The translator Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad b. Abī l-Riżā ʿAlavī Āvī

As his nisba implies, Āvī hailed from, or had links to, Āveh, probably the Āveh situated in the vicinity of Sāveh, which lay on the route between Kashan and Qumm.Footnote ⁵ Two celebrated eleventh-century men of letters hailed from this Āveh.Footnote ⁶ Its larger neighbour Sāveh, which had, prior to the destructive Mongol invasions of 617/1220-1, boasted a remarkable library,Footnote ⁷ produced in Āvī’s lifetime several bureaucrats and men of letters, including the vizier Saʿd al-Dīn Muḥammad Sāvajī (d. 711/1312) and the poet and panegyrist Salmān-i Sāvajī (c. 709-78/1309-76). Both of these individuals, who were contemporaries of Āvī, possessed links with the Ilkhanid administration and especially with the viziers Rashīd al-Dīn and Ghiyāth al-Dīn.Footnote ⁸ These factors provide helpful context for Āvī, concerning whom, apart from the few biographical and incidental details conveyed in TMI, little information has come to light. This small amount of material, which includes Āvī’s self-identification with emblems of the literary and secretarial arts, suggests that perhaps he too belonged to a family well-versed in the traditions of Arabic and Persian letters and familiar with bureaucratic service.Footnote ⁹

It seems highly likely, as several scholars have assumed, that Āvī was an Imāmī Shīʿī.Footnote ¹⁰ Among the circumstantial factors that might support this inference is the report of his contemporary Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī Qazvīnī (b. c. 680/1281-2, d. c. 750/1349), who described the population of Āveh as deeply committed (bi-ghāyat mutaʿaṣṣib) in their devotion to Imāmī Shīʿism, and often at odds with their neighbours in Sāveh, who were firmly Sunnī and Shāfiʿī.Footnote ¹¹ As scholars have pointed out, boundaries between ‘Sunnī’ and ‘Shīʿī’ Islam in early fourteenth-century north-western Iran and Azerbaijan were often indeterminate, although it is apparent that the period's many examples of ‘confessional ambiguity’ co-existed with manifestations, in specific moments and locations, of clearer sectarian demarcations.Footnote ¹² In this context, the internal evidence of TMI is highly suggestive, if not entirely conclusive regarding the confessional allegiance of the author, who wrote, it should be remembered, for a Sunnī vizier. Āvī’s few references to figures of religious significance from the early Islamic centuries are almost entirely imported, usually with little change, from RMI, whose author, probably a Muʿtazilite, is quite likely to have held the pro-ʿAlid sentiments prevalent among the Muʿtazila.Footnote ¹³ The figure who receives most attention, by far, is Salmān-i Fārisī (d. 35 or 36/665 or 666), whose origins in Isfahan are asserted and highlighted.Footnote ¹⁴ When, in one narrative, ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 13-23/634-44) appears as an interlocutor, Āvī omits the formula raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu with which Māfarrukhī had followed the caliph's name.Footnote ¹⁵ Both authors introduce ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and his son al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib with the title Amīr al-Muʾminīn;Footnote ¹⁶ Āvī also adds a reference and quotation from ʿAlī in his dhayl.Footnote ¹⁷ In Āvī’s time, the inclusion of Ḥasan among the early ‘caliphs’ would have been neither unusual, nor a marker of a firmly demarcated sectarian identity.Footnote ¹⁸ Also evident in TMI is Āvī’s deep attachment to the Prophet's family, which, in a phenomenon that transcended sectarian divisions, he shared with Sunnī and Shīʿī Muslims alike.Footnote ¹⁹

Apparently in quick succession, Āvī, following his arrival in Isfahan at an unspecified date, produced two translations from Arabic into Persian: the TMI that forms the subject of this essay, and the ʿAhdnāmeh, a translation of the ‘Letter’ of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661) to Mālik al-Ashtar (d. c. 37/658).Footnote ²⁰ The latter text survives in a copy produced in Isfahan and dated to the year 730/1330, that is, the year after Āvī’s completion of TMI. The copyist of this manuscript, Abū l-Maḥāsin Muḥammad b. Saʿd al-Nakhjavānī, known as Ibn al-Sāvajī, produced in the same period several other manuscripts, many related to the writings of ʿAlī; Ibn al-Sāvajī himself composed a Durrat al-maʿālī fī tarjamat al-laʾālī, a paraphrase in Persian of the Arabic Nathr al-laʾālī, a collection of the words of ʿAlī.Footnote ²¹ Āvī dedicated his ʿAhdnāmeh, as he did his TMI, to a vizier, namely Sharaf al-Dawla wa-l-Dīn ʿAlī al-Fāminīnī.Footnote ²²

Āvī wrote in an Isfahan that had recovered considerably since its devastation in the wake of the Mongol army's first advance roughly a century earlier, in 623/1226, and the extreme suppression of continuing local resistance that endured for decades, well into the reign of Abaqa Khan (r. 663-80/1265-82), after the city's final conquest in 638/1240-1. Modern scholars have discerned in the later period of Abū Saʿīd's reign both signs of stability and the beginnings of the disintegration that anticipated the end of the Ilkhanate,Footnote ²³ and the impact of the peace treaty concluded between Abū Saʿīd and the Mamluk ruler, al-Malik al-Nāṣir Muḥammad I b. Qalāwūn (r. 693-4/1293-4, 698-708/1299-1309, 709-41/1310-41), in 723/1323, after some sixty years of conflict, remains somewhat uncertain.Footnote ²⁴ There is ample evidence to suggest, however, that Isfahan had, by the time of Āvī’s arrival, benefited from the land and tax reforms initiated by Ghazan Khan (r. 694-703/1295-1304) and pursued by his successor Öljeytü (r. 703-16/1304-16).Footnote ²⁵ Ghazan had sponsored the foundation of a dār al-siyāda (a ‘house for sayyids’) in the city, and Mustawfī, who visited Isfahan during this period, reported the presence of numerous madrasas, khānaqāhs and charitable institutions established for purposes of benevolence (abwāb-i khayr);Footnote ²⁶ he also remarked on the active state of Isfahan's craftsmanship.Footnote ²⁷ Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, who visited in 727/1327, experienced generous hospitality in the zāwiya (khānaqāh) affiliated with the Shaykh ʿAlī b. Sahl, a student of al-Junayd.Footnote ²⁸ At the same time, the city retained its longstanding reputation for recurrent inter-communal conflict. According to Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, much of the fine and substantial city of Isfahan had fallen into ruin as a result of the still active fitna between ahl al-sunna and the rawāfiḍ.Footnote ²⁹ Like their counterparts in other urban centres, the citizens of Isfahan had resisted an attempt under Öljeytü to declare Imāmī Shīʿism the official religion of parts of the Ilkhanid kingdom.Footnote ³⁰ The number and variety of explanatory narratives generated by Öljeytü’s adoption of Shīʿī Islam, as well as reports of his subsequent return to Sunnī Islam, suggest that, in Judith Pfeiffer's words, Shīʿism represented “the exception, not the rule” in Ilkhanid Iran.Footnote ³¹ Isfahan and its environs, however, appear to have possessed a significant Shīʿī population; and the nearby shrine of Pīr-i Bakrān, where the shaykh was buried in 1303, contains an inscription naming the twelve imams.Footnote ³²

