The Library of Congress African and Middle Eastern Division

The Roshan Institute for Persian Studies University of Maryland

Presents

For additional information contact: Hirad Dinavari (202) 707-4518

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The Wide World of Persian: Connections and Contestations, 1500-Today

Friday, May 2, 2014 9:00AM – 1:00PM Whittall Pavilion

Thomas Jefferson Building 10 First Street, SE Washington, D.C.

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Breakfast

Welcoming Remarks, Dr. Mary-Jane Deeb, Chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division Fatemeh Keshavarz, Director Roshan Institute for Persian Studies Dr. Kevin Schwartz, SSRC Postdoctoral Fellow for Transregional Research

Panel I: Identity and Politics Moderator, Dr. Christopher Murphy, Head of the Near Eastern Section, AMED

“Status and Politics of Persian Language in Afghanistan: A Brief Review” Amin Tarzi, Marine Corps University

“Tajiks and the Persianate World” Muriel Atkin, George Washington University

“Silencing the Unruly: The Lives, Legends, and Verses of Early Persian Women Poets” Wazhmah Osman, Temple University

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

Coffee Break

11:30$a.m.$–$1:00$p.m.$$ Panel II: Language and Linguistics Moderator, Mr. Hirad Dinavari, Iranian World Reference Specialist, AMED

“Cheraghkoshan across Time and Space, from Bulgaria to India” Willem Floor, Independent Scholar

“Standard, National and Colloquial Varieties of Persian” Corey Miller, University of Maryland

“Persian as Lingua Franca: From Bosphorus to Bay of Bengal” Pardis Minuchehr, George Washington University

This conference is made possible by a Social Science Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship for Transregional Research with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Library of Congress African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED)

The Roshan Institute for Persian Studies University of Maryland

The Wide World of Persian: Connections and Contestations, 1500-Today

Saturday, May 3, 2014 9:30AM – 4:00PM Van Munching Hall

University of Maryland College Park, M.D.

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Breakfast

Welcoming Remarks

Panel III: Interchange and Exchange

“The Learned Ideal of the Mughal Waz�r: The Life and Intellectual World of Prime Minister Afzal Khan Shirazi (d. 1639)” Rajeev Kinra, Northwestern University

“The Language of Heaven in Safavid Iran and Mughal India: Persian and Cosmology in the Thought of Āẕar Kayv�n and his Followers” Daniel Sheffield, Princeton University

“India as a Refuge: Anti-Arab Writing in Persian in India” Ruzbeh Jamshidi, University of Maryland

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

Lunch

1:00$–$2:30$p.m.$$ Panel IV: Style and Script

“Script United? The Persianate Sphere and nastaʿliq Calligraphy around 1600” Simon Rettig, Freer|Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution

“Poetry as Politics, Worship, and Education: The Cosmopolitan World of Sa‘di of Shiraz” Fatemeh Keshavarz, University of Maryland

“Trans-regionalism and Mannerism: Some Notes on Sabk-i Hindi, its Post-Rationalized Contestations and the Persona of the Beloved” Alireza Korangy, University of Virginia

This conference is made possible by a Social Science Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship for Transregional Research with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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Coffee Break

Closing Roundtable: Persianate Studies in Academic Disciplines

Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, University of Maryland (Iranian Studies) Ahmet Karamustafa, University of Maryland (Islamic Studies) Rajeev Kinra, Northwestern University (South Asian Studies)

The Roshan Institute for Persian Studies University of Maryland The Library of Congress

African and Middle Eastern Division

The Wide World of Persian: Connections and Contestations, 1500-Today

Panels and Abstracts

Panel I

Identity and Politics Date and Time Friday May 2, 2014 9:30am-11:00am Location Whittall Pavilion Jefferson Building Library of Congress 10 First Street, SE Washington, DC Presenter: Amin Tarzi, Marine Corps University Title: “Status and Politics of Persian Language in Afghanistan: A Brief Review”

