Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order

456 Pages·2012·4.11 MB·English

by  Brian Spooner

literacy
in the
persianate world
Penn Museum International Research Conferences
Holly Pittman, Series Editor, Conference Publications
Volume 4: Proceedings of “Comparative Diplomatics:
Historical and Cultural Implications,”
Philadelphia, October 5–8, 2006
PMIRC volumes
1. Landscapes of Movement: Trails, Paths, and Roads in
Anthropological Perspective, edited by James E. Snead,
Clark L. Erickson, and J. Andrew Darling, 2009
2. Mapping Mongolia: Situating Mongolia in the World from
Geologic Time to the Present, edited by Paula L.W. Sabloff, 2011
3. Sustainable Lifeways: Cultural Persistence in an
Ever-changing Environment, edited by Naomi F. Miller,
Katherine M. Moore, and Kathleen Ryan, 2011
literacy
in the
persianate
world
writing and the social order
edited by
Brian Spooner and William L. Hanaway
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Philadelphia
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Literacy in the Persianate world : writing and the social order / edited by Brian Spooner
and William L. Hanaway.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-934536-45-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-934536-45-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Persian language—History. 2. Persian language—Written Persian—History. 3. Writ-
ing—Iran—History. 4. Literacy—Iran—History. 5. Iran—Intellectual life. 6. Iran—
Social life and customs. I. Spooner, Brian. II. Hanaway, William L., 1929–
PK6225.L57 2012
491’.5509—dc23
2011041955
Endpaper illustration by Kimberly Leaman.
© 2012 by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Philadelphia, PA
All rights reserved. Published 2012
Published for the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
contents
Foreword vii
Preface ix
Contributors xv
Note on Transliteration and Referencing xvii
Introduction: Persian as Koine: Written Persian in
World-historical Perspective 1
Brian Spooner and William L. Hanaway
Part One: Foundations
1 New Persian: Expansion, Standardization, and Inclusivity 70
John R. Perry
2 Secretaries, Poets, and the Literary Language 95
William L. Hanaway
3 The Transmission of Persian Texts Compared to the Case of
Classical Latin 143
A.H. Morton
Part Two: Spread
4 Persian as a Lingua Franca in the Mongol Empire 160
David Morgan
5 Ottoman Turkish: Written Language and Scribal Practice,
13th to 20th Centuries 171
Linda T. Darling
6 Persian Rhetoric in the Safavid Context: A 16th Century
Nurbakhshiyya Treatise on Inshā 196
Colin P. Mitchell
vi Contents
Part Three: Vernacularization and Nationalism
7 Historiography in the Sadduzai Era: Language and Narration 234
Senzil Nawid
8 How Could Urdu Be the Envy of Persian (rashk-i-Fārsi)!
The Role of Persian in South Asian Culture and Literature 279
Muhammad Aslam Syed
9 Urdu Inshā: The Hyderābād Experiment, 1860–1948 311
Anwar Moazzam
10 Teaching Persian as an Imperial Language in India and in England
during the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries 328
Michael H. Fisher
Part Four: The Larger Context
11 The Latinate Tradition as a Point of Reference 360
Joseph Farrell
12 Persian Scribes (munshi) and Chinese Literati (ru).
The Power and Prestige of Fine Writing (adab/wenzhang) 388
Victor H. Mair
Afterword 415
Glossary 418
Index 424
penn Museum international
research conferences
Foreword
For more than a century, a core mission of the University of Pennsylva-
nia Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has been to foster re-
search that leads to new understandings about human culture. For much of
the 20th century, this research took the form of worldwide expeditions that
brought back both raw data and artifacts whose analysis continues to shed
light on early complex societies of the New and Old worlds. The civiliza-
tions of pharonic Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, Greece, Rome, Mexico, Peru,
and Native Americans have been represented in galleries that display only
the most remarkable of Penn Museum’s vast holding of artifacts. These
collections have long provided primary evidence of many distinct research
programs engaging scholars from around the world.
As we moved into a new century, indeed a new millennium, Penn
Museum sought to reinvigorate its commitment to research focused on
questions of human societies. In 2005, working with then Williams Director
Richard M. Leventhal, Michael J. Kowalski, Chairman of the Board of Over-
seers of Penn Museum, gave a generous gift to the Museum to seed a new
program of high level conferences designed to engage themes central to
the museum’s core research mission. According to Leventhal’s vision, gen-
erating new knowledge and frameworks for understanding requires more
than raw data and collections. More than ever, it depends on collaboration
among communities of scholars investigating problems using distinct lines
viii Foreword
of evidence and different modes of analysis. Recognizing the importance
of collaborative and multidisciplinary endeavors in the social sciences, Penn
Museum used the gift to launch a program of International Research Con-
ferences that each brought together ten to fifteen scholars who had reached
a critical point in the consideration of a shared problem.
During the three years until the spring of 2008, it was my privilege to
identify, develop, run, and now oversee the publication of eight such confer-
ences. The dozen or so papers for each conference were submitted to all
participants one month in advance of the meeting. The fact that the papers
were circulated beforehand meant that no time was lost introducing new
material to the group. Rather, after each paper was briefly summarized by
its author, an intense and extended critique followed that allowed for sus-
tained consideration of the contribution that both the data and the argu-
ment made to the larger questions. The discussions of individual papers
were followed by a day discussing crosscutting issues and concluded with
an overarching synthesis of ideas.
“Comparative Diplomatics: Historical and Cultural Implications” was
the second conference in the series, held in the fall of 2006. It is the fourth of
the conferences to see publication. As Series Editor, I look forward to four
more volumes that will appear will appear over the next few years. The pub-
lication of the results of these conferences allows the new knowledge and
understanding that they achieved to be shared broadly and to contribute to
the uniquely human enterprise of self understanding.
Holly Pittman
Series Editor
Deputy Director for Academic Programs, Penn Museum, 2005–2008
Curator, Near East Section
Professor, History of Art
Bok Family Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania
preface
Brian Spooner and William L. Hanaway
the revolution that culminated with the departure of the Shāh in 1979
changed the way we think of Iran. During the 1980s a large Iranian di-
aspora established communities in key cities in America, Europe, and Asia.
Some began to question whether modern Iran remains the same country as
the Persia we knew from the past. Should we think of it more in terms of
the relationship between modern and ancient Greece? The subject matter
of Persian Studies was also changing, and appeared less secure in the West-
ern curriculum. It was in this environment that the idea for this book began
to develop.
In the 1980s the new Iran redefined its relationship with the past in ways
that raised questions about the history of Persian civilization and the histor-
ical nature of Iranian identity. A number of Iranian intellectuals as well as
Western Iranists began to engage these questions. Are we still on the same
historical trajectory that began with the prophet Zoroaster and Cyrus the
Great in the middle of the 1st millennium BC? Is there a continuous line of
development in civilization and identity from the foundational monotheism
of Zoroaster and the administration of the Achaemenian Empire (550–330
BC) through the courts of the Sasanian Shāhs supported by their landed
aristocracy and gentry (AD 224–651), their cultural successors under the
Caliphate in the Samanid amirates (AD 819–999) and the later sultanates
of Central Asia, to the conscious regeneration of an explicitly Iranian Shia
identity by the Safavids in the 16th century, which was continued through
the Zands, Qajars, and Pahlavis and regenerated by Khomeini? What would