Shah Ismāᶜīl’s Dīvān: SourcesFootnote ⁷

As Persian came to dominate the language of the state bureaucracy, the language of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry presented a reminder of the dynasty’s hard-scrabble past.Footnote ⁸ Known as Turkmen or Qizilbashī to distinguish it from Ottoman or Rumī Turkish, the dialect of Ismāᶜīl’s poetry was literarily synonymous with the Safavids’ tribal vanguard.Footnote ⁹ In modern times linguists classify this dialect as Azeri, a branch of Western Turkish in contradistinction to Eastern or Chaghatay Turkish. We know that early generations of the Safavid family spoke and composed in Persian and related Kurdish dialects. In time these other-worldly dervishes, known for their contemplative retreats and communal feasts, seemed to abandon Persian in favor of the language spoken by the ruling castes of Anatolia and Western Iran, reflecting their political alliances with the Turkmen dynasties.Footnote ¹⁰ It was not exceptional for an upwardly mobile potentate like Ismāᶜῑl to turn to Turkish as a literary language, like many of his contemporaries including mortal enemies of the Safavids such as such as the Aqqoyunlu Sultan Yaᶜqūb (d. 1490) and the Uzbek Shaybānī Khān (d. 1510). Sovereign authors of the Turkish language from this period also included the founder of the Mughal dynasty, Bābur (r. 1526‒30) and the Mamluk Qānṣūḥ al-Ghawrī (d. 1516). The ironic exception to this literary preference among the ruling elite was the Ottoman Selīm I (r. 1512‒20), who composed his verse in courtly Persian. Aside from language choice, poems penned by these rulers have not generated much interest from historians. Ismāᶜῑl’s poetry, however, would prove to be an exception. Only in Shah Ismāᶜῑl’s case is the choice of poetic language assigned political motivation.

As stated above, the Paris (I) version of Ismāᶜῑl’s dīvān was considered to be the definitive, authentic copy for decades, due in large part to Minorsky’s argument in favor of the manuscript’s pre-eminence. It was also the copy from which Turkhan Gandjei published the first complete dīvān in 1959.Footnote ¹¹ Since that time, and especially in the past decade, the number of Ismāᶜῑl’s known dīvān manuscripts has grown to least twenty-five copies, including three early manuscripts (albeit incomplete) which were likely assembled during Ismāᶜῑl’s lifetime, that is, before 1524.Footnote ¹² Although dīvān manuscripts were later produced as Safavid royal commissions and a selection of Ismāᶜīl’s poems are featured in an official Safavid dynastic genealogy,Footnote ¹³ historians have noted the disparity between the revolutionary religiosity that inspired Shah Ismāᶜῑl’s poetic imagination and the staid ithnā ᶜasharī Shīᶜism which took its place in Safavid Iran.Footnote ¹⁴ Their argument notes a disjuncture between the later Safavid establishment and the poetic claims of its founder which can be seen in Ismāᶜῑl’s poetic expression of his identity, a central issue of the interpretation of the poetry itself. The idea that Ismāᶜῑl’s poetry played a role in the establishment of Safavid rule is a major premise that influenced Safavid historiography in the twentieth century.

In an audacious voice and force familiar to modern students of the Safavid revolution, Shah Ismā‛īl develops an ambitious poetic identity throughout the following ġazel. This particular version of the poem is taken from one of the oldest manuscripts of his dīvān, housed in the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian.Footnote ¹⁵ This manuscript, though incomplete, is the source preferred here both because of its earlier date (Wheeler Thackston first proposed that it was produced before 1524) and its accessibility.Footnote ¹⁶ The translation below is taken from perhaps the oldest complete composition illustrating Ismāᶜīl’s prodigious poetic identity (see Figure 1):

1. 1. Intoxicated with the encounter, today I have come,

   Always with God, here today I have come.

2. 2. Know me as an intelligence on earth,

   As reality and purity, I have come.

3. 3. Beware of deeming me as a separate entity,

   As the beloved I have now come.

4. 4. Striking the souls of hypocrites with a sword,

   Today as a penitent from God I have come.

5. 5. O people of the heart, for the lover’s sake,

   Today as a sacrifice, I have come.

6. 6. The stranger thinks I am apart from the Truth,

   But by knowing His Presence I have come.

7. 7. Know me always as the essence of God,

   Apart from that which is apart from Divine Truth, I have come.

8. 8. From the summit of heaven for the people of the West,

   As the dust of an intoxicant, I have come.

9. 9. I take a life for the souls who praise,

   As Ḫaṭāʾī, offering his life as a sacrifice, I have come.Footnote ¹⁷

Spectacular poems such as this have made Shah Ismāᶜīl’s literary work central to the understanding of the Safavid ethos during his rise and reign. Composed in the first person, the refrain in the ġazel above emphasizes the “coming” (geldim) of a figure who strikes “the souls of hypocrites with a sword” (4), evoking traditional beliefs surrounding the Mahdi-Qāᶜīm’s final military mission in Shīᶜī eschatology. What marks this poem as the unique voice of Shah Ismāᶜīl is the poet’s alignment with the Divine: “with God” (bī-ḫüdāyım, 1); “from the Divine Truth” (ḥaḳḳ’tan, 4); “by knowing His Presence” (biḥażret āşnāyım, 6) and even declaring his own “essence of the Divine” (aṣl-ı ḥaḳḳ, 7) as the ġazel crescendos to a close. This type of self-expression will always be a characteristic of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s unmistakable voice. However, this interpretive speculation which views his poetic statements as reflections of the contemporary beliefs held by his followers has become increasingly insecure. First of all, we cannot date any particular composition within the dīvān collections, the contents of which are arranged by convention in alphabetical order.Footnote ¹⁸ But even if we did have a reliable chronology, poetry is not a systematic theological statement or treatise; its theology comes through a series of literary declarations, making definitive declarations seem less so within the context of the entire poem, especially the ġazels. Ahmet Karamustafa had recently undertaken a more systematic evaluation of the internal evidence in order to analyze the poetry’s theology, characterizing it as a monist system in which the poet shares an “affinity” with the divinized figure of ᶜAlī.Footnote ¹⁹ This is a measured refinement of previous and more cursory explanations of Ismāᶜīl’s poetic self-identification.

Dīvān-i Khaṭāʾī, Freer Gallery of Art and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, s1986.60, 38v.

Dīvān-i Khaṭāʾī, Freer Gallery of Art and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, s1986.60, 39r.

True to the conventions of the poetic genre, the ġazel poet, which Ḫaṭāʾī certainly was, communicates through deliberate ambiguity, a major aspect of the hermeneutic for this era of poetry. And while individual poems quoted from the dīvān, such as the ġazel above, carry the divine king motif, external corroboration to the literal belief in Shah Ismāᶜīl’s divine status is problematic.Footnote ²⁰ The history of the contemporary scholar and chronicler Rūzbihān Khunjī (d. 1521) is cited to support the notion that divine allusions within Ismāᶜīl’s poetry are a window into his followers’ beliefs in his charisma at the time. But Khunjī specifically names Ismāᶜīl’s father and grandfather, and not Ismāᶜīl, as the shaykhs who cultivated their charisma to the point of deification. Describing the followers of the Safavid shaykhs Junayd (d. 1460) and Ḥaydar (d. 1488), Khunjī recounts rumors of their resurrection:

