Table Of Content

FAKHRADDIN GORGANI TRANSLATED FROM THE PERSIAN WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY DICK DAVIS MAGE PUBLISHERS ALTOONA Google Original from Digitized by PENNS TATE Copyright © 2008 Dick Davis Some sections of this translation have previously appeared in The Hudson Reviewa nd The New Criterion. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any manner whatsoever, except in the form of a review,w ithout the written permission of the publisher. Front and back jacket paintings by Reza Abbasi circa 1630, Sarre Collection, 1910; and Art and History Trust, Houston, Texas. Persian calligraphy by Amir Hossein Tabnak Map by Karen Rasmussen, Archeographics data Library of congtess cataloging-in-publication Fakhr al-Din Gurgani, ft. 1048. [Vis va Ramin. English] Vis & Ramin / Fakhraddin Gorgani ; translated from the Persian with an introduction and notes by Dick Davis. -- 1st hardcover ed. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-933823-17-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) I. Davis, Dick, 1945- II. Title. III. Title: Vis and Ramin. PK645l .F28V5l 3 2008 398.220955--dc22 2007041742 First hardcover edition ISBN 1-933823-17-8 ISBN 13: 978-1-933823-17-l Printed and manufactured in U.S.A. MAGE BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT BOOKSTORES, THROUGH THE INTERNET OR DIRECTLY FROM THE PUBLISHER: MAGE PUBLISHERS, 10J2-29TH STREET NW WASHINGTON, DC 20007 202-342-1642 • [email protected] • 800-962-0922 VISIT MAGE ONLINE AT WWW.MAGE.COM Google Original from Digitized by PENNS TATE CONTENTS ••• INTRODUCTION . . VIII • • • • • • . xiv THE PRONUNCIATION OF NAMES . • • • . xlvi A GEOGRAPHY OF VIS AND RAMIN • • • THE BEGINNING OF THE TALE 1 • • • • • 9 THE BIRTH OF VIS • • • • • • • VIS AND VIRU 17 • • • • • • • • VIS AND MOBAD . 39 • • • • • • • . 123 VIS AND RAMIN . • • • • • • VIS RETURNS TO HER MOTHER . 143 • • • • RAMIN COMES TO VIS IN THE DEVILS, FORTRESS . . 197 MOBAD ENTRUSTS VIS TO THE NURSE . . 245 • • . 299 RAMIN AND GOL • • • • • • • v1s's LETTER TO RAMIN . 325 • • • • • RAMIN RETURNS TO VIS . 363 • • • • • THE END OF THE TALE. . 453 • • • • • NOTES. . 499 • • • • • • • • APPENDIX: COMPARISONS FOR THE BODY . . 515 • -v- Google Original from Digitized by PENNS TATE Google Original from Digitized by PENNS TATE For .tif(cfram Go gle Original from Digitized by PENNS TATE . ; . .- - ,. ·~, . ... . . •. •. . . ., ' ., .. ..,. . ,){, ~.I '.. . . ,• : ::..• • ..1:'. ' -,~ ~'_ ,.,;: .-.., ·. . .".. . .,, . '. ' ' .•.,. , . .., • ,. . .'.. .. . ..,. ,, ' INTRODUCTION vis between 1050 and 1055 by the AND RAMIN WAS WRITTEN Persian poet Fakhraddin Gorgani; it is the first major Persian romance, and one of the most extraordinary and fascinating love narratives produced anywhere in the medieval world, Islamic or Christian. Vis and Ramin is Gorgani,s only surviving long work, and no more than three other short scraps of extant verse are ascribed to him. We know virtually nothing about the poet, apart from what he tells us in the exordium and conclusion to his poem. Remarks by medieval poets about themselves have to be treated with care; many such comments, especially boasts, and complaints likely to elicit sympathy, tend to be drawn from a common stock and to vary little from one poet to another. In general, the less specific self-referential remarks made by medieval poets are, the more unreliable they are. But Gorgani is very specific about two things: his patron,s identity and the circumstances under which his poem was written, and there seems no reason not to take his account at face value. In I 050, the Seljuk sultan Abu Taleb Toghrel • • • Vis & Ramin VIII Google Original from Digitized by PENNS TATE Beg left the city of Isfahan under the control of one 'Amid Abu,l Fath Mozaffar. Gorgani says that he accompanied the new commander to the city, who commissioned the poem from him as an entertainment, during their sojourn there. Other sources confirm that 'Amid Abu'l Fath Mozaffar was the ruler of Isfahan from 1050 to 1055, which gives us the date for the poem,s composition. Gorgani,s name suggests that he, or his family, was from an area to the east of the Caspian, either the town of Gorgan itself, or the surround ing countryside, which was also called Gorgan. The town and its surroundings figure quite prominently in Vis and Ramin (geographically, it is about halfway between the two main areas of the poem's action), and it may be that the tale was thought of as a largely local story in the places where the poet grew up. We know, however, that it enjoyed a wider currency than the merely local, as the Arab poet Abu Nawas mentioned it in the eighth century, three hundred years or so before Gorgani wrote his version. Twice in the course of telling his lovers, story Gorgani refers in general terms to his age, but the two instances seem to contradict one another. At one point he tells us that his own days of romantic involve ments are long over, suggesting that he is at least middle aged, and then at the very end of the poem he asks his friends to pray that God will ''Forgive the youth who wrote this pretty story." All we know for sure about Gorgani is that he wrote his poem in Isfahan at some point between 1050 and 1055, and that he was familiar with the atmosphere and protocol of a local ruler,s court; we can guess that he was probably Introduction ix Google Original from Digitized by PENNS TATE . ." . . ' .' .. .' . . . '9 .;, , ...... ,. .. ,. . ..... .. . '. ., •• +. • • , ,..., . , ... . .' ' ~ from the area to the east of the Caspian known as Gorgan. Occasionally, in the course of Vis and Ramin, he will address his reader or auditor directly, and sometimes when he does this he recommends generosity as a noble course of action; these remarks are probably there as a hint to remind 'Amid Abu'l Fath Mozaffar of his duties as a patron. The eleventh century was a period when a number of Persian authors were interested in writing versions of stories from pre-Islamic Iran. The country had been conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century, and then subsumed into the Arab and Moslem caliphate. Iran had existed as an inde pendent country, and as the ruler of much of Western Asia, for most of the previous millennium, and the conquest was such a shocking reversal of fortune that it took some time for the culture to recover. Persian poetry of the eleventh century shows a strong nostalgia for the stories and civilizations of pre-Islamic Iran, for a time when Persian political and cul tural hegemony in Western Asia was unquestioned, and its rulers could style themselves King of Kings without apol ogy. The most spectacular example of this literary nostalgia is Ferdowsi's great epic, the Shahnameh (completed in 1010 cE), and Gorgani's Vis and Ramin is another instance of it. In some ways Vis and Ramin is an even more interesting exam ple than the Shahnameh;u sually when Ferdowsi comes across a pre- Islamic custom of which Islam disapproves he glosses over it, or, if mention of it is unavoidable, he is shamefaced about it. Gorgani makes no bones about such moments and seems to make no effort whatsoever to trim his tale to suit x Vis & Ramin Google Original from Digitized by PENNS TATE , .:.. ..~ :. , . .•· .,►:: , •• :.,, . . ' ,. + ~ • • • • + .•, .. , ,· ~ •. r '·•' Islamic sensibilities; similarly,a lthough Ferdowsi's diction is relatively conservative, Gorgani's is at times even more so, and his poem is a major source for lexicals urvivals from pre Islamic Persian into the Persian of the post-conquest period. In his poem's introductory material Gorgani implies that he understands ''Pahlavi'' (pre-Islamic Persian) well - we have no way of verifying whether this was true or not - and he will occasionally refer us to the meaning of Pahlavi words or phrases, as when he gives us the etymology of Khorasan (page 139). In a series of cogently argued articles,1 the twentieth-cen tury Russians cholar Vladimir Minorsky drew on geographical, philological, and historical evidence to demonstrate that the story of Gorgani's Vis and Ramin derives from the Parthian period. The Parthians ruled Iran from 247 to 224 so BCE CE, the tale comes from around the beginning of the Christian era, give or take a century or two. The dominant religion of Iran during the period of Parthian rule was Zoroastrianism . • We have then a Parthian/Zoroastrian story that is being retold by an author who has grown up in an Islamic milieu and has at least a nominal allegiancet o Islam. As might be expected, the text is often a kind of cultural palimpsest, with both cultural and religious traditions present; even when one is brought into especial prominence the other usually remains discern ible in the background. Perhaps deliberately,G organi begins 1 VladimiMr inorsky"V, isu RaminA: ParthiaRn omanceB,"u lletino f the Schoool f Orientaal ndA fricanS tudiesV, ol.X I,1 943-46,p p.7 41-763;V ol. XII,1 947-1948p, p.2 0-35;V ol.X VI,1 954,p p.9 1-2; "NewD evelopments," Vol.X XV1, 962,p p.2 75-286. xi I tttroductiOtl Google Original from Digitized by PENNS TATE . . .. . .. .. · and ends his tale by invoking both cultures simultaneously; at the opening of the story he mentions both Korab and Kasra in one image; Korab is a figure from the Qur, an, Kasra from pre-Islamic Persian history; at the end of the tale he imagines the Islamic angel Rezvan looking down on the Zoroastrian temple of Borzin, where Vis,st omb is located. V1s THE Soc1AL WORLD OF AND RAMIN The first thing that strikes any reader of Vis and Ramin is the very peculiar nature of the marriage customs that seem to be in place at the beginning of the poem. These customs are (a nd were in Gorgani,s time) as bizarre to Middle Eastern readers as to Western readers, as they belong not only to the Zoroastri anism of two millennia ago, but also to the marriage customs of the pre-Islamic Persian royal dynasties. Marriages that are now universally regarded as incestuous were relatively com mon among the pre-Islamic dynasties of Iran, and were even seen as especially praiseworthy.2 In the ancient world, royal incest was of course not unique to Iran; it was also common in the Egyptian royal dynasties, and the pharaohs were usually married to their own sisters. The brother-sister marriage that 2 Confirmatioonf the relativec ommonnesins p re-IslamiIcra no f marriages thatw ouldn owb e regardeads incestuouiss providedb yt he Sasanian law book,T heB ooko f a ThousanJdu dgement(sIn troductiotnra, nscription andt ranslatioonf the Pahlavtei xt, notesg lossarayn di ndicesb yA nahit PerikhaniaTnr.a nslatefrdo mR ussiabny NinaG arsorianB.i bliothecPae rsica, CostaM esa,1 997)T. hisc ontainsla wsr elatingto brother-sistemr arriage (p.2 37,s ection1 05,5 -10; p. 281,A 18,7 -12; p. 315,A 36,6 -12),f ather daughtemr arriage(p .3 3,3 , 11-14;p .121,4 4, 13-14;p . 235,1 04,1 2-14) andm other-somn arriage(p .3 3,4 , 1-4). . . \'is & Ramin Google Original from Digitized by PENNS TATE