Jami,
the lastgreat
poet in classical
Persian, was man of surpassing talents born into the flowering
of culture under the Timurid
rulers at Herat.
Moulana Nuruddin Abdorrahman Jami, to give him his full
name — Jam means wine goblet — was born at a small
town in Khorasan, nowAfghanistan,
in 1414, and died in Herat in 1492. He learned Arabic and
Persian from his father, was further educated in Herat,
but then studied under Ghazi-zadeh Ruhm in Samarqand, returning
to Herat to study philosophy and mathematics. A deeply religious
man, Jami then joined the dervish
circle of Khaja Saaduddin Kashghari.
When the poet — who was a Sunni in a predominantly
Shia community — made the haj
to Mecca in 1472 he was very well known.
Lavish offers were made to him from the courts of the Ottoman
and Timurid rulers, but, against the pattern
of the times, Jami preferred his own quiet search for truth
to honours and luxury under foreign rulers. He wrote many
books of poetry, theology and grammar — 44 to 99, accounts
differ — and at the age of 70 completed his masterpiece:
Yusuf
and Zulaikha. Jami was an independent man with a
good sense of humour, and often annoyed his fellow writers
with sharp comments on their wisdom and humility. Much of
his poetry is still read.
Jami's
poetry
Jami
wrote copiously, and among his prose works
are Nafahatul Uns (Breaths of the Breeze of Friendship),
Beharistan (Abode of Spring) and biographies of Sufi
Saints. Baharistan, which he wrote for his son, is
in the style of Saadi's Rose-Garden. In addition to Saadi,
he modelled himself on Hafez and
Nizami. Best known among the poetry are Haft
Awrang (Seven Thrones of Grace: over 25,000 couplets),
Salaman
and Absal (a version of Leila
and Majnun), Khiradnameh Iskandar (Alexander's
Wisdom) and Yusuf
and Zulaikha. Zuleika,
the daughter of the king of Mauretania, saw repeatedly in
a dream someone of such beauty that she fell in love with
the vision. Finally, the apparition is named as Egypt, the
figure as Yusuf (Joseph), and Zuleika plays the part of
Potiphar's wife.
Persian
poetry
Persian
has a longhistory,
but was eclipsed by Arabic after the conquest, becoming
again the outstanding literary
language of western Asia from the 13th to 15th centuries.
Among the great names
are Firdawsi,
Rumi,
Saadi,
Hafez, Khosrow,
Nizami,
Attar
and Jami. All are different, though apt to sound similar
in translation, given the difficulty in conveying the beauty
of language (on which the poetry depends) without losing
its subtlety of thought. Complex allusions, the diffuse
mystical strain of the imagery and its constant reference
to medieval Islamic thought all make for difficulties. What
may be useful to contemporary poets (who have other themes
and objectives) is the illustration of what is possible
through a highly-polished language, without concession to
'speech of the tribe': the poetry works within a long-established
tradition by further refining a high art form. Firdawsi
(d. c.1220) wrote the Iranian national legend in the 50,000-line-long
masnavi of Shahnama.
Rumi
(d. 1273) was a prolific and multi-faceted writer: his Masviya
ma'navi alone runs to 27,00 lines and incorporates Sufi
thought, ethics, anecdotes and stories. Attar's (d. c. 1220)
Mantiq
al-tayr is an allegory of the soul's path to the
divine. Nizami (d. 1209), a master story teller, assembled
five long romances in a khamsa. Amir
Khosrow of Delhi (d. 1325) and Jamir (d. 1492) both
learned from him. Saadi
of Shiraz (d. 1292) wrote mellifluous ghazals on earthly
and spiritual beauty. Hafez (d.
1390) blended the secular and mystical in ghazals that operated
on many levels of meaning — which influenced Goethe
and western literature.