Khunjī made his claim, it must also be remembered, as a courtier of the Aqqoyunlu, who saw the treacherous Anatolians as quasi-Christians and “a crowd of error and a host of devilish imagination.”Footnote ²² Like Khunjī’s lurid account, contemporary European sources have also played a colorful role in their alleged witness to Ismāᶜīl’s rise by virtue of belief in his divinity. Long assumed by historians to be hyperbole, after the discovery of Ismāᶜīl’s poetry these accounts were then taken as legitimate historical sources. However, Palmira Brummet established that European conjectures of Ismāᶜīl’s identity were more accurate reflections of their own geo-eschatological complexes. Their collective description of Ismāᶜīl suggests a deified potentate who would deliver Christendom from the Ottoman menace. The records of the Venetian republic report that Ismail “says he is god,” but according to Brummet, “None of the early tellers actually saw Ismail. Hence, layers of story intermingled with literary convention, entertaining anecdote, rumor, observation, official report, trope and commercial information.”Footnote ²³ Regaling his European audience, the following testimony of an anonymous Italian merchant states:

The beliefs surrounding immortality of the subject of the report fall in line with the picture Khunjī paints, but there are incredulous discrepancies as well. For instance, the religious identity of “The Sofi” (as Ismāᶜīl was known in Europe) is occasionally described as Christian or crypto-Christian.Footnote ²⁵ Such conflation of Ismāᶜīl’s religious loyalty shows the contemporary sources propagating the young shah’s quasi-divine identity are at the same time some of the most untrustworthy sources of that identity. Yet so much of the value granted Ismāᶜīl’s dīvān as a historical source has assumed that his followers regarded its claims as accurate representations of the new shah. The European “witnesses” to Ismāᶜīl’s ascent are generally oblivious to the origin of their stories, but the notion of achieving his power through literary propaganda is also absent in these European accounts, mentioning neither poetry nor songs. We can only speculate about the propagation of Ismāᶜīl’s poetry outside of the platform of the manuscripts collected during his lifetime, but evidence for any kind of public dissemination has not come to light. The earliest reference to poetry associated with Shah Ismāᶜīl that is in direct connection with an audience comes a full dynastic generation after his initial rise to the Tabriz throne in the context of a private Qizilbash ritual.Footnote ²⁶

But such speculation on its actual effect is tempting given the poetry’s forceful words. The Paris dīvān contains a curious piece supporting the charisma theory, translated below. Warriors have proclaimed their epitaphs on the battlefield since Homer, in a tradition that has crossed over into poetry, but this poetry is more than martial boasting. The folk rhythm and structure suggests a musicality, possibly composed to incite the troops for battle.Footnote ²⁷ Its strategy also befits a soldiers’ march, with the sacred warrior, the ġazī, marauding throughout each couplet on behalf of the family of the Muhammad-ᶜAlī, deliberately conflated with the Safavid clan. This oft-cited piece in particular seems to be speaking directly to this sacred warrior, giving him urgent directives, to come forth, to prostrate, to address the author as shah:

1. 1. Call to Allah, Allah ġāzī, call me the Shah, ġāzī,

   Come forth to meet me, call me the Shah, ġāzī.

2. 2. I am the bird of paradise, I am a commander over legions of soldiers,

   I am the comrade of the Sufi, call me the Shah, ġāzī.

3. 3. In whatever soil you plant me I grow, I come wherever you call me,

   I take the hands of the Sufi, call me the Shah, ġāzī.

4. 4. I was in the gallows with Manṣūr,Footnote ²⁸ I was in the fires with Abraham,

   I was with Moses on Sinai, call me the Shah, ġāzī.

5. 5. From the eve come forth, celebrate the New Year, come to the Shah,

   Prostrate yourselves, ġazī, call me the Shah, ġāzī.

6. 6. With a red crown and a gray horse, with the fierce soldiers of the Prophet’s family,

   With the appearance of the Prophet Joseph, call me the Shah, ġāzī.

7. 7. I am Ḫaṭāʾī, on the red steed, as his words of sugar, I am as sweet,

   I belong to Murteża ᶜAlī, call me the Shah, ġāzī.Footnote ²⁹

Each successive couplet in this martial lyric aligns the poet, who speaks as a commander of a holy army, with waves of successive prophets (Abraham, Moses and Joseph), Sufi martyrs (al-Ḥallāj) and spiritual warriors (the Sufi and the ġāzī), culminating in the final couplet with the declaration of his dedication to ᶜAlī. Does the poem reveal the actual relationship between the poet speaking as a commander and his followers? The words are polemic, bombastic and sectarian, everything that is associated with the Qizilbash at this revolutionary stage. However, despite the temptation to contextualize the piece as a soldiers’ march, our conjectures remain so, as we have no direct accounts that his poetry served this purpose. Only three manuscripts of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s dīvān remain from his lifetime, which is not a strong indication of its widespread dissemination, and this particular “march” is taken from a later version. But perhaps the numerous subsequent versions of his dīvān, those that were copied and preserved decades and centuries after his reign, are more revealing alternative interpretations of intense sectarian content.

If the lack of corroborative witness justifies skepticism about the role Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry played in the establishment of Safavid rule, then the question arises as to whether this should lead to a reassessment of the poetry itself. If the political consequence of the poetry is downplayed, should T. S. Eliot’s principle to regard a poem “primarily as poetry and not another thing” reorient the interpretation of his poetry?Footnote ³⁰ Reinterpretation of sources, literary or otherwise, is necessary, especially as new sources come to light and known ones are reevaluated. But it is perhaps unrealistic to view poetry which is obviously engaged with religious and political imagery in total isolation of its historical author; it is perhaps too purist a literary stance to apply to a time of such religious and political tumult. Nevertheless, political readings alone fail to explain the subsequent understandings of Ismāᶜīl’s work. In order to account for this phenomenon, more literary, as opposed to literal, interpretations may better serve our understanding.

Shah Ismāᶜīl’s Apocalypse

Previous analyses of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetic allusions to the Mahdi have focused on his early career, his unlikely rise to establish Safavid Iran. In the same vein, his punishing defeat before the army of the Ottoman Selim I at the battle of Chaldiran in 1514 allegedly brought to an end any “messianic pretentions” previously revealed in his poetry.Footnote ³¹ Ali Anooshahr dates the dīvān before the Safavid capture of Tabriz, but after the time of the young shaykh’s departure from his educational haven in Gilan.Footnote ³² If we are to date the more powerful images early (before 1501), then the alignment of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s claims with deliberate and precise reference from Shīᶜī apocalyptic culture is a strong indication of the guiding hand of his elders. Some of the grandiose imagery suits an adolescent prodigy groomed by a cabal of loyal tutors with a vested interest in augmenting the exceptionalism of their charge. This indeed may account for some of the more dramatic images. Yet many of these images were expressed by one with vision enough to construct them to endure beyond the immediate promised utopia. But in toto, Shah Ismāᶜīl’s dīvān is complex and sophisticated enough to be cited as a major influence in the development of early modern poetics in the Turkish idiom.

However, additional sources that paralleled Ismāᶜīl’s career with the appearance of the Mahdi, such as the Ross Anonymous, are now recognized as literary narratives that came much later.Footnote ³³ As for the dīvān itself, Ismāᶜīl’s motif of the mysterious eschatological figure have held up as some of its most arresting images. In some verses the poet even speaks as the Mahdi in first person, quoting directly from Shīᶜī apocalyptic prediction, “as the ring of Solomon, the staff of Moses, and the flood of Noah, I have now come.”Footnote ³⁴ But as often, the apocalyptic element is subtle and ethereal, certainly more so than Ismāᶜīl is given credit for. The poems that employ nuanced strategies should be emphasized as least as much if we are to get a fuller picture of Ismāᶜīl’s contribution as a poet.

In several pieces, one of them well known, Shah Ismāᶜīl explicitly heralds the coming savior in his effort to express the significance of his emerging dynasty. Perhaps these verses indicate an early reckoning with his own significance as the leader of the emerging order, of what Ali Anooshahr characterizes as the obvious “expression of the thirteen-year-old shah’s political agenda.”Footnote ³⁵ The following qasīde, first brought to our attention by Minorsky, is the most obvious and propaganda-like of all of his poems, bearing an imminent messiah theme:

1. 1. May God be glorified, come see that the light of God has come,

   Muhammed Muṣṭafā, the seal of all prophets has come.