Abstract The formation of Afghanistan as a distinct political entity in 1747 divided some of the more important Persian speaking heartlands between two distinct and competing national entities—Iran and Afghanistan. These lands had formed parts of several empires dominated by Persian language and culture beginning with the Achaemenids in sixth to fourth centuries B.C. to Nadir Shah Afshar’s reign. Additionally, in the aftermath, the territories of Khurasan and Sistan found themselves straddling a new physical as well as ideological border. Persian—officially referred to as Dari in Afghanistan since 1964—has retained the status of lingua franca until today; however, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the Afghan authorities began to question its status, and gradually, Persian language became considered almost a foreign language. This paper traces the journey of the Persian language in Afghanistan. The story begins in 1747, as revealed through the Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi, the first history of the newly formed entity. This paper then continues to briefly explore insights provided through Afghanistan’s master narrative formulated in writing in the early twentieth century through the monumental Siraj al-tawarikh and discusses the reasons for Afghanistan’s Persian dilemma. Persian language emerges again in Afghanistan’s linguistic politics in that country’s constitutional movement of the early twentieth century and in debates on the status of official languages in Afghanistan’s constitutions and politics from 1930s to present. The paper concludes with a discussion on the current debate on Afghanistan’s linguistic politics, highlighting the linguistic disconnect and distrust between that country and Iran.

Presenter: Muriel Atkin, George Washington University

Title: “Tajiks and the Persianate World”

Abstract Perceptions of the cultural and ethnic identity of Central Asia’s Persian-speakers changed dramatically over the course of the past century. At the start of the twentieth century, few indigenous Central Asians defined themselves in ethnic terms. Moreover, Persian was a language of government, literature, and learning not only for native speakers but also for many of the Turkic inhabitants of the settled areas of Mawara an-Nahr. Educated people, whether Persian-speaking or Turkic, were likely to think of this entire region as their land, rather than in terms of an ethnically-defined portion of the whole. Ordinary Persian-speakers were more likely to identify with the particular locale in which they lived. Profound changes came to the region largely as a result of policies introduced from outside by the Soviet Union. National identity became politically salient. National languages were formally defined and regulated, with the effect, in the case of Persian, of emphasizing dialects which differentiated Tajiki from Persian as spoken elsewhere. History and the cultural heritage were similarly regulated, while European and Soviet history and culture and the Russian language were favored over those of Central Asia. Some educated Soviet Tajiks worked carefully within the constraints of the system to promote a positive perception of the Persian cultural heritage. In the late-Soviet and post-Soviet periods, nationality politics became increasingly important, including for the Tajiks, although loyalties defined according to locale and political faction also mattered. A new emphasis on Persian-Tajik culture became both a political tool and a means of self-assertion. Links to Persian-speakers in Iran and Afghanistan became increasingly attractive to both Tajikistan’s neo-Soviet government and the opposition, although often for quite different reasons. The Islamic Republican regime in Iran appeared both potentially useful and an unacceptable system to various groups of Tajiks across the political spectrum.

Presenter: Wazhmah Osman, Temple University

Title: “Silencing the Unruly: The Lives, Legends, and Verses of Early Persian Women Poets”

Abstract While the canon of classical Persian poets has been long established by the likes of Ferdowsi, Rumi, Sa‘di, and Hafiz, the historical role of women Persian poets in the pre-modern and early modern Persianate world been less defined. In this presentation I will explore the role and influence of three lesser-known women poets and their connective experiences across space and time. The three poetesses under consideration are: the iconic figure of Râbi‘ah Balkhî (early tenth century), the daughter of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, Zîb al-Nissâ (d. 1701), and the enigmatic figure of Bî Dilî (dates unknown). While their male contemporaries have been ubiquitously translated and have garnered a global following, why have these female poets not yet received their equal due? I argue that this is not mere oversight but a systematic silencing by powerful institutions that span centuries. These poetesses rocked the bedrock of their own

societies with their verse, and unabashedly and heroically challenged cultural, religious, and political norms and codes. These women’s words are fierce, lusty, and rebellious. We find them to be as provocative today as they were in their time. Of the aristocracy, these women were subjected to imprisonment and even death for challenging the rule of their brothers and fathers with their verses. Their life stories, marked by defiance to tradition and the fact that they met tragic consequences, have further elevated their mythic stature and have made them beloved figures of legend. In a post-9/11 world, where classic stereotypes of women under Islam have gained new currency and women from the Persian-speaking region have often become synonymous with oppression, repression, and victimhood the verses of these women poets provide a counter narrative to mainstream media misrepresentations. Their poetry and life experiences offer a more accurate glimpse into the contestations and socio-political movements that shaped and continue to shape the Persianate world.

