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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2020
The tadhkira (biographical anthology) represents one of the most prolific and prevalent categories of texts produced in Islamicate societies, yet few studies have sought to understand the larger processes that governed their production and circulation on a transregional basis. This article examines and maps the production, circulation, and citation networks of tadhkiras of Persian poets in the 18th and 19th centuries. It understands tadhkiras of Persian poets as a transregional library that served as a repository of accessible and circulating texts meant to be incorporated, reworked, and repackaged by a cadre of authors separated by space and time. By relying on a macroanalytical approach, quantifiable data, and digital mapping, this article highlights the overall construction of the transregional library itself, the impact of state disintegration and formation on its constitution, and the different ways authors on opposite ends of the Persianate world came to view this library by the end of the 19th century.
1 For example, see Losensky, Paul E., Welcoming Fighani: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the Safavid-Mughal Ghazal (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 1998)Google Scholar; Kia, Mana, “Imagining Iran before Nationalism: Geocultural Meanings of Land in Azar's Atashkadeh,” in Rethinking Iranian Nationalism and Modernity, eds. Kamran Scot Aghaie and Afshin Marashi (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 89–112Google Scholar; Kevin L. Schwartz, “Bazgasht-i Adabi (Literary Return) and Persianate Literary Culture in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Iran, India, and Afghanistan” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2014); Beers, Theodore S., “The Biography of Vahshi Bafqi (d. 991/1583) and the Tazkera Tradition,” Journal of Persianate Studies 8, no. 2 (2015): 195–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kinra, Rajeev, Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural Persian State Secretary (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pellò, Stefano, “Persian Poets on the Streets: The Lore of Indo-Persian Poetic Circles in Late Mughal India,” in Telling and Texts: Music, Literature, and Performance in North India, eds. Orsini, Francesca and Schofield, Katherine Butler (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015), 303–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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3 Ibid., 28.
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5 While “West Asia” may be a less politicized and more apt term to describe early modern tadhkira production in an area that includes contemporary Iran, I have opted to use “Iran” in this article as a way to best highlight the different modes and features of tadhkira production there vis-a-vis South Asia.
6 Maʿani, Ahmad Gulchin-i, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha-yi Farsi, 2 vols. (Tehran: Intisharat-i Kitabkhanih-yi Sanaʾi, 1984–85)Google Scholar; Naqavi, Sayyid ʿAlirida, Tazkirih-Navisi dar Hind va Pakistan (Tehran: ʿAli Akbar ʿIlmi, 1964)Google Scholar; Storey, C. A., Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey, vol. 1, part 2 (London: Luzac & Company, 1972)Google Scholar; Rieu, Charles, Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols. with suppl. (London: British Museum, 1879–95)Google Scholar; Ivanow, Wladimir, Concise Descriptive Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the Collection of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1926)Google Scholar.
7 A list of the 144 tadhkiras (Appendix 1) as well as other appendices and resources related to this article, including copies of digital maps, can be viewed in the supplementary material section.
8 On networks connecting the Mughal court and society in the 17th and 18th centuries, see, respectively: Lefevre, Corrine, “The Court of ʿAbd-ur-Rahim Khan-i Khanan as a Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions,” in Culture and Circulation: Literature in Motion in Early Modern India, eds. de Bruijn, Thomas and Busch, Allison (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 75–106Google Scholar; and Keshavmurthy, Prashant, “Bidel's Portrait: Asceticism and Autobiography,” Philological Encounters 1 (2015): 8.Google Scholar
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11 al-Din, Muhammad Qiyam “Qaʾim” Chandpuri, Tazkirih-yi Makhzan-i Nikat, ed. Hasan, Iqtida (Lahore: Majlis-i Tarraqi-yi Adab, 1966), 201Google Scholar.
12 For Safinih-yi Bikhabar, see Gulchin-i Maʿani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 1, 708–9. For Tazkirih-yi Husayni, see introduction to Tazkirih-yi Husayni quoted in Naqavi, Tazkirih-Navisi, 318.
13 Mushafi, Shaykh Ghulam, ʿAqd-i Surayya: bih Khatt-i az Mawlavi Khastih, ed. Pakfar, Muhammad Sarvar (Kabul: Majjalih-yi Khurasan, 1983–84), 3Google Scholar. On Qatil's life and intellectual activity, see Pellò, Stefano, “A Linguistic Conversion: Mirza Muhammad Hasan Qatil and the Varieties of Persian (ca. 1790),” in Borders: Itineraries on the Edges of Iran, ed. Pellò, Stefano (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari Digital Publishing, 2016), 203–40Google Scholar.