2. 2. The souls of the lovers are joyous, the destiny of the faithful is fulfilled,

   The spirit of believers has awakened, purity has come, purity has come.

3. 3. In all lands for all eras, it is the advent of the righteous,

   From the heavens, from the angels, many greetings have come.

4. 4. The perfect guide (mürşid-i kāmil) has arrived to be the leader of all people,

   All of the ġāzīs rejoice for the seal of the prophets has come.

5. 5. Man stands before God, prostrate and do not follow Satan,

   He has put on the clothes of man, God has come.

6. 6. The angels have descended from the heavens, announcing good news to the knowing,

   The hour of death to the outsiders and disaster to the YezīdsFootnote ³⁶ have come.

7. 7. Amidst corruption, your candle extinguished into darkness,

   Open your eyes, see that like the moon in darkness, religion has come.

8. 8. ḪalīlullahFootnote ³⁷ has donned new garments, he was given the name İsmāᶜīl,

   Sacrifice your lives, for a proclamation from God has come.

9. 9. My beautiful Shah, my moon, my place of desire, my heart’s desire,

   My perfected manifestation of God, the elect of saints has come.

10. 10. Do not follow that demon by the name of ᶜAzāzīl,Footnote ³⁸

    Take the hand of the guiding Imam, come see the path of God.

11. 11. The world followed Pharaoh through sorcery,

    But Moses’ staff, to devour like a dragon, has come.

12. 12. The beautiful ġāzīs unleashed, the crown of the dynasty on their heads,

    This is the mahdī’s time, to the cyclical world the eternal light has come.

13. 13. His eye is ṣād, his tongue as ṭāhā, his cheeks as ḳāf and the Ḳurān,

    His eyebrows as nūn his hair as “The Night,” his face as the midday sun, he has come.Footnote ³⁹

14. 14. Submit to the son of İmām Shah Ḥayder, heart and soul,

    My Imams Caᶜfer Ṣādıḳ and ᶜAlī Mūsā Rıżā have come.

15. 15. Desperate Ḫaṭāʾī desires union with that beauty of the Shah,

    Sell your life, for knowledge worth the soul has come.Footnote ⁴⁰

For Ḫaṭāʾī, the Mahdi is clearly a muse, especially in his hymns of praise. It is quite reasonable to characterize reference to the universal and ubiquitous Shīᶜī figure as personal, that is to see the “Mahdi’s time” (12) as one in the same with Ismāᶜīl’s. Though allowing some ambiguity about the identity cast in the central role, the poet relays a militancy on behalf of the Mahdi, with “all of the ġazīs” welcoming the “seal of the Prophets” (4). Alluding to the Safavids’ dervish past, the “murşid-i kamil” becomes the “leader of all people” (4), with the “beautiful ġāzīs unleashed, the crown of the dynasty on their head.” Though the author leaves the identity of the dynasty deliberately vague, the parallels to the Safavid family are obvious and intentional.

Scholars have seen in Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry the identity of this messianic figure conflated with the identity of the poet himself.Footnote ⁴¹ If not promoting himself as the eschatological Mahdi, internal evidence within the poetry suggests the author intended to present himself as the Mahdi’s representative.Footnote ⁴² Most recently, Rıza Yıldırım has refined the Mahdist angle by interpreting Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetic persona in light of the heroic ṣāḥib-i khurūj figures that appeared in popular ᶜAlid epics during the period leading up to the establishment of the Safavids.Footnote ⁴³ These sectarian heroes, who took up the task of avenging Ḥusayn’s blood after centuries of quietism, were the archetypes Ismāᶜīl drew upon to cultivate both the mystique of his poetic identity and his revolution.Footnote ⁴⁴ Rather than the singular end-time equalizer himself, Shah Ismāᶜīl was taken as one of several “heroic archetypes” in an effective call to extract vengeance for Ḥusayn, according to Yıldırım.

Whether or not Ismāᶜīl intended to present himself as the eschatological Mahdi, or some sort of “insurrectionist” on behalf of the Shīᶜī martyrs, it remains true that one of the most intriguing figures appearing in Shah Ismāᶜīl’s dīvān poetry is a divinely guided savior. As the Mahdi specifically developed through the history of Shīᶜism, it emerged by this time as an immortal commander lying in wait to break out and redress all of history’s injustices for a final time. Belief in his advent throughout the Muslim world, both Sunni and Shīᶜī, was particularly intense during the sixteenth century, as it coincided with the millennium of the hijrī calendar.Footnote ⁴⁵ For ithnā ᶜasharī Shīᶜism, which came to define Safavid Iran, the identity of the Mahdi was confidently placed in the obscured Twelfth Imam, Muḥammad al-Mahdī. For the most part Shah Ismāᶜīl defers to ithnā ᶜasharī authority in this identification.

Thus it is through the Twelfth Imam that Ḫaṭāʾī most resolutely explores the significance of the Mahdi in his poetry. And it is specifically within the qasīde form dedicated to the Twelve Imams that Ḫaṭāʾī’s treatment of the Mahdi not only conforms to the convention of Twelver piety, but also contributes to its development. Ernest and lengthy, the qasīde is an ancient, originally Arabic, vehicle of formal poetic praise. While the form may be less frequently employed than the ġazel in the dīvān collections as a whole, they remain Shah Ismāᶜīl’s most consistent forms of religious expression, as seen in those qasīdes in praise of ᶜAlī and the Twelve Imams (düvazdah imām). These poems are also the most influential of Ḫaṭāʾī’s forms, stretching beyond Shah Ismāᶜīl’s lifetime among the Safavids’ descendant communities. Taken from the Smithsonian manuscript, the following qasīde is one of several effuse though conventional praise hymns to the Twelve Imams. The Mahdi makes his due appearance in the penultimate couplet (see Figure 2):

Dīvān-i Khaṭāʾī, Freer Gallery of Art and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, s1986.60, 49v.

Dīvān-i Khaṭāʾī, Freer Gallery of Art and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, s1986.60, 50r.

1. 1. From God, the intercessor of sinners, Muḥammad Muṣṭafa has come,

   Glory to the people of the world, God’s only chosen has come.

2. 2. My shah, the leader of the world, the light of religion,

   Taking Zülfiḳar in his hand, ᶜAlī Murteża has come.

3. 3. In his hand the strength of God, disaster to the poison of assassins,

   By God’s command, with the blessing of the people, Ḥasan has come.

4. 4. The fate of Ḥusayn’s death, written on his forehead,

   To your hearts from divine wisdom, purity has come.

5. 5. Asylum for the afflicted has come in Zeyn al-ᶜAbidīn,

   So that to all who are blind, illumination has come.

6. 6. Muḥammad Bāḳir, the light of my eyes,

   To the people of the path, the master of fidelity has come.

7. 7. Caᶜfar Ṣādiḳ, at the head of the straight path,

   To the hearts of those who praise him, nourishment has come.

8. 8. Mūsi-i Kāẓım fulfilling Divine commands day and night,

   To those who remain with him, grace and favor have come.

9. 9. Always under Divine command, ᶜAlī Mūsā Riżā has come,

   To those who mourn him, God’s blessing has come.

10. 10. Muḥammed Taḳī is the reader of hearts, the light of my soul,

    To him many greetings from the angels in heaven have come.

11. 11. ᶜAlī Naḳī remains the cure of all pain, all sickness,

    As cure for the blind, the dust under his foot has come.

12. 12. Those who love Ḥasan ᶜAskerī with all their soul reach God,

    From the compassionate, many robes of honor have come.

13. 13. Muḥammed is the mahdī, the mystery of the saints of the present day,

    To us the guide on the path of the Islamic religion has come.

14. 14. Oh Lord, is Ḫaṭāʾī the destitute worthy of Your Presence?