Panel II

Language and Linguistics

Date and Time Friday May 2, 2014 11:30am-1:00pm Location Whittall Pavilion Jefferson Building Library of Congress 10 First Street, SE Washington, DC Presenter: Pardis Minuchehr, George Washington University

Title: “Persian as Lingua Franca: From Bosphorus to the Bay of Bengal”

Abstract For over ten centuries, Modern Persian language became the lingua franca of a vast region, extending from the Eastern parts of China into the Balkans. This presentation examines the origins as well as the evolution of the Persian language throughout its wide expanse in history, and at the same time it highlights cultural and linguistic aspects of a poly-centric language, which developed major cultural centers such as Herat, Tus, Bukhara, Samarkand, Shiraz and Lahore. Presenter: Willem Floor, Independent Scholar Title: “Cheraghkoshan across Time and Space, from Bulgaria to India”

Abstract To get a larger market share, religious organizations, like companies, produce propaganda for their products and hope that by establishing (better) brand name recognition that more believers start adhering to their brand of religion. This kind of propaganda is not always of a positive nature, for it is quite normal that religious organizations negatively stereotype and besmirch rival organizations, in particular those that are considered break-away heretic groups. These are generally considered to more be dangerous to their market share than adherents from different religions and, therefore, generally are the target of more vehement attacks. To facilitate the denunciation of heretics, use is made of labels as well as sound bites, as we call them nowadays in the case of politicians. One interesting label that has remained in persistent use in the Persianate world until today is that of cheragh-kosh. It is unknown when this type of negative

religious label was first launched, although it seems that the term was not used before at least 1500. In this note I discuss the diffusion of this term and what its possible origin may be.

Presenter: Corey Miller, University of Maryland

Title: “Standard, National and Colloquial Varieties of Persian”

Abstract This presentation will explore the notions of “standard” in the Persian language. This notion is complicated both by the existence of three national varieties (in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan) and by the presence within each of manifold differences between written/formal and spoken/colloquial Persian. We will explore the concept of a supranational variety of Persian, as well as the evolution of standards within the Tajik, Afghan and Iranian varieties; in addition to recent claims of narrowing distinctions between Afghan and Iranian Persian. In each national case, we will examine the role of the dialect of the capital city (Dushanbe, Kabul and Tehran) in the formation of a standard or national variety. In the Iranian context, we will explore differences between the Tehrani dialect and what might be termed a “national colloquial variety.”

Panel III

Interchange and Exchange

Date and Time Saturday May 3, 2014 10:00am-11:30am Location Van Munching Hall Room 1505 University of Maryland College Park, MD

Presenter: Rajeev Kinra, Northwestern University

Title: “The Learned Ideal of the Mughal Wazīr: The Life and Intellectual World of Prime Minister Afzal Khan Shirazi (d. 1639)”

Abstract This paper examines the life and career of Mirza Shukr Allah Shirazi (d. 1639), better known by his Mughal title “Afzal Khan,” who served as prime minister for nearly a decade under Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658), the celebrated builder of the Taj Mahal. Born into a family already highly regarded as “specialists of the pen and accounts” (arbāb-i qalam wa ahl-i siyāq), as one source put it, Afzal Khan made an early name for himself as an administrative savant, diplomat, and linguist in various courts of Central and West Asia during the last decades of the sixteenth century. He thus already had quite a reputation as a man of learning and eloquence before coming to India in the early seventeenth century, where he eventually rose to the upper echelons of Mughal imperial power. Afzal Khan’s career is thus quite interesting simply as an illustration of the kind of cosmopolitan mobility that was possible in early modern South, Central, and West Asia. But as we examine his career in greater detail, we see too the degree to which certain specific learned ideals contributed greatly to Afzal Khan’s success. Contemporaries often referred to him as ‘Allāmī, or “the learned,” Afzal Khan, and regularly hailed him as a second Plato or Aristotle. Others were especially impressed by the Khan’s deep humility, literary panache, and mystical sensibility. On the surface, these qualities may seem at odds with the military and political demands of exercising worldly power. But, as I hope to show, they were actually integral to the ideals of ministerial conduct, ethics, and good governance in early modern India, as well as the larger Persianate world.