Tarjameh-yi Maḥāsin-i Iṣfahān

I shall begin my analysis of TMI with a discussion of Āvī’s preface, which, designed to forge a connection between the text to follow and its audience, provides useful contextual material. After examining a number of contextual factors, I shall turn to a consideration of Āvī’s purposes in selecting RMI as his source-text.

The extant manuscripts of TMI vary quite considerably in length.Footnote ³³ Some lack significant sections of introductory material; one omits substantial passages from the body of Āvī’s text; furthermore, the various manuscripts conclude at different points. On the basis of a manuscript thought likely to date from Āvī’s lifetime, ʿAbbās Iqbāl, in 1949, published an edition of the Persian text.Footnote ³⁴ Other relatively early manuscripts include an unsigned, undated copy preserved in the Chester Beatty Library, thought to date from the mid-fourteenth-century, and the copy, dated 884/1479, that formed the principal, if defective, basis for the detailed study of E. G. Browne, who published a thorough two-part summary of its contents in 1901.Footnote ³⁵ Two nineteenth-century copies, both produced in Isfahan, appear to preserve full versions of the text, in a form almost identical to the text reproduced in Iqbāl's edition.Footnote ³⁶ It would seem, then, that the earliest surviving manuscript and the nineteenth-century copies, all of which preserve the fullest versions of the text, provide a sound basis for the present study.

Āvī’s preface

In his preface, Āvī writes in his own person, his voice not yet mediated by Māfarrukhī or Māfarrukhī’s interlocutors. Nothing in TMI suggests that Āvī wrote in response to a commission; nor did he employ the common device of ascribing the impulse behind his composition to the entreaties of friends. Employing a different trope, Āvī adopts the posture of an outsider. Without means and dependent on the goodwill of strangers, he presents himself as a marginal, isolated figure, who rapidly became enchanted by the remarkable qualities of the city.Footnote ³⁷ In the supporting narrative, Āvī recounts that, having spent a period of time lamenting the (unspecified) misfortunes that had befallen him, he pondered his father's advice and the examples of his brother and uncles, and experienced a sudden moment of inspiration, which moved him to resolve to leave his homeland (vaṭan).Footnote ³⁸ Gathering the symbolic accoutrements of the student (and perhaps aspiring secretary)—a few leaves of paper, ink, pen-holder—he left the ‘house of sorrows’ (bayt al-aḥzān) that had been his home in Āveh, and after some days, passing through Kashan (as he recounts in verse), he reached Isfahan.Footnote ³⁹ In Isfahan, where he knew no one, he sought succour in a madrasa designated for strangers (madraseh-ī bi-rasm-i gharībān).Footnote ⁴⁰ As he passed through the streets and markets, Āvī avers that he found Isfahan greatly superior, by a factor of ten, to all that he had previously heard about it.Footnote ⁴¹ By chance, he recounts, he came across “a book by the name of Maḥāsin, which contained details of the singular qualities and beautiful features of Isfahan”.Footnote ⁴² Delighted by its contents and by Māfarrukhī’s pleasing use of language, he decided to translate it into Persian. Describing this impulse with metaphors drawn from clothing, Āvī explains his intention to divest the book of its (Arabic) durrāʿa and adorn it instead in the qabāʾ of Persian, to relieve the doubts of tāzī and pārsī, “so that ʿArab and ʿAjam might enjoy the good fortune of beholding its beauty and contemplating its perfection”.Footnote ⁴³ He judged that the contents of Māfarrukhī’s Risāla covered eight principal topics, and, arranging his translation accordingly, he lists the subjects of the eight thematic sections (sg. dhikr) into which he divided the material.Footnote ⁴⁴ Āvī concludes his preface with the dedication of his translation to the vizier Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad, in whose praise he includes a lengthy qaṣīdeh, in Persian, of his own composition; finally, he apologises for any imperfections and errors.Footnote ⁴⁵ Āvī recapitulates some of the points mentioned in his preface in the ‘continuation’ (dhayl) that follows his eighth dhikr. In his dhayl, he describes the activities involved in producing his translation as the revelation of (the meanings of) the Arabic expressions, which had been concealed; the renewal of the text in the Persian language; and the addition of records of recent events.Footnote ⁴⁶ He concludes this epilogue, as he had his preface, with verses in praise of Ghiyāth al-Dīn.Footnote ⁴⁷

The specific elements in Āvī’s account—his references to his origins in Āveh, his status as a student of the literary arts, his migration first to Kashan and next to Isfahan—reflect his accommodation of his particular circumstances to the structures of established literary convention. The author's despairing abandonment of his natal town, his unplanned travels in search of a hospitable place of residence, his poverty and reliance on the kindness and generosity of strangers, his rapture at his new surroundings and gratitude for an actual or anticipated improvement in his circumstances—these tropes conveyed the needs and aspirations, in a manner conditioned in accordance with the region's literary culture, of numerous itinerant or displaced individuals. The date of Āvī’s arrival in Isfahan remains unknown, but by the time of his writing in 729/1328-9 he had evidently spent long enough in the city to be able to report on, for example, the types and amounts of its revenues as well as the status of various buildings.Footnote ⁴⁸