    To the path of the Imams, with his life as a sacrifice, he has come.Footnote ⁴⁶

Rather than dominating the central theme, the Mahdi’s entry in this qasīde is in due order, appearing in sequence at the end of a litany of praise and honor to Muḥammed and each of the Twelve Imams the poem honors. Ḫaṭāʾī comes in reverently at the end, making a humble appearance in the concluding couplet as an unworthy destitute. The poem’s unremarkable treatment of both the Mahdi and the author might account for its continued relevance as a pious form of poetry. Through a process of creative pseudonymity, works bearing the pen-name of Ḫaṭāʾī were revered among the Qizilbash tribes as they developed into permanent sectarian communities after the historical author’s death. It is clear that within this additional corpus, the author’s personal identity as Shah Ismāᶜīl became secondary to the devotional content of the poetry, especially in its major motif of praise for the Imams. The düvazdeh imām continued to hold a central place within the repertoire of the Qizilbash-Alevi, within their sacred texts and integrated into ritual. Ḫaṭāʾī’s attributed düvazdeh imām form, placed throughout Alevi ritual and sacred texts, is perhaps the most direct connection between the historical corpus and the tradition of poets that drew inspiration from it.

But to return to the historical corpus, heralding the return of an eschatological savior through poetry has long precedent in Shīᶜī history, as seen with the Kaysanites, among whom central Shīᶜī messianic ideas crystalized.Footnote ⁴⁷ But unlike the bards exalting Ibn al-Hanafiyya’s (d. 700‒701) status as a Mahdi, Shah Ismāᶜīl’s legacy as a poet endured beyond that of a propagandist, if indeed he intended to compose for that purpose. At issue here is the causative connection assumed between Shah Ismāᶜīl’s apocalyptic imagery in his poetry and the actual political achievements of his early career. These apocalyptic elements, outliving any of the disappointments of his messianic or political career, survived through the transmission of the dīvān. Therefore, even the most personal and political self-references within the dīvān hold up as literary expression in a way that the works of propagandists fail to.

In other words, the apocalyptic motif in Shah Ismāᶜīl’s dīvān persists as a viable literary characteristic beyond verbatim readings, or even revisionist readings of the poetry’s surmised political influence. There can be little question that Shah Ismāᶜīl’s apocalyptic vision informed his literary odyssey, and this tendency is present in the earliest collections we have. But his apocalyptic themes are not automatically political or even eschatological in the literal sense. It is helpful here to distinguish between what Said Amir Arjomand refers to as the “apocalyptic worldview” and “political messianism.” Since the latter is often expressed through the language of the former, the concepts are often conflated. But from a literary point of view, the distinction is essential, as it is the difference between the poet and the political propagandist, a distinction which is meaningful in this context. As Arjomand states, “Political messianism inevitably motivates militant activism.”Footnote ⁴⁸ And although Shah Ismāᶜīl’s words are assumed to coincide with the “militant activism” among his followers, manuscripts of his dīvān circulated long after the dissipation of this activism, if in fact his poetry was a direct catalyst for political activism during his lifetime. More importantly, Ḫaṭāʾī’s apocalyptic motifs are not exclusively eschatological, but carry certain features independent of eschatology that stand on their own, building upon a much older literary foundation.

Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry can be more fully interpreted under Arjomand’s “apocalyptic worldview,” which is not only “historically prior” to political messianism, as Arjomand observes, it is also considerably more ancient. In its longue durée consideration, apocalyptic expression is continuously adjusted and cannot be confined to a fixed political agenda, making it amenable to multiple interpretations. As its Greek etymology indicates, the term “Apocalypse” entered the literary stream through the term for “Revelation,” with the images from the last book of the Christian canon eventually dominating connotations of the term. But the complexity of the apocalyptic lens stretches further back to Hebrew biblical literature. In this earlier stage, apocalyptic literature was shaped by the orientation found in the Book of Daniel in its primary dichotomy: the present world of wickedness up against the righteous dispensation of the future, and, above all, the re-occurring battle of good versus evil, revealed piecemeal in elaborate, often cryptic, symbolism. Of course, the young Ismāᶜīl most likely absorbed his apocalyptic sensibility directly from the Qur’an, rather than from superseded biblical sources. And the Qur’anic font from which Ḫaṭāʾī draws his images is further evidence that he is operating on the level of “Apocalyptic” in this earlier sense of an unveiling or revealing of the hidden. Viewed as such, the interpretation of Ḫaṭāʾī’s apocalyptic expression, rather than literal insights into his public life, must be open to the concept of metaphor.

To demonstrate Ḫaṭāʾī’s openness to the apocalyptic metaphor, we should look to those images he relies upon with a degree of literary consistency. For example, Shah Ismāᶜīl identifies with the mythical Alexander the Great, predictably in his role as world conqueror. Listed alongside the prophets as well as ancient Iranian kings, Ḫaṭāʾī struts: “I am the immortal Ḫıżr, Jesus, Mary, and the Alexander of this age.”Footnote ⁴⁹ But at other times Ḫaṭāʾī’s referencing of Alexander has less to do with his ambitious territorial designs and more with his understanding of esoteric literary interpretation. Louis Massignon famously referred to the Surah of the Cave, where Alexander makes a prominent appearance as Dhū al-Qarnayn (“of the two horns”), as the “Apocalypse of Islam.”Footnote ⁵⁰ Through its enigmatic episodes in which reality lies hidden, the Surah of the Cave both exemplifies and interprets the meaning of revelation itself. This type of scriptural criticism is helpful in understanding the importance of Surah’s images in subsequent literature, including Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry. Certainly more possibility is open to us if we approach Ḫaṭāʾī’s self-expressions as a form of cyclical apocalypses, that is, a series of self-revelations with the images constructed to serve the internal strategies of the poem. Assuming Ismāᶜīl’s grandiose statements should be received as a linear (and literal) eschatology becomes more anachronistic as time goes on.

It is also through the mysterious guide of Moses (identified by later commentators as Ḫıżr, the “Green One”) that Ḫaṭāʾī’s indebtedness to the eighteenth Surah can be seen. Even apart from his extended appearance in the Surah of the Cave (though not by name), Ḫıżr is a transcendent figure in Islamic culture, with a variegated extra-Quranic folk life. A Sufi pīr, saint, savior and prophet, avatars of Ḫıżr bend well with Ḫaṭāʾī’s continuous search for ways to express divine realities, in both creative and conventional ways. Conventionally, Ḫıżr stands as a direct connection to the hunted “Water of Life,” as in the dīvāns of countless other Islamicate poets. Following are some of Ḫaṭāʾī’s references to Ḫıżr and Alexander in their shared connection to the life-giving waters:

The ġazels from which these references are taken are neither militant nor sectarian, and certainly not eschatological. Rather, they are examples of the dominant strategy of the most common form of dīvān poetry, the ġazel, in which unrequited love is the primary metaphor for seeking God. In conformity with this paradigm, references to Ḫıżr (and to a lesser extent Alexander) are common in dīvān poetry, increasing the plausibility of a literary interpretation of these verses. Ḫıżr stands as a metaphor for the elusive Beloved, with access to the most coveted treasure, the water that procures an infinite lifespan. The author returns to the concept of revelation as the unveiling of spiritual mysteries continuously throughout his dīvān, as in the following ġazel from the Smithsonian manuscript. Again, we have no hard evidence of when particular pieces were composed, but one can nevertheless get a sense of a literary maturity in his presentation of the classical ġazel strategy, especially in the use of apocalyptic images that shed their obvious eschatology to become more revelatory, more sophisticated, and more consciously literary. Through the classic ġazel paradigm, in his own distinctive voice, Ḫaṭāʾī reveals the divine encounter through the language of a human desire, achieving the symbiotic poetic relationship between carnal love and Divine encounter:

1. 1. When we looked upon your face, our moon became sacred,

   What a wondrous visage our God has created.

