M. Mo’in (Tehran, 1996), 49–54.
Abu’l-Qāsem Firdawsī, The Shāhnāmeh, ed. Jalāl Khāleql-Moṭlaq, 6 vols. (Costa Mesa, 1987), vol. II, 4–12.
Ibid., 6.
Abu al-Qāsīm Firdowsī Ṭūsī, Shāhnāmeh, ed. by Ye. E. Bertel’s et al., 9 vol. (Moscow, 1960–1971), vol. IX, 226–29.
Tha’ālibi, op. cit., 388–89.
Tha’ālibi, op. cit., 389.
See A. Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sassanides (Copenhague, 1936), 478–79.
See Hamdullah Mustawfī Qazvīnī, Tārikh-e guzidah, ed. A. Navā’ī (Tehran, 1960), 123.
See Dīvān-e manuchehrī dāmghanā, ed. Muḥammad Dabār Sāyaqā (Tehran, 1977), 4th ed. These songs can be found (in the order I have mentioned) on the following pages: 186–87, 88, 186, 34, and 87; 19 and 72, 19 and 69, and 87, 4, 32 and 113, 87, 88 and 127, 1, 209.
See also H. Mallāh’s Manūcherī dāmghanī va mūsīqī (Tehran, 1984), 83, and Manūcherī’s Dīvān, 18 and 159.
See Muḥammad Ḥ usayn ibn Khalaf Tabrīzī famous as Burhān, Burhān-e qāṭi’, ed. M. Mo’īn (Tehran, 1963), vol. II, 2nd ed. 1207–8, here I have to mention that I have some misgivings about the enumeration of these “Thirty Songs.” Because there are discrepancies between the editions of Sarvatyiā;n and V. Dastgirdī’s edition of Khusraw va Shīrīn (Tehrān, 1954). For the most part, these are not major differences, but there is one variant that affects the total number of the songs. Dastgirdī’s reading of the sixth and seventh song is: chu nāghūsī va avrangī zadī sāz / shudā avrang chun nāghūs az āvaz (p. 191). This reading makes naghūsī and avrangī two separate songs, while Sarvatyiān’s reading is more ambiguous: chu nāghūsī bar avrang āmadī bāz/ shudī avrang chun nāghūs az āvāz (p. 340). Sarvatyiān’s reading connects the two words of nāghūs and avrang in a way that makes it difficult to read them as denoting two separate songs, thus making Nizami’s “Thirty Songs” into twenty-nine songs. Sarvatyiān himself also alludes to this discrepancy (see pp. 893–94) but finds the fault with the reading of songs in other lines.
Theorists like Ibn Sina have generally divided the music after the advent of Islam into twelve primary modes or maqāms: rāhawī, husaynī, rāst, būsalīk, zankūla, ’ushaq, hijāzī ’iraq, isfahan, navā, buzurk, mukhālif. All of these names can still be found in modern Persian art music, but how much they differ from or resemble the original modes unfortunately is unknown to us. H. Farhat and S. Blum in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1995), vol. IX, 292–300; for this quotation, see p. 292.
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© 2000 Kamran Talattof and Jerome W. Clinton
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Khazrai, F. (2000). Music in Khusraw Va Shirin. 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_9
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