Āvī’s expression of his circumstances and his dedication of TMI to the vizier Ghiyāth al-Dīn strongly suggest, I propose, that he sought access to the circles of the vizier, and that he composed TMI in the hope that it would bring him a means of economic support, whether in the form of remuneration for his ‘gift’ or a position in the chancery.Footnote ⁴⁹ The text, as will be seen in what follows, contains numerous allusions to viziers, and strongly implies a comparison between Ghiyāth al-Dīn and his Seljuk predecessor Niẓām al-Mulk (c. 408-85/1018-92), both of whom combined extensive patronage with extraordinary power in the military as well as the bureaucratic domains.Footnote ⁵⁰ It is instructive to consider Āvī’s TMI in conjunction with a composition completed in the same year, in Arabic, and dedicated to the same vizier, namely the mirror for viziers Minhāj al-wuzarāʾ wa-sirāj al-umarāʾ of Aḥmad al-Iṣfahbadhī, who, in a fairly explicit allusion to his aspirations, described his work as “a conveyance towards his [Ghiyāth al-Dīn's] lofty presence” and “a means of access to his High Gate”.Footnote ⁵¹

Ghiyāth al-Dīn and the late Ilkhanid western Iranian network

Ghiyāth al-Dīn was the son of Rashīd al-Dīn Fażl Allāh, the celebrated vizier of Ghazan Khan (r. 694-703/1295-1304) and his successor Muḥammad Khudābandeh Öljeytü (r. 1304-16).Footnote ⁵² Executed in 718/1318, towards the beginning of Abū Saʿīd's reign, Rashīd al-Dīn was, of course, also the remarkable author of the universal history Jāmiʿ al-tavārīkh or Tārīkh-i Rashīdī. Abū Saʿīd, who had ordered the execution of Rashīd al-Dīn, appointed the latter's son Ghiyāth al-Dīn to the vizierate in 727/1327, the same year that saw the fall of Amīr Chūpān (c. 660-727/1262-1327), the leading Mongol amīr of the late Ilkhanid period and effective ruler for the previous decade.Footnote ⁵³ Like his father, Ghiyāth al-Dīn wielded considerable power, not only in the administrative and cultural but also in the political and even military arenas (strikingly, several contemporary sources refer to him as Amīr Ghiyāth al-Dīn); according to al-Ṣafadī (696-764/1297-1363), Abū Saʿīd entrusted him with the reins of government (maqālīd al-mamālīk), and bestowed upon him advancement (irtiqāʾ) and sovereign authority (mulk) of a degree that no other vizier of his time had possessed.Footnote ⁵⁴ Again like his father, Ghiyāth al-Dīn did not long survive the death of his sovereign, and after the death of Abū Saʿīd, in the ensuing disintegration of the Ilkhanate, he too was killed.Footnote ⁵⁵

Ghiyāth al-Dīn occupied the most prominent position in an extensive network of administrators, men of letters, scholars and Sufi masters, interlinked with members of leading Mongol families, including the family of the Ilkhans, as well as the Ilkhanate's vassal rulers, who were frequently tied to the Ilkhanid ruling dynasty by marriage.Footnote ⁵⁶ Individuals affiliated through the period's networks often participated in them in multiple capacities; for example Vaṣṣāf, who wrote during the reigns of Ghazan, Öljeytü and Abū Saʿīd, was variously and often simultaneously an official in the financial administration, a member of the court, an admired poet and stylist, a panegyrist, and a historian.Footnote ⁵⁷ The overlapping connections—personal and familial, professional, religious and local—among members of these networks multiplied still further as the reach of individuals extended through the members of their families. The reach of the network was both geographical and institutional; it was commonplace, for instance, for viziers to install members of their families, as well as other members of their local, professional and religious networks, to positions throughout the kingdom.Footnote ⁵⁸

Western Iran and its extension north into Azerbaijan lay at the centre of the network over which Ghiyāth al-Dīn presided. The geographical area mapped by the urban centres of Tabriz, Qazvin, Īdhaj in Greater Luristan, Kashan and Isfahan, as far as the borders of Fars and Yazd, formed in this period an interconnected, coherent unit. Rashīd al-Dīn had owned property in several of these locations,Footnote ⁵⁹ many of which, for the first half of the fourteenth century, fell within one of three regional monetary divisions (north-western, south-western and north-eastern) in the Ilkhanid territories. Orientated towards Tabriz (designated dār al-salṭana), ʿIrāq-i ʿAjam, a section of the north-eastern division that included Isfahan, comprised a sub-region within the dīvān, and a distinctive sub-regional coinage linked Hamadan, Isfahan and Kashan with Greater and Lesser Luristan.Footnote ⁶⁰ The vitality of the network in which Ghiyāth al-Dīn, for the duration of his vizierate, occupied the leading position is apparent in the high level of mobility that typified the lives of several members of the various élites, who moved frequently among these urban centres. Rulers, soldiers, government officials and administrators moved constantly; so too did religious figures, scholars and holy men and writers, poets and scholars in search of patronage.Footnote ⁶¹ In a reflection of the mediated sovereignty that characterised much of the Ilkhanid kingdom, several writers moved between Isfahan and the court of the vassal or client dynasty of the Hazāraspids in Īdhaj, a distance of forty-five farsangs.Footnote ⁶² In accordance with their movements, writers frequently revised and rededicated their writings to new or potential patrons.Footnote ⁶³