2. 2. I reached the straight path through your visage,

   Our path led us to the waters of life (āb-ı ḥayvāne).

3. 3. All who behold your dark locks are calmed,

   Who would dare dye those locks we curse.

4. 4. From the hand of the immortal Ḫıżr we drank the waters of life,

   We pitched our tent before ᶜĪsā and Meryem.

5. 5. Reaching the kaʽbe I offered my life as the sacrifice,

   Becoming a pilgrim, I spilled blood in our place of sacrifice.

6. 6. I saw the arch of your eyebrows, I made it my ḳıble,

   Because the dust of your feet became our destination.

7. 7. This Ḫaṭā’ī wears pilgrim’s clothing [iḥrām] for your kaʽba of Divine love,

   At that hour, he ascended to the throne in remembrance of God.Footnote ⁵⁶

The first couplet suggests the presence of a vision unveiled, the face of the Beloved. The vision of the Beloved and the reference to the elusive Ḫıżr of the first lines meld into unified images serving the central metaphor of the haj as the quest for the encounter of the Divine Beloved: the garb of the tent and pilgrim, the place of sacrifice, and the kaᶜba. In the final couplet the poet is rewarded with a beatific vision after his ascent to the throne of God. The fact that Ḫaṭāʾī is granted an ascent to the Divine is an indication of his successful spiritual achievement we shall return to in the next section.

Although the poet establishes his mastery of the metaphoric possibility, Shah Ismā‛īl’s poetic contribution often seems confined to the apocalyptic as the term later developed: a mission of vengeance and upheaval straddling the end of time. At times eschatological and even political, Ḫaṭāʾī’s use of apocalyptic images also, and more often, demonstrates literary depth, which explains not only the survival of the corpus but how it may have been perceived among subsequent generations. Ḫaṭāʾī constructs images and figures with an apocalyptic perspective, but seeing these images as manipulation to achieve political goals is not inevitable. Moreover, as a source of a developing religiosity, his poetry remained influential for much longer than any particular political circumstance. What is being refined here is the addition of possible literary nuance in the interpretation of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s striking, and often subtle, treatment of apocalyptic themes and personae.

A Literary View of Divine Union

If we begin to see Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry in its primary context, the poetic one, then some widely held assumptions about his work must be refined. The first assumption is the poor quality of his verse. When regarded merely as self-promotion, the literary contribution Shah Ismāᶜīl made to the development of early modern Azeri is the first casualty. However, if we follow Azeri literary historians and categorize Shah Ismāᶜīl as an architect of Azeri poetry, he stands alongside Nesīmī (executed c. 1418) and Fużūlī (d. 1555) as well as the Qaraḳoyunlu ruler Jihān Shāh (d. 1467) who wrote under the pen-name Ḥaḳīḳī.Footnote ⁵⁷ Azeri scholars of the former Soviet republic were the first to champion Shāh Ismāᶜīl’s literary legacy: Azizaga Memedov referred to Shah Ismāᶜīl as a “master” of poetry, central to the development of literary Azeri.Footnote ⁵⁸ This is a stark contrast to Minorsky’s assessment of the “banal” images and “monotonous” themes of the dīvān, as well as to Jean Aubin’s judgment of its “contenu juvenile.”Footnote ⁵⁹ But today in the Republic of Azerbaijan, Shah Ismāᶜīl is an iconic figure in its national literary canon.

When seen in a literary context, we must acknowledge that the majority of Shah Ismā‛īl’s poetry is conventional relative to time, place and placement within Azeri literary history. In that way we can concede its treatment as literature apart from its limited-time use as Safavid propaganda. This again leads to the question of intended audience. When historians pass over the mainstream of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry as “ordinary lyrics in which pagan hedonism is often interwoven with Sufi ecstasy”Footnote ⁶⁰ in order to dwell on his self-referential lyrics, a distortion occurs because it is the “ordinary” lyrics that dominate his poetic corpus. Lacking accounts that place this poetry in its received context, we are left with the conclusion that Ismāᶜīl’s poetry would be understood and appreciated by his intended audience, consisting of those who understood and appreciated such things. Thus, this audience must somehow be reimagined to include subsequent generations as well as non-combatants. Standing primarily as an expression of love, the poetry’s militant, messianic and self-aggrandizing pieces constitute a fraction of the corpus as a whole. They remain an interesting segment of the corpus, but they must also be read as sources embedded within a larger literary tradition.

Shah Ismāᶜīl’s formal collections consist of a variety of classical poetic forms, with the ġazel predominating.Footnote ⁶¹ The numerical dominance of the ġazel form is another indication of the placement of the corpus within the wider poetic culture. Significant studies emphasize the ġazel as the primary vehicle in Islamicate literary culture, as the formal composition for centuries used to express unrequited love, both human and divine, carnal and incorporeal.Footnote ⁶² Shah Ismāᶜīl’s dīvān is no different in its reliance on this form and its use of metaphor. In much the same way as Baroque artists depicted sensual tension to intensify a Divine presence, so too does the erotic language parallel a mystical reality in these poetic images.Footnote ⁶³ In hundreds of ġazels, Ḫaṭāʾī, like his contemporaries, stands as the dejected lover and the Beloved stands for the most part unrequited. Shah Ismāᶜīl’s ġazels also follow the poet’s tortured trance through its ecstatic highs and longer, anguishing lows, as in the following ġazel from the Smithsonian manuscript (see Figure 3):

1. 1. Oh rose cheek, if I declare your lips my soul, I would be right,

   If I declare your lock of hair an infidel against your believing face, I would be right.

2. 2. I asked the doctor for a cure form my pain, it was not found,

   If I declare your ruby lips the cure for this pain of love, I would be right.

3. 3. Who leans against your threshold finds perpetual fortune,

   If I declare your threshold to be the attributes of the Almighty, then I would be right.

4. 4. But your door is a place of affliction and dejection,

   And if I declare it vast as Solomon’s dominion, then I would be right.

5. 5. In the remembrance (zikr) of you beauty Ḫaṭāʾī found Divine light,

   If I declare the heat of your breath is a page of the Ḳur’ān, I would be right.Footnote ⁶⁴

By ruefully describing the torture resulting from the Beloved’s self-imposed distance, the author creates the classical paradigm of the ġazel in a familiar lament. In this way, most of Ḫaṭāʾī’s works, like the one above, are remarkably conventional for their content. However strong the emphasis on earthy themes and images, such as the beloved’s “rose cheeks” (1), “ruby lips” (2) and the heat of his breath (5), it should not obfuscate the mystical structure often underlying the paradigm, an interpretive lens which gives the genre its meaning and poignancy. It is within the mystical elements that Ḫaṭāʾī most displays his skill in guiding the central drama—that is, through his manipulation of the profane to express a longing for the sacred. Most of his dīvān poetry is a constant mixing and realignment of the sensual and the scriptural, contributing to an ongoing erotic allegory. While the psychology of real human relations is a valid way to understand divan poetry, the potential of the Beloved’s divine identity is an important facet of the genre’s complexity. As a poet fully embracing this culture, the mystical-religious character of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s approach to the ġazel is traditional rather than aberrant. While certain tropes may seem blasphemous to the uninitiated, these expressions of desperate irreverence are suitable for the genre:

Dīvān-i Khaṭāʾī, Freer Gallery of Art and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, s1986.60, 45r.

The paradisiacal references above clearly place the poetry within the familiar role-playing of the drama, with the Beloved drawn as a houri’s offspring, and the poet brought to the point of apostasy. This desperate pursuit is a noble one however, for like the lusty Zuleyḫā in her obsession with the ethereal beauty of Yūsuf, ultimately it is a quest for the Divine. In the following couplet, the poet describes the intense desire for a kouros with his physical features likened to the images of scripture.