Presenter: Daniel Sheffield, Princeton University

Title: “The Language of Heaven in Safavid Iran and Mughal India: Persian and Cosmology in the Thought of Āẕar Kayvān and his Followers”

Abstract Known primarily through his association with the most important primary source on the religions of the early modern Persianate world, the Dabistān-i Maẕāhib (completed 1068 AH/1658 CE), and through the popularity his works enjoyed among nineteenth-century Iranian nationalists, the man who called himself Āẕar Kayvān (b. 942/1533, d. 1027/1618) continues to elude us. In this presentation, I situate Āẕar Kayvān’s linguistic thought within the religious landscape of the first Safavid century, examining in particular his connections with contemporary Nuqṭavism. Kayvān and his followers held that with the coming of the lunar millennium, the period of the Arabo-Islamic rule was at its end and a new millennium of Persian-Zoroastrian dispensation was beginning. Rejecting formal adherence to Islam, Kayvān promulgated an idiosyncratic neo-Zoroastrian identity which he referred to as the kīsh-i ābādī. Kayvān and his followers adopted archaic Persian names and constructed genealogies for themselves stretching into Iran's pre-Islamic past. Yet despite their Persocentrism, Kayvān and his followers also believed each of the religions of the world were translations of the same fundamental truth, and therefore, the ancient prophets of world’s religious traditions were simply translations of one another. This belief stems from Āẕar Kayvān’s notion of the celestial language (zabān-i āsmānī), the original language of mankind. Kayvān held that this celestial language contained the seeds of all the languages of the peoples of the world. I argue that this belief in the underlying unity of the world’s religions engendered a form of religious practice in which Āẕarī disciples were to treat members of different religious communities equally (ṣulḥ bā hama), a practice which seems to have been a direct antecedent for the Mughal Emperor Akbar’s doctrine of ṣulḥ-i kull (Universal Civility), as well as later forms of Persianate pluralist thought.

Presenter: Ruzbeh Jamshidi, University of Maryland

Title: “India as a Refuge: Anti-Arab writing in Persian in India”

Abstract In this talk I will draw on the material I’ve collected for my dissertation which deals with anti-Arab representation in modern Persian literature. I will focus on how in the seventeenth century certain Persian intelligentsia migrated to India to use that country’s relative freedom to promote anti-Arab representation. I will examine the so-called Dasātiri movement, which is considered a neo-Zoroastrian movement in India. I will begin with the Zoroastrians’ situation in Iran during this time and then, through several case studies, demonstrate how certain Dasātiri writers have promoted anti-Arab representation in Persian in India. I argue that the Dasātiri anti-Arab writing found in India has impacted modern Iranian writers too. I end with Ākhundzādeh (d. 1878), showing how he had drawn on the Dasātiri texts to conceptualize his critique of Persian culture in general.

Panel IV

Style and Script Date and Time Saturday May 3, 2014 1:00pm-2:30pm Location Van Munching Hall Room 1505 University of Maryland College Park, MD

Presenter: Alireza Korangy, University of Virginia

Title: “Trans-regionalism and Mannerism: Some Notes on Sabk-i Hindi, its Post-Rationalized Contestations and the Persona of the Beloved”