This broad set of interconnections encompassed individuals who participated simultaneously in a variety of parallel or subsidiary networks, which intersected at various points. Notably, Ghiyāth al-Dīn cultivated and maintained close relations with several religious scholars and Sufi masters, in an era in which strong attachment to holy men and women was finding expression in the proliferating construction of shrines that gradually transformed the landscape.Footnote ⁶⁴ Ibn al-Fuwaṭī (642-723/1244-1323), whom Ghiyāth al-Dīn summoned to the Madrasa al-Rashīdiyya one evening in 726/1325-6, conveys the conviviality of his majlis, which, with a gathering of the leading men of religious and humanistic learning (aʿyān al-ʿulamāʾ wa-akābir al-fuḍalāʾ), he attended; after the group had performed the prayer, the soon-to-be vizier presided over a long evening of entertainments and refreshments.Footnote ⁶⁵ It is evident from the large number of writings, varying widely in genre and in scale, addressed or dedicated to him that Ghiyāth al-Dīn enjoyed the reputation of an especially active and generous patron.Footnote ⁶⁶ In addition to commissioning a number of writings and remunerating authors who offered him their unsolicited compositions, Ghiyāth al-Dīn almost certainly sponsored and supervised the production of the Great Mongol (‘Demotte’) Shāhnāmeh in Tabriz between 736/1336 and 737/1336.Footnote ⁶⁷

Perhaps the prime example of an individual's multiple points of connection within and across networks was the Shaykh ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī (659-736/1261-1336). ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla, initiated into the Kubrawiyya, belonged to a family of wealthy landlords and high officials in the Ilkhanate (his paternal and maternal uncles and his father had all served as viziers). About the same age as Arghun (r. 683-90/1284-91), he had grown up with him at the ordu, and at the age of fifteen had entered into his official service, before withdrawing in order to pursue the path of spiritual engagement. At a later date, his status as a leading Sufi teacher established, he interceded with the Ilkhan Abū Saʿīd on behalf of Amīr Chūpān.Footnote ⁶⁸ ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla, a prolific writer, also received visits from poets, including Kh^vājū Kirmānī (c. 689-750/1290-1349), himself a scion of a family of high social status, the composer of poetry addressed to a spectrum of political and spiritual figures, and an initiate into the Murshidiyya.Footnote ⁶⁹ Collaboration among members of the Ilkhanid family, their high administrators and members of religious institutions also took the form of dual patronage of shrines in the early fourteenth century, a trend that began under Öljeytü and continued after the end of the Ilkhanid state.Footnote ⁷⁰ Several of these individuals possessed considerable authority, of various kinds, and they were able to exercise it to appeal to and sometimes constrain the power of the ruler or his viziers.Footnote ⁷¹

The combination of textual and contextual evidence indicates the likelihood that Āvī’s principal incentive in producing TMI was the prospect of gaining access to the system of networks over which Ghiyāth al-Dīn occupied a position of primacy. But what factors, in his efforts to achieve this objective, led him to choose the particular mechanism of producing a Persian version of the Arabic RMI? I turn now to the relationship between RMI and TMI, and of Āvī to his predecessor, the littérateur Mufaḍḍal b. Saʿd b. al-Ḥusayn al-Māfarrukhī.

A multi-generic composition, Māfarrukhī’s Arabic Maḥāsin Iṣfahān combines aspects of the ‘local history’, the ‘literary anthology’, and faḍāʾil literature.Footnote ⁷² Unlike Āvī, Māfarrukhī, who composed his RMI during the reign of the Seljuk Sultan Malikshāh (r. 465-85/1073-92),Footnote ⁷³ belonged to one of Isfahan's long established families of notables.Footnote ⁷⁴ During the Buyid period (320-454/932-1062), several members of the Māfarrukhī family appear to have enjoyed associations with the city's rulers and the courtly élites. The family participated in the cultural life of the flourishing local court established in the city by the vizier and littérateur Abū l-Qāsim Ismāʿīl al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād (326-85/938-95), during the reigns of the Buyid rulers Abū Manṣūr Muʾayyad al-Dawla (r. 366-73/976-84) and Abū l-Ḥasan Fakhr al-Dawla (r. 373-87/984-97).Footnote ⁷⁵ After the Seljuk conquest of Isfahan in 443/1051, Mufaḍḍal and his father Saʿd became clients of the vizier Niẓām al-Mulk (c. 408-85/1018-92), and Mufaḍḍal's RMI includes an implicit dedication to Niẓām al-Mulk's son, the governor of Isfahan, Abū l-Fatḥ Muẓaffar Fakhr al-Mulk (d. 500/1106).Footnote ⁷⁶ During the reign of Malikshāh (r. 465-85/1073-92), who grew up in the environs of Isfahan and remained attached to it, Isfahan developed into the real and symbolic centre of Seljuk power.Footnote ⁷⁷ Niẓām al-Mulk, who had taken up residence in Isfahan in about 456/1063, transformed it into the focal point of the vast and powerful network that he had constructed across Iran.Footnote ⁷⁸ It was also at this time, however, that the city's established social and political structures, in which the Māfarrukhī family had long participated, experienced the profoundly dislocating effects of Niẓām al-Mulk's importing of notable families from Khurasan.Footnote ⁷⁹ In RMI, Māfarrukhī responded to a particular historical moment. It seems likely that he sought to convince the city's newly powerful élites of its worthiness to serve as the Seljuk ‘capital’,Footnote ⁸⁰ and of the enduring merits of Isfahan's indigenous notable families.Footnote ⁸¹ This perspective finds support in the extensive attention in RMI to the city's notables (ruʾasāʾ), and the wide range of individuals – including landowners and merchants – to whom he ascribes this status.Footnote ⁸²