Eliciting literary meanings from Ḫaṭāʾī’s poetry does not eliminate the possibility that this poetry was perhaps received at one time as the political-religious statements in service of the Safavid power. At the same time, the mechanics of his poetic propaganda are elusive enough to consider alternative understandings of the verse, both simultaneous and subsequent. While accounts directly linking Ismāᶜīl’s poetry to propaganda during his lifetime remain obscure, what is known are more common and enduring interpretations of his allusions. We cannot know precisely how Ismāᶜīl’s poetry boosted his popularity, but we do know that Shah Ismāᶜīl’s dīvān proliferated beyond his reign. This indicates a literary accommodation of these verses after Shah Ismāᶜīl’s image as a divinely guided ruler would have tarnished considerably.

The following ġazel shows the possibility of reading the poetry on two levels. What “Ḫaṭāʾī desires,” the refrain carried throughout, could easily be seen as a litany of demands made upon his followers, especially his desire for “ġazā from the ġāzīs” (6). However, with a literary interpretation the piece reveals itself as poetry and something less cynical than a political pamphlet emerges (see Figure 4).

Dīvān-i Khaṭāʾī, Freer Gallery of Art and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, s1986.60, 47v.

Dīvān-i Khaṭāʾī, Freer Gallery of Art and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, s1986.60, 48r.

1. 1. Ḫaṭāʾī desires from you purity for the Shah,

   Ḫaṭāʾī desires goodness kindness and munificence.

2. 2. Ḫaṭāʾī desires the zinc for his eyes,Footnote ⁶⁷

   From the dust of your feet, oh Shah of Shahs.

3. 3. He does not wish to separate from your threshold,

   Do not cause him pain, for Ḫaṭāʾī desires fidelity.

4. 4. Take that black lovelock from the moon face,

   Open your veil, Ḫaṭāʾī desires your face.

5. 5. To arrive to this straight path to the Shah,

   Ḫaṭāʾī desires to be your only guide.

6. 6. Ḫaṭāʾī desires ġazā from the ġāzīs,

   Always against the Yezīds, infidels and Mervāns.Footnote ⁶⁸

Despite the militant interjection in the signature couplet, against the “Yezīds, infidels and Mervāns,” the ġazel is almost archetypal in its portrayal of spiritual passion. Given the identity of the author, of course, the “Shah” introduced in the first couplet is an ambiguous figure to the audience. However, the sovereign was a stock symbol for the all-powerful Beloved, who is at the same time the destination of the path (5), the moon-face behind the veil (5). The literary contribution achieved within Ḫaṭā’ī’s conventional, even typical, ġazels lies in his juxtaposition and balance of sacred and sensual images.

Following the standard practice, Shah Ismāᶜīl’s historical poetry collections are arranged alphabetically, according to poetic form, with classical love-centered ġazels mixed in with the more anomalous battle hymns and apocalyptic self-disclosures, sometimes within the same poem. Did these sometimes violent interjections reflect the author’s psychological reality in an early example of confessional poetry? It is a legitimate question which has invited speculation. Irène Mélikoff returned to this question often: “Did Shah Ismail really believe in his divine essence? In reading his exalted poems and remembering his young age, one is tempted to think he really believed that he was the incarnation of Ali. He said it repeatedly in his poems.”Footnote ⁶⁹ The issue is raised again in the following selection from the Paris dīvān, the manuscript in which most of the self-referential poems remain intact:

1. 1. Come, come here all of you, to love, which is mine,

   You laugh at the ascetic but light and faith are mine.

2. 2. In my hands are the earth and sky, as well as His wisdom and power,

   The earth, air, water and fire all together are mine.

3. 3. God, may his name be exalted, brought down four books to the earth.

   Don’t turn from me, because all scripture is mine.

4. 4. Don’t be dependent on the scribe’s black and white [ink], it will lead you astray,

   Open your ears and listen to my word, the Ḳurʾān is mine.

5. 5. The world has many heroes such as Rustam and Zāl,

   The dominion of Iskender and the possessions of Süleyman are mine.

6. 6. I gave Eyyüb affliction, pain and disaster,

   Call on me, the relief is mine.

7. 7. I will cause Yaᶜḳub bitter tears and longing for Yūsuf,

   For a forty-day retreat, the throne and land of Egypt are mine.

8. 8. Pushing forward the brave men, I am ᶜAlī’s descendant, his family

   Zülfikar, the crown and Düldül are the three signs that are mine.

9. 9. In the very beginning, I gave my life as a sacrifice to the Shah,

   If he accepts it, the feast of the sacrifice is mine.

10. 10. I am Ḫaṭāʾī, praising the qualities of the Shah,

    I gird my lions with truth, and the record book is mine.Footnote ⁷⁰

The extent of Ḫaṭāʾī’s desire for both worldly and spiritual things is fully revealed in this ġazel. The ancient Iranian warriors Rustam and Zāl form a seamless chain with Alexander, and continue through the Quranic prophets, and through ᶜAlī and his descendants. The illustrious lineage culminates in the author, who possess the qualities of them all, from the dominion of Solomon, to the record book on Judgment Day. The blatant hubris, the extravagant spiritual claims, the posturing of Ḫaṭāʾī’s more infamous pieces seems unbearable against the subtlety of the more conventional ġazels. But before confining the exuberant self-regard to the effect it presumably had on his followers, the mystical-literary assumptions on which it is based must be considered. Beyond seeing this as the deviant expression of a megalomaniac, the words can be seen as part of a wider understanding, as a significant strain of Sufi expression, a spiritual tradition within which we know Ismāᶜīl was schooled. Perhaps by this time in its decadent phase, statements of this intensity were actually established ways in which to express spiritual, as opposed to political, achievement.

Acknowledging Ismāᶜīl first as a poet, Wheeler Thackston analyzed how he skillfully mirrors the ġazel’s standard themes and images to mystical realities. Thackston saw this as a literary process, described as a “conflation of attributes” in which “the devotee ‘becomes’ the lover in all respects, and the worshipped ‘becomes’ the beloved.”Footnote ⁷¹ In other words, in the works often cited as evidence of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s literal deification are based on a literary strategy in which the lover has actually become the Beloved within the poem. As the lover is now completely conflated with the Beloved, that which the poet utters is actually the utterances of the Beloved: “Beware of deeming me as a separate entity / As the beloved I have now come [dilrübayım].”Footnote ⁷² In addition to being a literary technique, this identification of the author with the Beloved constitutes a form of identification that goes even further back. It is a technique representing an older form of expressing ecstatic union, one that we can surmise through his references Shah Ismāᶜīl was well acquainted with.

In fact, the unitive triumph present in Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry has a long history as an elite form of mystical expression identified as shaṭḥ (plural: shaṭḥiyāt), from the root of “outpouring, overflowing.” This outpouring of language is to be taken as a mystical reality, not a political literalism. As the famous scholar of religious sciences al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) defined the controversial phenomenon:

The revelation materializes in the extravagance of shaṭḥ expressions, which often centered on the nature of self.Footnote ⁷⁴ Although understood as “ecstatic expressions” shaṭḥiyāt do not necessarily manifest during an ecstatic, non-rational state. According to Carl Ernst, “The majority [of shaṭḥiyāt] are admittedly answers to questions, written replies to letters, or actions taken in response to some need.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Concerning Shah Ismāᶜīl’s medium of shaṭḥiyāt, they are similarly generated during a state in which full control of the faculties are required such as the composition of classical ᶜarūż poetry. However outrageous, the history of this expression shows that it can be a sober, articulate and, in the poet’s case, metered, expression of God’s all-absorbing existence.Footnote ⁷⁶