Abstract Persian literature has witnessed shifts in mannerism that—albeit considered post!rationalized—define the intricacies of an inter-correspondence between socio-political milieus and poetic expressions. These mannerisms (sabk), put into perspective and highlight the minutiae of language that are reflective of the emotive intelligence wielded through poetic expressions in the Persian!speaking world and even Iran today. This study aims to bring into purview one of the most dynamic—and dogmatic—literary shifts as concerns mannerism that came about in the mid-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century: the Indian Style ‘Sabk‐i Hindī.’ It addresses changes that occur in one of the most enigmatic components of Persian verse, the beloved, at a time when the Safavid dynasty had, in line with its fervor for pious—though often folly—self-acknowledgment, a designed front against poetic expressions especially when concerning the long!standing traditions of the panegyric qaṣīda. In line with that opposition, and in accord with the rhetorical connection between the qaṣida and the ghazal, the ghazal suffered as well. As the ghazal and its amorous longing for an enigmatic and mysterious beloved did not serve the Shi’ite-embedded social paradigm, which the Safavids had in mind, the ghazal found its inspiration in another realm. Many of the most erudite poets migrated to the Indian sub!continent where under the patronage of the Mughals they were able to do what they did best which was to experience with poetry, be compensated, and become well known for those abilities. These are known facts. However, by looking at their poetic production, it becomes clear that while most of these poets saw this move as a change in their general modus vivendi, they were also significantly morphing the image and the role of the beloved as contrasted with what had served as their notion of the historical precedence [of the beloved] for centuries, and so was changed a great component of their poetic modus operandi—somewhat as a matter of course. Although some of the finest poems were produced in this period, the contestations that followed are worth much investigation as to their objectivity and their xenophobic determinants a la caveat emptor, not only questioning the

Indian Style’s notion of the beloved but also the very kernel of the Indian Style’s linguistic and rhetorical repertoire.

Presenter: Simon Rettig, Freer|Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution Title: “Script United? The Persianate Sphere and nastaʿliq Calligraphy around 1600”

Abstract Since its alleged “invention” around 1400 by Mīr ʿAlī Tabrīzī in Iran, the nastaʿliq script emerged as a style that has been widely, if not solely, used to transcribe almost all texts written in Persian – from belletristic copies to historical treatises to even interlinear translation in Qur’ans – in a vast geographic area that extends from Turkey to India. After the late fifteenth century, the success and visual appeal of nastaʿliq meant that it was also used for inscriptions on objects and buildings. As a result, it also became visible in the public sphere, but did these developments serve as testimony to nastaʿliq’s acceptance as an equal to the traditional codified scripts (aqlam al-sitte)? The present paper considers the idea of nastaʿliq script as the “visual embodiment of the Persian language”. This issue will be questioned not only by analyzing sixteenth-century calligraphic examples but also by examining celebrated contemporaneous treatises composed in different locales of the Persianate sphere: Qāḍī Aḥmad Qummi’s Golestān-e honar (c. 1595), Muṣtafa ʿĀli’s Menaqeb-e Hünerverān (c. 1587), and to a lesser extent the entry on calligraphy in Abū’l-Faḍl’s A'īn-e Akbarī (c. 1595). Certainly the primacy of nastaʿliq amongst the visual arts of the post-Timurid dynasties (Safavid, Uzbek, Ottoman, and Mughal) coupled with the prestige earned by its practitioners has long been acknowledged. Little is known, however, about how contemporaries perceived the values and merits of nastaʿliq and how the script had a fundamental albeit varying impact on the aesthetics of the early modern Persianate “regimes of visuality”.

Presenter: Fatemeh Keshavarz, University of Maryland

Title: “Poetry as Politics, Worship, and Education: The Cosmopolitan World of Sa‘di of Shiraz”!

Abstract Poetry is the most significant cultural product of the Pre-modern Muslim Middle East. Classical Arabic, Persian, and Turkish poetry were far more than a fine artifact. They played a diverse role in the ways in which the society expressed, educated, and reimagined itself. None of these processes were completely religious or secular. They bridged the most mundane human engagements with loving and worshiping the Divine. In this talk, I will explore the ways in which the Persian master poet Sa’di of Shiraz (b. 1210) used his poetry to provide the society with political agency, ethical guidance, and spiritual richness.

Roundtable

Persianate Studies in Academic Disciplines Date and Time Saturday May 3, 2014 3:00pm-4:00pm Location Van Munching Hall Room 1505 University of Maryland College Park, MD

Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, University of Maryland (Iranian Studies) Ahmet Karamustafa, University of Maryland (Islamic Studies) Rajeev Kinra, Northwestern University (South Asian Studies)