From Arabic into Persian

As the preceding discussion of Āvī’s preface indicated, Āvī’s announced purpose in producing TMI was to broaden the accessibility of the engaging Arabic source-text for a Persian-speaking audience. He also states his decision to supplement the materials in his source-text with more recent materials. It is quickly apparent, however, that Āvī’s ‘translation’, like many other Persian renderings of prestigious Arabic texts, diverges substantially from its source-text. Some of Āvī’s most striking interventions in Māfarrukhī’s text occur at the level of structure: whereas Māfarrukhī composed his RMI as a continuous, undivided text, Āvī divided the contents into sections, which he rearranged into eight thematically differentiated divisions. In another basic alteration of the source-text's structure and contents, Āvī omits considerable amounts of material and adds new matter, including substantial quantities of verse.Footnote ⁸³ To this eight-part structure Āvī added, as previously indicated, a preface and a dhayl, in which he included certain passages from Māfarrukhī’s text, augmented, as his choice of the term dhayl implied, with materials that reflected the passage of time since RMI’s composition. Some of the translator's modifications pass without remark. In several cases, however, Āvī announces his interventions; introducing his fourth dhikr, for example, he adds the clarifying words, “on the excellent qualities of the interior and exterior parts of the city … in former times and in the era of the translator”.Footnote ⁸⁴ Indeed, Āvī, who refers to himself as bandeh-yi mutarjim or mutarjim, repeatedly draws attention to his relationship with his predecessor, to whom he refers as Ṣāḥib-i Risāleh-yi Maḥāsin.Footnote ⁸⁵

Several aspects of Māfarrukhī’s Risālat Maḥāsin Iṣfahān must have rendered it an especially promising point of departure for a bilingual literary specialist seeking access to the city's cultural and administrative élites. Adopting the earlier Arabic work as a foundation for his new composition allowed Āvī to approach his intended audience with a degree of indirectness, in accordance with the conventional requirement of authorial modesty; especially importantly in an unsolicited text, it also provided him with a means of addressing this audience in terms of its particular cultural code. RMI’s praise of Isfahan and its emphasis on the city's singular qualities provided Āvī, in the pose of the unfamiliar newcomer, with the opportunity to add laudatory materials of his own selection and composition. His source-text's preoccupation with the local municipal leaders invited him to expand this focus to accommodate contemporaneous notables. RMI’s attention to viziers and its implied dedication to Fakhr al-Mulk furnished Āvī with a nice pretext to dedicate his TMI to Ghiyāth al-Dīn, similarly a scion of an illustrious family of viziers. Finally, RMI’s generic hybridity provided Āvī with an opportunity to demonstrate his mastery of a variety of linguistic and literary skills, appropriate to the chancellery's practice of inshāʾ, and to display his affinity with the cultural vocabulary of the bilingual urban and courtly élites.

The presentation of Isfahan

RMI’s celebration of Isfahan's distinctive qualities and notable figures furnished Āvī with the opportunity to link himself with a repertoire of materials of immediate interest and appeal to his intended audience. It relieved him of the literary imperative of explaining and justifying his decision to write in praise of a city to which he had, according to his conventional self-presentation, only recently arrived, and it provided him with a means of accommodating the set of tropes discussed in the previous pages. Furthermore, Āvī used this opportunity to supplement the materials recorded in his source. He added large amounts of Persian and some Arabic poetry, including verses of his own composition in both languages, and he added laudatory treatments of contemporary notables to the preoccupation with the merits of the urban ruʾasāʾ in his source-text.

In an example of his adaptation of RMI to accommodate contemporary notables, Āvī reworked a section in his source-text devoted to the remarkable features of locations in the vicinity of Isfahan. In the corresponding section of RMI, Māfarrukhī narrates a story concerning a qanāt, in the region of Kashan, from which Arabs reportedly drank at their peril.Footnote ⁸⁶ He proceeds to discuss the remarkable properties of a series of nearby villages (sg. qarya). Among these locations is the town of Yazd. Jürgen Paul has noted the ironic distance that Māfarrukhī deploys in this sequence of narratives, which he concludes with a wry reference to himself as a narrator of worthless tales (asāṭīr).Footnote ⁸⁷ At the conclusion of this section, Māfarrukhī includes his own verses in praise of the fine natural qualities of Isfahan.Footnote ⁸⁸

Āvī narrates the story (ḥikāyat) of the kārīz near Kashan in a fashion very similar to that of his source.Footnote ⁸⁹ His accounts of the other villages (sg. dih) largely correspond to the reports in RMI, although in one case, concerning the spring at Mount Dinārat in Qumdār, Āvī substitutes a different narrative for the tale adduced in RMI.Footnote ⁹⁰ Strikingly, however, Āvī omits the city of Yazd from his sequence, and proceeds instead to discuss the remaining locations treated in his source.Footnote ⁹¹ It is only after reaching the end of this sequence that Āvī turns his attention to Yazd, which, treated separately from the previously mentioned locations, appears as the culmination of the section. His purpose in highlighting Yazd was to avail himself of the occasion to praise at length Shams al-Dīn [Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad Ibn al-Niẓām al-Ḥusaynī] Yazdī (d. 733/1332-3), a prominent member of the family of sayyids known as the Āl-i Niẓām. Shams al-Dīn's father Rukn al-Dīn (d. 732/1331-2), like his son naqīb and qāḍī of the Shāfiʿīs, had constructed a complex, the ʿIṣmatiyya, in Isfahan, and Shams al-Dīn, married to a sister of Ghiyāth al-Dīn, had been appointed by him to the office of qāḍī l-quḍāt and to the deputy vizierate over the kingdom's territories.Footnote ⁹² In other words, he was a highly placed and widely admired local figure in the network(s) to which Āvī sought access.

In the continuation of this section, Āvī omits his predecessor's self-referential irony and proceeds directly to poetry in praise of Isfahan. In another reshaping of his source-text, he adduces in the first instance verses of his own composition, in Arabic, in praise of Isfahan; only after these verses does he cite the verses of his predecessor Māfarrukhī, which he retains in the Arabic original.Footnote ⁹³ This pairing of Māfarrukhī’s verses with verses of his own, sometimes in Arabic and sometimes in Persian, is a strategy that Āvī replicates in several instances in TMI; it reinforces his linking of ṣāḥib al-risāla with bandeh-yi mutarjim, of the newcomer with his predecessor, who had belonged to the literary circles of the city's rulers and viziers.