Although Shah Ismāᶜīl’s images suggest his employment of classical shaṭḥ expression, these expressions seem anachronistic from his pen and exalted place. The archetypes of shaṭḥiyāt are represented by early, mythic figures such as Abū Yazīd al-Basṭāmī (d. circa 875)—“How great is my glory” and Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (executed 922)—“I am the Divine Truth.” The extended commentaries on the subject date from the classical period as well, such as Rūzbihān Baqlī’s (d. 1209) Sharḥ-i Shaṭḥiyyat. Therefore, the few studies which have dealt extensively with the phenomenon of shaṭḥiyyāt, most notably Carl Ernst’s study, are limited in scope to the classical period of Sufism, from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, and do not venture into its later developments.Footnote ⁷⁷

According to Ernst, after the classical period, this form of inspired speech became formalized as a “conventional rhetorical device.”Footnote ⁷⁸ As in Shah Ismāᶜīl’s works, forms of shaṭḥiyāt continued to serve as a mode of poetic expression in quotations from past masters and martyrs. The references to al-Hallāj are a characteristic of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry, a signaling of the false blasphemy of similar statements. The almost formulaic homage to al-Ḥallāj, his martyrdom and his infamous words, strongly suggests Shah Ismāᶜīl’s deliberate interplay with the established technique of the “theophanic locution”:

The poet and martyr Nesīmī (d. c. 1418) is often cited as the single most direct literary influence on Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry. A follower, and likely a direct disciple of Faḍl Allāh Ḥurūfī (d. 1394), Nesīmī was also executed like his master, possibly as a result of his heretical utterances.Footnote ⁸⁴ Nesīmī’s influence, alongside the decidedly eccentric Ḥurūfī influence on Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry, has led to frequent speculation regarding Ismāᶜīl’s Ḥurūfī leanings.Footnote ⁸⁵ Both poets take quotations from the shaṭḥiyāt of al-Ḥallāj. Like numerous poets and mystics since al-Ḥallāj, recalling the famous martyr both by name and through his immortal declarations, a wealth of associations are created, with the poet and his audience partaking in the mystical experience of doctor ecstaticus himself.

Nesīmī biographer Kathleen Burrill cites the specific references to Nesīmī in Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry to further demonstrate the link between these two poets of the southern Turkish idiom.Footnote ⁸⁶ However, it should be noted that explicit mentions of Nesīmī are found in Shah Ismāᶜīl’s later, attributed poetry, calling the historic authenticity of these references into question. The following quatrain bearing Shah Ismā‛īl’s maḫlaṣ is taken from a poem in the syllabic meter, alludes to Nesīmī’s gruesome execution method:

Despite their affinities, according to Burrill, the comparison of Shah Ismā‛īl to Nesīmī is limited. The two are distinguished because Shah Ismāᶜīl’s expressions of self-exaltation constitute “the words of a warrior-poet pressing his divine rights as king, not those of the intoxicated mystic treading the road to martyrdom at Aleppo.”Footnote ⁸⁸ Shah Ismāᶜīl’s apotheotic claims are “more insistent, more unmistakably personal than are Nesimi’s.”Footnote ⁸⁹ It is Shah Ismā‛īl’s status as the founder of an empire that resists viewing his statements of ecstatic union as rhetorical forms of mystical and literary expression. Perhaps because he avoided execution, in contrast to the fate of shaṭḥ-speaking martyrs, Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry is not granted the poetic license afforded others, and is rather seen as literal reflections of his self-identity as well as those of the devotees of his persona. Nevertheless, it is significant that in the vast and varied body of pseudo-Ḫaṭā’ī which developed among the Anatolian Alevi-Bektashi, the references to al-Ḥallāj and his inspired speech carried through the tradition as a steady trope, as seen in the quatrain above.

In Shah Ismāᶜīl’s historical poetry, however, al-Ḥallāj’s recollected drama serves the Beloved, who is, whether vanquished or elusive, the constant muse throughout his dīvān. The following illustrates his ġazel’s more traditional dialectic, subordinating the lover to the Beloved through the latter’s adopted persona of the sovereign. The crucified Manṣur al-Hallāj is cast as the iconic martyr, at the mercy of the Shah’s cruelly impartial omnipotence (5):

1. 1. The Shah who amazes and bewilders me

   Is the Shah who tours the recesses of my heart.

2. 2. You have scorned me, cast me into the world,

   You are the Shah who has caused my eyes to weep bitterly.

3. 3. He who conquered the entire world,

   Is the Shah who created Yezīd’s people and Muslims both.

4. 4. He who became a nightingale and wandered the rose garden

   Is the Shah who caused my bitter weeping outside its walls.

5. 5. In his heart, Manṣūr cries out “anā al-ḥaḳḳ,”

   Yet the Shah crucifies Manṣūr.

6. 6. The Shah, with Yezīd’s hand,

   Sacrifices Hasan and Ḥüseyn in Karbela’.

7. 7. He who rescued Yūsuf from the well of devastation,

   Is the Shah who made him Sultan in the land of Egypt.

8. 8. In his eye the only thing shining is the sun,

   He made a rose bed out of the gardens of the world.

9. 9. To the faces of the blameless his face is the sun,

   Yet the Shah conceals the sun.

10. 10. From the hand of the brave lion in Daşt-ı Arzan,Footnote ⁹⁰

    The Shah protects Selman Farsi.Footnote ⁹¹

11. 11. Ḫaṭāʾī desires longing from you,

    Again, the Shah holds the records on Judgment Day.Footnote ⁹²

Again, Shah Ismāᶜīl’s presentation of the ġazel form is arresting. Its personal and militant references are at the same time a theological meditation on God’s all-encompassing power, where the poet has torn out the apocalyptic structure of duality to reveal a monist vision of the Beloved Shah. The Beloved cast as a cruel sovereign is an opportunity to explore a reality in which all of humanity is encompassed, Yezīds as well as Muslims (3). He is the one who protects Selman the Persian (10), exalts Yūsuf to the throne (7), but at the same time He accepts the martyrdoms of Ḥasan and Ḥusayn as a sacrifice (10). Revealing a painful sacred history, “The Shah who amazes and bewilders” conceals His own light, in an act of Divine withholding.

Shah Ismāᶜīl defies classical ġazel paradigms by expressing a union of the lover with the Beloved, rather than a struggle on behalf of the lover to achieve this elusive consummation. However, pieces displaying this unique dramatic paradigm have been viewed primarily from the perspective of their external effects on Shah Ismāᶜīl’s followers rather than internal strategy. Further ventures into Shah Ismāᶜīl’s historical poetry must take into account a wider accommodation of these verses, beyond literal objectives of the author, beyond his supposed delusions of grandeur extending to the reception of this poetry beyond the battlefield. Shah Ismāᶜīl’s striking mystical orientation is not without precedent in dīvān literature. By assessing Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry in the context of his life and times, it is certainly understandable to assign purely political motives to this form of artistic expression. However, this approach alone limits the appreciation of this influential corpus as literature. Internal evidence within the poetry suggests that perhaps declarations are not always to be swallowed whole, but are to be taken as the ecstatic expressions of a mystical reality. With the collapse of the bard and his muse, union of the seeker with the Divine is, on occasion, fully achieved.

Shah Ismāᶜīl’s Adventures in CharismaFootnote ⁹³

Initially established as “an historical document characteristic of the strivings of the age,”Footnote ⁹⁴ Shah Ismāᶜīl’s dīvān remains compelling material for literary history. The following piece is an example of his singular voice, displaying the sectarian violence we have come to expect, replete with blood, sacred warriors (eren), final resurrection, millenarianism and martial machismo:

1. 1. With the exalted word, may they come to the field,

   May the effeminate stay back, may the manly come.

2. 2. The sign of the eren is the sign of God,

   To knowledge, may the eren come.

3. 3. My Zülfikar foams at the mouth, as I stand in blood,

   He who denies, to belief may he come.

4. 4. Sinners leave behind their sins,

   He who would drive them away, to the Sultan may he come.

5. 5. By the power of God, grief was put to an end,

   To drive away that accursed Satan, may he come.

6. 6. According to the tradition of the prophet,

   Those who have laid rest for 1000 years, to life may they come.