14 Naqavi, Tazkirih-Navisi, 495–96.
15 Ibid., 470.
16 Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, “Urdu and Persian at Allahabad,” September 2007, http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00fwp/srf/txt_allahabad.html. The relationship between the flowering of literary activity and the breakdown of an imperial state is one that others have observed in the course of Islamic history. See Muhanna, Elias, The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 16–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Sarkhush, Muhammad Afzal, Kalimat al-Shuʿaraʾ, ed. Lakhnawi, M. H. Mahvi (Madras: 1951)Google Scholar. Cited in Pellò, “Persian Poets on the Streets,” 306 (his translation).
18 Gulchin-i Maʿani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 1, 194; vol. 2, 266.
19 See introduction to Tuhfat al-Shuʿaraʾ quoted in Naqavi, Tazkirih-Navisi, 379.
20 Muhan Laʿl “Anis”, Anis al-Ahibba’ (Berlin: Staatsbiliothek zu Berlin-Preußischer Kulturbesitz), 5, accessed 26 November 2018, http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB0001DD2700000000.
21 See Naqavi, Tazkirih-Navisi, 500–11.
22 Sultan Muhammad Bahadur Khan Safavi also wrote his own tadhkira entitled Tuhfat al-Shuʿaraʾ (Lucknow, 1801–02). See Gulchin-i Maʿani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 1, 160–67.
23 Riyad al-Shuʿaraʾ was one of the most cited tadhkiras during the 18th and 19th centuries. See appendices 2 and 3 in the supplementary materials section.
24 On the growing importance of Urdu poetic networks and master-student relationships during this time, see Faruqi, Shamsur Rahman, “A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture, Part 1: Naming and Placing a Literary Culture,” in Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, ed. Pollock, Sheldon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 850Google Scholar.
25 For Urdu tadhkiras in the 18th century see Dhavan, Purnima and Pauwels, Heidi, “Controversies Surrounding the Reception of Vali ‘Dakhani’ (1665?–1707?) in Early Tazkirahs of Urdu Poets,” JRAS Series 3, 25, no. 4 (2015), 625–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For literary and linguistic transitions in shahr-āshūb, see Sharma, Sunil, “The City of Beauties in Indo-Persian Poetic Landscape,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, no. 2 (2004): 73–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Dhavan and Pauwels, “Controversies,” 629.
27 Ibid., 625.
28 For a longer discussion on the inaccuracy and problems of the decline narrative of Persian in South Asia see the section “South Asian Stagnation” in chapter 1 of Kevin L. Schwartz, Remapping Persian Literary History, 1700–1900, forthcoming.
29 For example, see Minault, Gail, “Delhi College and Urdu,” Annual of Urdu Studies 14 (1999), 119–34Google Scholar; Stark, Ulrike, “Politics, Public Issues and the Promotion of Urdu Literature: Avadh Akhbar, the First Urdu Daily in Northern India,” Annual of Urdu Studies 18 (2003), 66–94Google Scholar; and Hakala, Walter, Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and the Definition of Modern South Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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32 Pritchett, Frances, “A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture, Part 2: Histories, Performances, and Masters,” in Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, ed. Pollock, Sheldon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 881Google Scholar.
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36 For tadhkira production at Arcot, see Schwartz, “Curious Case,” 545–49.
37 See The Last Mushaʿirah of Delhi: A Translation into English of Farhatullah Baig's Modern Urdu Classic, Delhi ki Akhri Shama‘, by Farhatullah Bayg, trans. Akhtar Qamber (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1979), 15; and Madhu Trivedi, The Making of Awadh Culture (Delhi: Primus Books, 2010), 91.
38 Muhammad Aslam Syed, “How Could Urdu be the Envy of Persian (rashk-i Farsi)! The Role of Persian in South Asian Culture and Literature,” in Literacy in the Persian World, Spooner and Hanaway, 299.