The notables of the city and the prominence of viziers

In his reworking of Māfarrukhī’s RMI, Āvī continued and extended his predecessor's striking attention to the local notables of Isfahan. The prominence of this theme in his source-text allowed Āvī to appeal in an indirect manner to the social category to which he sought access. Emulating Māfarrukhī, Āvī reports accounts and records verses, including poetry of his own composition, in praise of numerous contemporary figures holding posts in the administrative and military leadership. He extolled, in addition to the previously mentioned Shams al-Dīn Yazdī, the Amīr Muẓaffar al-Dīn Shaykh ʿAlī b. Amīr Muḥammad b. Girāy Īdājī (a descendant of Arghun and Nawrūz), who had assumed the governorship of Isfahan after the accession of Ghazan, and his deputy Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Shujāʿ al-Dīn Lunbānī Iṣfahānī;Footnote ⁹⁴ the Ṣāḥib-Dīvān Qāżī Niẓām al-Dīn Iṣfahānī;Footnote ⁹⁵ the naqīb Maḥmūd b. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib al-Ḥusaynī;Footnote ⁹⁶ the vizier Sharaf al-Dawla wa-l-Dīn ʿAlī al-Fāminīnī, to whom he dedicated his ʿAhdnāmeh;Footnote ⁹⁷ and the recently deceased Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Ashtarjānī (fl. 713-17/1313-17), vizier to the Mongol Amīr Sevinj b. Shishi, and a leading mustawfī in the reign of Abū Saʿīd.Footnote ⁹⁸ All of these individuals occupied prominent positions in Isfahan. Many (perhaps like Āvī himself) belonged to families of sayyids, established in the region's towns and cities; many held offices as raʾīs, naqīb and nāʾib as well as vazīr and ṣāḥib-dīvān; many dispensed patronage and sponsored charitable works in their cities; and many belonged to the system of networks affiliated with Ghiyāth al-Dīn.Footnote ⁹⁹ The extensive list of contemporary and near-contemporary figures upon whom Āvī lavishes praise was perhaps designed to be as inclusive as possible, in an environment in which, as had been the case in earlier periods, the élites of Isfahan were often fractured by competing interests, and alliances frequently crossed ethnic and cultural divides. Furthermore, by invoking a varied set of notables, Āvī availed himself of the opportunity to demonstrate his proficiency in deploying the appropriate forms of address, in accordance with the rules of inshāʾ.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Among the notables to whom Māfarrukhī had paid attention in RMI were some of the most eminent viziers associated with the city. Āvī, addressing himself to the most powerful vizier of his own age, combined Māfarrukhī’s interest in viziers of the past with corresponding attention to viziers of the present. He retains most of Māfarrukhī’s accounts concerning al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād and Niẓām al-Mulk,Footnote ¹⁰¹ and adds poems in praise of Ghiyāth al-Dīn and his father Rashīd al-Dīn.Footnote ¹⁰² By adding contemporary figures to Māfarrukhī’s treatment of viziers, Āvī is able to imply links between the illustrious viziers of the past and the current vizier, to whose patronage he aspired. His implied parallel between Niẓām al-Mulk and Ghiyāth al-Dīn echoes the explicit comparison that al-Ṣafadī, finding no counterpart to Ghiyāth al-Dīn's extraordinary (military as well as bureaucratic) power in his own time, would evoke, in describing Ghiyāth al-Dīn's rank as ‘of the kind held by Niẓam al-Mulk’ (kānat rutbatuhu min nawʿ rutbat Niẓām al-Mulk).Footnote ¹⁰³

In devoting substantial attention in TMI to viziers, Āvī participated in the elevation of the office of the vizierate evident in several early fourteenth-century writings. As scholars have pointed out, most authors of the period's historiographical, administrative and advisory sources were affiliated, often over several generations, with the administrative and secretarial professions, which shaped their perspectives.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ If these writers approached the topic of the vizierate with a professional and familial predisposition to attach high value to the office at the apex of the administration, they also displayed an awareness of the immense power of specific viziers in their own lifetimes. Rashīd al-Dīn and Ghiyāth al-Dīn participated actively in the political life of the Ilkhanid state: members of a family distributed at various levels in the administrative hierarchy, these two individuals engaged in negotiations at the highest levels of power, possessed great wealth and extensive estates, and participated, as previously noted, in military as well as administrative activities.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ If these two individuals, like certain members of the Juvaynī family, had risen to the highest levels of power, the vizieral office and its associated duties varied considerably throughout the Ilkhanid period; even the titles ascribed to the office's holders varied,Footnote ¹⁰⁶ and the frequent practice of dividing the office between two, often mutually hostile individuals constrained the authority and hampered the effectiveness of both parties.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The fourteenth-century writers who highlighted the office distinguished among its more and less effective holders.

Notably, several early fourteenth-century authors of compositions devoted to the vizierate and dedicated to viziers of the Ilkhanid period attached similar importance to viziers of the Seljuk era. Niẓām al-Mulk, celebrated during his lifetime and remembered more or less ever since, as Neguin Yavari has written, as “the archetypal good vizier in Islamic history”,Footnote ¹⁰⁸ appears prominently in the historiographical and literary discourses of the Ilkhanid period as the supremely efficacious administrator and quintessentially sagacious counsellor.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Writing in the year 725/1325, two years before Ghiyāth al-Dīn's appointment to the vizierate, the Munshī Nāṣir al-Dīn Kirmānī completed his Nasāʾim al-asḥār min laṭāʾim al-akhbār, a treatment of the viziers of the Islamic period, grouped according to the dynasty they served. Kirmānī devoted particularly extensive sections to the viziers of the Seljuk and Ilkhanid periods. In the former case, he included the biographies of dozens of figures, many of them relatives of Niẓām al-Mulk; his presentation conveys the scale of the network over which the Seljuk vizier presided.Footnote ¹¹⁰

It is not surprising that Āvī’s text reflects this contemporary perception of viziers’ significance. In portraying the great viziers of the Seljuk period, above all Niẓām al-Mulk, as pre-figurations of the viziers of his own time, he joined certain of his contemporaries. For instance, in his Ẓafarnāmeh, a versified history dedicated to Ghiyāth al-Dīn, Mustawfī depicted the figures of Buzurgmihr and Niẓām al-Mulk as precursors of Rashīd al-Dīn, the vizier to whom Mustawfī owed his position in the financial administration.Footnote ¹¹¹ Offering a perspective from the Mamluk territories, al-Ṣafadī, who, as previously mentioned, declared the scope of Ghiyāth al-Dīn's authority unparalleled among the viziers of his time, expressly likened his status (rutba) to that of Niẓām al-Mulk.Footnote ¹¹²