7. 7. Flowing streams, flowing canals and springs

   Surge from their places, to the ocean may they come.

8. 8. Ḫaṭāʾī is wealthy and generous,

   To the cure, may the wretched come.Footnote ⁹⁵

This is Ḫaṭāʾī at his most militant, with an astounding tone for such a simple ġazel that does not even bother to mention the Beloved. Again, it is tempting read into it Ismāᶜīl’s psychology of conquest as well as the motivation of his soldiers. At the same time, we simply have no record that anyone outside Ismāʽīl’s court scribes actually heard these words. Will these words continue to be a window into history’s unfolding? Although the signature couplet offers a more mundane source for the author’s military success—“Ḫaṭāʾī is wealthy and generous” (8)—it is difficult to completely discount the spiritual sources of his mystique when considering such pieces.

Modern historiography presents the career of Shah Ismāᶜīl through what Max Weber taught us to identify as charisma: the belief that certain individuals are endowed with divine or supernatural powers, allowing them to attain temporal authority over those who hold the belief in their enchanted being. As the concept became more important as a sociological theory through the twentieth century, the onus shifted to the believers in the divine authority, and charisma rises and falls according to their whims. With the discovery of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry as an important historical document, insight into the nature of charismatic leadership was articulated. Part of the excesses of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s art came from how the concept of charisma developed in western, particularly Anglophone, academic scholarship. This notion of charisma, as it developed through the twentieth century with its hefty portion of history’s demagogues, became a symptom of coercion and perversion, with no room for the original Weberian association of charisma with extraordinary individuals.Footnote ⁹⁶ It is also significant that much of the analysis of Ismāᶜīl’s rise to power took place simultaneously during the modern establishment of a “theocracy” in Iran, generally viewed in the West as an aberrant, irrational political development.

But even during his own time, Shah Ismāᶜīl’s marriage of temporal with spiritual authority attracted violent criticism from his enemies, who would taunt him for his dervish identity. For the modern social scientist, however, this type of authority is reconciled intellectually by the theory of charisma. Focusing on the beliefs attributed to Shāh Ismāᶜīl’s followers, modern associations of irrational fanaticism shaped our views of believers of the past. Characterized as regressive, pagan and fanatical, the beliefs of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s followers were logically susceptible to the charismatic authority he cultivated. Compelled above all by apocalyptic expectation in its more recent sense, the primitive beliefs of the Turkmen tribes were assessed in the following terms: “The ideational and theological elements of the shiᶜitized Sufism of the Qizilbash appear to have been extremely crude, covering a substratum of shamanistic and anthropolatric folk religiosity.”Footnote ⁹⁷ The conversion of the Safavids’ Turkmen followers to Islam is deemed “recent and most superficial” whereas their “Central Asiatic beliefs and customs” are tenuous.Footnote ⁹⁸ The explanation for the rise of these charismatic warlords is often traced to a long period of instability ushered in by the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century, a trauma which laid fertile ground for the irrational belief in utopias on earth. Shah Ismāᶜīl, aware of his power over the impressionable hordes, expertly manipulated it: “Like the Mushaᶜshaᶜ before him, Ismāᶜīl varied his claim to mahdistic authority to the audience.”Footnote ⁹⁹

Unsavory aspects of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s royal career (not uncommon among autocrats), his atrocities and decadence, but especially the fanatical excesses of the Qizilbash are all attributed to a lingering pre-Islamic paganism. This pagan regression, located in a distant shamanistic Central Asian past, explains the intense devotion of the shah’s followers, manifesting itself in such incidents as cannibalism.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The gruesome aspects of warfare are certainly found in Safavid sources as well. But modern sources have tended to paint the incidents of cannibalism as a “practice,” a ritualistic element of Mongol culture.Footnote ¹⁰¹ The desecration of graves is also rooted in the ancient shamanic belief that the soul lived in the bones beyond death.Footnote ¹⁰² The list goes on: the use of the skull as a drinking vessel (the fate of Shaybānī Khān’s) is also a vestigial Mongol custom.Footnote ¹⁰³ Ismāᶜīl’s well-documented alcoholism during his later years is also ascribed in part to culture of Mongol libertinism.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Both the shah and his followers shared in a backwards culture that was “not in the least Islamic”:

The charismatic lens that reconciles the European reports, the contemporary polemic as well as equivocal Safavid chronicles and, above all, Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry, make decadence and divine inspiration theoretically determined. The cruelty of Shah Ismāᶜīl combined with the fanatical conduct of the Qizilbash constitute the dark side of charismatic authority, a perverse interruption of the rational progression of both history and Islam. Because the charismatic leader is no longer deserving ethically of the devotion he commands, the nature of this devotion can at least be accounted for sociologically—in the case of the Safavids, a regressive paganism combined with a climate of millennial expectation among their restless followers. For the most part, the interpretation of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry conformed to this view.

In recent years, new interpretations of Shah Ismāᶜīl’s power—the source of his authority, how it was wielded—are notable. Rather than the fanatical boy-messiah, what is emerging is a more rational figure, though not necessarily less despotic. There have always been suggestions of more pedestrian motivations for Shah Ismāᶜīl’s devoted following: a power vacuum in East Anatolia, adept leadership and especially the payment of troops. Informed by an undervalued chronicle entitled Futuhat-e Shahi, Anooshahr plays down the charismatic factor in the Safavids’ road to the Turkmen capital of Tabriz (definitively captured in 1501). This account suggests that it was not the divine favor of the adolescent murshid-i kamil as much as the material extravagance in his distribution of the spoils of war: “Ismaᶜil was the most generous paymaster for soldiers during a period of political breakdown and profusion of impoverished, plunder-hungry, vagabond armies,” Anooshahr states.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Like his poetry and private life, Ismāᶜīl’s public career was extravagant. The Venetian descriptions of extreme enthusiasm witnessed by an unarmed infantry could just as well have been chalked up to the promise of booty. The Italian observers do not say. We do have accounts, however, that enumerate the material rewards for their service, and Ismāᶜīl was deemed “far more generous than Alexander.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Margaret Meserve’s recent analysis of the European sources of Ismāᶜīl’s early career also highlights the material incentives through which he fostered popular support. According to a Greek observer in Karaman in the fall of 1502, “I am assured that he is enormously rich, not only because he rules a large country but also because he has taken so much from these lords whom he has killed; and he is very just and liberal with everyone.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸ According to Meserve, it was the new shah’s “zeal for redistributing wealth” that attracted as much attention from Europeans as the messianic promise of the early reports.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ These studies have introduced a more sober approach to Ismāᶜīl’s charisma, scaling back its intensity and citing more practical calculations of loyalty and leadership. Long lauded as a document reflecting his age, by downplaying Ismāᶜīl’s persona as a demi-god, the dīvān may not remain so.

The challenge of interpreting Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry is of course a familiar one in literary criticism: that is, to what extent should the interpretation of a particular text rely on its historical author and his context? And to what extent should other sources influence this interpretation? While it is true that in Shah Ismāᶜīl’s case certain external sources bear too heavily on the meaning of the poetry, sources outside the literary text itself cannot be totally irrelevant. Shah Ismāᶜīl was the monarch who established ithnā ᶜasharī Shīᶜism as the religion of state, defining the religious culture of early modern Iran. And not unusual for a pre-modern dynastic, he was also an accomplished poet, one who authored a significant amount of religious poetry as a direct expression of his loyalties: hymns to ᶜAlī and the Twelve Imams, laments for Karbala and apocalyptic visions. Shah Ismāᶜīl’s dīvān cannot be considered irrelevant to history —not yet—as the connection between art and life is too obvious. But whether it proves to be directly influential or not, what is being proposed here is that Shah Ismāᶜīl’s poetry was constructed as a literary form, authored by one clearly conscious of its place in the larger literary-religious culture.