39 Naqavi, Tazkirih-Navisi, 562.
40 Ibid., 522–23.
41 Ibid., 559.
42 Mir Sayyid Muhammad, Bustan-i Sukhan, Salar Jung Museum Manuscript Collection, Hyderabad, India, Ar. m 103.
43 Gulchin-i Maʿani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 2, 406–7.
44 Moazzam, “Urdu Insha,” 312.
45 See Amanat, Abbas, “Legend, Legitimacy and Making a National Narrative in the Historiography of Qajar Iran (1785–1925),” in A History of Persian Literature, vol. 10, Persian Historiography, ed. Melville, Charles (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 292–366Google Scholar.
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47 See Gulchin-i Maʿani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 1, 687–94.
48 Abe, Naofumi, “The Politics of Poetics in Early Qajar Iran: Writing Royal-Commissioned Tazkeras at Fath ʿAli Shah's Court,” Journal of Persianate Studies 10, no. 2 (2017): 144, 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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50 Ibid., vol. 1, 225–38.
51 Ibid., vol. 2, 105–9.
52 Ibid., vol. 1. 83–85.
53 Ibid., vol. 2, 393–401. Dunbuli was equally invested in the project of Qajar history writing. See Amanat, “Legend, Legitimacy,” 299–303.
54 For how local elites in Qajar Iran articulated regional identities in geographical writings, see Gustafson, James M., “Geographical Literature in the Nineteenth-Century Iran: Regional Identities and the Construction of Space,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 59, no. 5 (2016): 793–827CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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56 See Gulchin-i Maʿani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 2, 392–93.
57 The texts composed by Mahmud Mirza's brothers were Bazm-i Khaqan by Sayf al-Dawla Sultan Muhammad bin Fath ʿAli Shah in 1829–30 (see Gulchin-i Maʿani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 1, 93–100); Tazkirih-yi Khusravi by Muhammad Quli Mirza bin Fath ʿAli Shah “Khusravi,” ca. 1834 (see Gulchin-i Maʿani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 1, 221–22); and Tazkirih-yi Khavar by Haydar Quli Mirza bin Fath ʿAli Shah “Khavar” during the last quarter of the 19th century (see Gulchin-i Maʿani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 1, 219–20).
58 Yahya Ahmadi Kirmani, Tarikh-i Yahya: Salshumar-i Tarikh-i Iran va-Jihan az Khilqat-i ʻAlam ta Sal-i 1336 Hijri Qamari, ed. Shams al-Din Najmi (Kirman: Danishgah-i Shahid Bahunar-i Kirman, 2007), 311. Many thanks to James Gustafson for helping me track down Hulaku Mirza's whereabouts during this time.
59 See Gulchin-i Maʿani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 1, 482–512.
60 Edgar Blochet, Catalogue des Manuscrits Persans de la Bibliothèque Nationale, vol. 2 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1912), 332.
61 Introduction to Kharabat quoted in Gulchin-i Maʿani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 1, 483–84; introduction to Mastabih-yi Kharab quoted in Blochet, Catalogue des Manuscrits Persans, 332.
62 For Makhzan al-durar, see Gulchin-i Ma‘ani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 2, 173–76. For Tuhfat al-Shuʿaraʾ, see Gulchin-i Ma‘ani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 1, 168.
63 Gulchin-i Ma‘ani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 1, 742–44.
64 Ibid., vol. 1, 439–57.
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70 Ibid., 132.
71 See al-Qadi, Wadad, “Biographical Dictionaries as the Scholars’ Alternative History of Muslim Community,” in Organizing Knowledge: Encyclopaedic Activity in the Pre-Eighteenth Century Islamic World, eds. Endress, Gerhard and Filali-Ansrary, Abdou (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 47–59Google Scholar.
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76 Ibid., 65.
77 For a full list and comparison of the texts cited by each tadhkira see Appendix 4 in the supplementary material section.
78 See Amanat, “Legend, Legitimacy.”
79 Khan, Muhammad Siddiq Hasan, Shamʿ-i Anjuman (Bhopal: Matbaʿ-i Shahjahani, 1875), 15Google Scholar.
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81 Ibid., 160–61.
82 Ibid., 161.
83 On the effect of print technology on Persian in North India, which at once attracted new readership for Persian materials but also gradually narrowed the type of material being read, see Shah, Zahra, “Sustaining Authority in Persian Lithographer Books: Publishers and Printing in North India, c. 1835–57,” South Asian Studies 33, no. 2 (2017): 137–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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85 Introduction to Ruz-i Rawshan quoted in Gulchin-i Maʿani, Tarikh-i Tazkirih-ha, vol. 1, 640–41.
Schwartz supplementary material