An opportunity for bilingual literary display

The multi-generic RMI belongs within the literary-cultural repertoire of Arabic adab. Jürgen Paul has drawn attention to Māfarrukhī’s subtle use of narrative techniques to convey implicit meanings within the context of a shared cultural code.Footnote ¹¹³ David Durand-Guédy has noted Māfarrukhī’s deployment of specific rhetorical devices and his fondness for rare words.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Indeed, the display of his fluency in the literary arts, the establishment of his sharing in the cultural system that correlated with the repertoire of adab, and by implication the demonstration of the excellent Arabic skills of the indigenous Isfahani élites were, in all likelihood, among Māfarrukhī’s principal authorial objectives.Footnote ¹¹⁵ These objectives coincided with the motivations that prompted Āvī, at a remove of two-and-a-half centuries, to rework RMI in the guise of a ‘translation’.

Āvī’s reworkings of RMI were designed to display his rhetorical and literary skills and his cultural fluency. Emulating Māfarrukhī’s example, Āvī combines prose and poetry in a text that demonstrates his familiarity with the poetic repertoires of both his source and his target languages. The close interplay of prose and poetry constituted an important feature of the historiography of the Ilkhanid period, as the example of Vaṣṣāf, perhaps most notably, displays.Footnote ¹¹⁶ In an illustration of Āvī’s exhibition of his skill in the arts of inshāʾ, he invokes, when announcing his decision to sub-divide Māfarrukhī’s continuous text into eight parts, the eight bearers of God's Throne and the eight Gates of Paradise (hasht ḥamaleh-yi ʿarsh, hasht dar-i bihisht), and neatly links his reworking of his source with the cosmic order; the passage recalls his contemporary Aḥmad al-Iṣfahbadhī’s quotation of the maxim ‘the number ten is auspicious’ in announcing his arrangement of Minhāj al-wuzarāʾ wa-sirāj al-umarāʾ into ten chapters.Footnote ¹¹⁷

Not surprisingly, Āvī’s reworkings involve a degree of ‘Persianisation’. A substantial amount of the Arabic poetry quoted in Māfarrukhī’s RMI does not reappear in TMI.Footnote ¹¹⁸ While he dispenses with a significant number of his source-text's Arabic verses, Āvī adds large amounts of Persian poetry. He draws especially on the verses of recent and contemporary poets from western and north-western Iran, many of whom were or had been resident in Isfahan: Khāqānī Shīrvānī (b. Shirvan, c. 521/1127; d. Tabriz, between 582/1186-7 and 595/1199);Footnote ¹¹⁹ Khāqānī’s twelfth-century contemporary and sometimes rival, Mujīr al-Dīn Baylaqānī of Arran (Azerbaijan) (d. c. 594/1197-8);Footnote ¹²⁰ Abū l-Fażl Kamāl al-Dīn Ismāʿīl Iṣfahānī (b. c. 568/1172-3; d. c. 635/1237);Footnote ¹²¹ and Saʿd al-Dīn Saʿīd Haravī (d. 766/1364-65).Footnote ¹²²

In another example of ‘Persianising’, Āvī integrates several references to the Iranian cultural past into his text. Māfarrukhī had already referred to certain figures remembered from the Iranian past, such as Nūshīrvān and Jam(shīd);Footnote ¹²³ but Āvī pursues the pattern, especially in poetic contexts. In accordance with the code of Persian poetics, for instance, Āvī invokes Mānī for the sublime beauty of his painting.Footnote ¹²⁴ Also prominent are Āvī’s references to figures from the Shāhnāmeh, a pattern in keeping with the extensive use of the poem in the Ilkhanid period in a wide variety of literary, artistic and architectural contexts. Āvī cites the long qaṣīdeh, composed in 724/1323-4, of his contemporary Saʿd al-Dīn Saʿīd Haravī, in which the poet likens the Isfahanis to the kings and heroes of the Shāhnāmeh.Footnote ¹²⁵ The poet and translator drew upon prevalent contemporaneous associations of the city with the epic tradition: Mustawfī narrated accounts of Isfahan's foundation by the Pīshdādī Ṭahmūrath, Jamshīd or Dhū l-Qarnayn, and reported that Kayqubād, first of the Kayānids, had made it his dār al-mulk, ushering in a period of extensive cultivation and population growth, as people flocked to the city.Footnote ¹²⁶ Āvī, furthermore, invokes the Pīshdādī Jamshīd in a panegyric in praise of Ghiyāth al-Dīn,Footnote ¹²⁷ and evoked associations of the epic past with the vizier, whose interest in the Shāhnāmeh has been mentioned.Footnote ¹²⁸ Āvī’s use of the kings and heroes of the Shāhnāmeh mirrors the work of his contemporary Mustawfī, whose involvement with the Shāhnāmeh induced him to produce an edition of the poem,Footnote ¹²⁹ and whose Ẓafarnāmeh, dedicated to the vizier, alluded to Firdawsī’s poem in its use of the metre mutaqārib.Footnote ¹³⁰

If Āvī’s TMI displays several instances of Persianising, almost equally striking is its conspicuous use of Arabic. While he exchanged amounts of Māfarrukhī’s Arabic verses for more recent, and local, verses in Persian, Āvī also retained substantial amounts of the Arabic poetry that he encountered in Māfarrukhī’s work—without, however, providing translations or paraphrases in a single case. Furthermore, Āvī selects and cites additional Arabic verses, including a long Arabic poem of the late Qāżī Niẓām al-Dīn Iṣfahānī, whom he describes as a master of Arabic and Persian poetry and prose (ṣāḥib-dīvān-i mamālik-i naẓm va-nathr-i ʿarab va-ʿajam).Footnote ¹³¹ Notably, the translator includes several examples of his own Arabic poetry.Footnote ¹³² When broaching a topic, such as the excellence of the Zendeh-Rud, he quite frequently begins with Arabic and Persian verses, which he quotes in that order.Footnote ¹³³ Āvī’s treatment of Isfahani speech is of particular interest in this regard. In RMI, Māfarrukhī had recounted a number of narratives that culminate in citations of direct speech in the distinctive verbal patterns of Isfahan. Māfarrukhī transcribed these phrases in accordance with their sounds, then supplied translations into the standard written language of Arabic. In TMI, Āvī follows Māfarrukhī’s model in transcribing the Isfahani phrases, but translates or paraphrases them variously. In one case, he translates the Isfahani speech into standard literary Persian;Footnote ¹³⁴ in another instance, he translates a phrase into Persian, and follows his Persian translation with Māfarrukhī’s Arabic rendering;Footnote ¹³⁵ in yet another case, he takes Māfarrukhī’s terse rendering of an Isfahani phrase into Arabic prose as an occasion to craft an Arabic verse of his own.Footnote ¹³⁶ It seems clear from the range of these authorial choices that Āvī’s principal concern in his treatment of Isfahani diction had little to do with rendering it comprehensible to his Persian-speaking, largely Isfahani audience.

Āvī’s TMI, then, is hardly a monolingual product in the target language of Persian. It seems that Āvī intended to make RMI the foundation for a work in which Persian predominated, especially in its prose sections, but which assumed full conversance with the source and target languages on the part of a bilingual if not multi-lingual audience. His contemporary Aḥmad al-Iṣfahbadhī, whose mirror for viziers functioned as a vehicle to exhibit its author's fitness for secretarial and administrative service, opted to write entirely in Arabic.Footnote ¹³⁷ Service in the chancellery required fluency and expertise in both Arabic and Persian, a bilingual dexterity demonstrated in the documents, official correspondence, historiographical and advisory writings of the munshīs and mustawfīs who dominated the period's literary production. Vaṣṣāf, who combined his literary activities with his service in an official administrative post, incorporates copious examples of Arabic as well as Persian poetry into his historiographical text, and records his composition of Arabic and Persian panegyrics for Geikhatu Khan (r. 690-4/1291-5), as well as epistles (chand risāleh) and discourses (maqālāt).Footnote ¹³⁸ Parts of Rashīd al-Dīn's corpus, according to the express instructions in his vaqfnāmeh, were to be copied annually in Persian and Arabic.Footnote ¹³⁹ Āvī’s contemporary, Muḥammad b. Hindūshāh Nakhjavānī (c. 679-768/1280-1366), a native speaker of neither language, both stipulated and exemplified the requisite bilingualism in his administrative manual Dastūr al-kātib fī taʿȳin al-marātib, commissioned by the vizier Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Surviving texts of the Ilkhans’ correspondence with the Ayyubid and Mamluk rulers of Syria and Egypt, and of several of their proclamations to their Arabic-speaking subjects, survive in Arabic versions, sometimes intermixed with Persian phrases. In many cases initially composed in Mongolian, the extant recensions of these documents display the obvious requirement of translation into Arabic at some point in their transmission to their recipients.Footnote ¹⁴¹ The dīvān employed official translators, in addition to which many individuals in the Ilkhans’ service were proficient in two or more languages.Footnote ¹⁴² Preparation of a ‘translation’ provided Āvī with a vehicle to display just such bilingual proficiency.

This interpretation of Āvī’s undertaking finds further support in his placement of Arabic materials in conspicuous locations in TMI. For example, he opens his first, seventh and eighth chapters with Arabic verses, in the last-mentioned case verses of his own composition. He opens his first dhikr with an unattributed pair of verses in Arabic that do not appear in Māfarrukhī’s text, and ends it with four lines of the Arabic verse of al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād, which, despite Māfarrukhī’s inclusion of examples of the Ṣāḥib's poetry, do not appear in RMI either.Footnote ¹⁴³ After a brief sentence that introduces the town of Jayy at the opening of the second dhikr, Āvī cites three lines of the Arabic poetry of Abū ʿĀmir al-Jarwaʾānī, which also do not appear in RMI; he ends this dhikr with long sections of Arabic verse taken directly from his source.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ An Arabic verse of al-Buḥturī (206-84/821-97) provides the poetic conclusion to the third dhikr.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ He begins his seventh dhikr with four Arabic verses of his own, and he finishes it with the previously mentioned poetic treatment in Arabic of an Isfahani expression.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ He opens his eighth dhikr with a poem of his own composition in Arabic,Footnote ¹⁴⁷ and he ends his dhayl with a final panegyric in Arabic.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ Furthermore, when he introduces Arabic verses taken directly from his source-text, he not infrequently retains Māfarrukhī’s introductory phrases (for example, wa-qāla [al-shāʿir] fī qaṣīda, wa-qāla ayḍan, wa-li-baʿḍihim yadhkuru fīhi … fī qaṣīda, wa-min qaṣīda lahu) in their original Arabic wordings.Footnote ¹⁴⁹

Not only does Āvī include Arabic as well as Persian materials in TMI; he also combines the two languages in a demonstration of bilingual interplay between Arabic and Persian. In his dhayl, he includes a four-line, mostly Persian poem in which the penultimate (third) line is entirely in Arabic, and the remaining three lines end in Arabic words and expressions; for example, the phrases li-l-ḥurūb rijāl and ʿalā l-ijmāl form the rhymes of the second and fourth lines respectively.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ When he declares that it is imperative to adduce some of the poetry in Arabic and Persian in praise of the city, he begins with the local eleventh-century poet and linguist Dhū l-lisānayn Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad al-Naṭanzī (d. 497/1103 or 499/1105), in Arabic.Footnote ¹⁵¹ He cites mulammaʿ verses, which mix Arabic and Persian hemistiches; one of these poems is a panegyric in praise of Ghiyāth al-Dīn.Footnote ¹⁵² In this conscious demonstration of bilingual artistry, Āvī avails himself of the appropriate materials in his source, and at the same time emulates the bilingual oeuvres of the poets Khāqānī, Mujīr al-Dīn Baylaqānī and Kamāl al-Dīn Iṣfahānī, poets whose verses he cites repeatedly.Footnote ¹⁵³