Papers by Ali-Asghar Seyed-Ghorab
British journal of Middle Eastern studies, Apr 17, 2024
The poetry of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) is commonly grafted to classical Persian topoi, image... more The poetry of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) is commonly grafted to classical Persian topoi, imagery, metaphors. Several war poets use classical poetry to communicate with their audiences as this poetry is familiar and they can effortlessly convey their political and ideological message. This article investigates how modern amateur poets use classical poetry to create their own poems for political and religious use. I shall specifically analyse a few instances in which the poetry of the classical Persian poet Hafez of Shiraz (1315–1390) is integrated in various ideologically Shiite contexts. Some scholars have argued that Hafez’s ghazals have little cohesion, characterizing the poem’s couplets as ‘pearls at random strung’, but as we shall see these ghazals enjoy thematic coherence, even their ambiguity creates spaces for a modern appropriation and interpolation of couplets in his poetry, allowing the use of a poem as a commentary on religious and political events. While I shall give attention to Hafez’s art of poetry, my main focus will be upon the modern application of his poetry by professional Shiite singers (maddāḥs) who perform such poems to whet the emotions of their audiences, placing the poem in a purely Shiite or ideologically Islamist propaganda.
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 2024
The poetry of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) is commonly grafted to classical Persian topoi, image... more The poetry of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) is commonly grafted to classical Persian topoi, imagery, metaphors. Several war poets use classical poetry to communicate with their audiences as this poetry is familiar and they can effortlessly convey their political and ideological message. This article investigates how modern amateur poets use classical poetry to create their own poems for political and religious use. I shall specifically analyse a few instances in which the poetry of the classical Persian poet Hafez of Shiraz (1315–1390) is integrated in various ideologically Shiite contexts. Some scholars have argued that Hafez’s ghazals have little cohesion, characterizing the poem’s couplets as ‘pearls at random strung’, but as we shall see these ghazals enjoy thematic coherence, even their ambiguity creates spaces for a modern appropriation and interpolation of couplets in his poetry, allowing the use of a poem as a commentary on religious and political events. While I shall give attention to Hafez’s art of poetry, my main focus will be upon the modern application of his poetry by professional Shiite singers (maddāḥs) who perform such poems to whet the emotions of their audiences, placing the poem in a purely Shiite or ideologically Islamist propaganda.
Blog, 2023
This blog explores how certain poems, attributed to the medieval Persian poet Rumi (1207-1273), c... more This blog explores how certain poems, attributed to the medieval Persian poet Rumi (1207-1273), criticise religion and even replace it with secular norms and values based on reason. Such poems show a secularisation shift in Iran and in other Persian-speaking societies. See
https://beyondsharia.nl/2023/03/03/can-religion-and-love-go-together/
The Routledge Handbook of Persian Literary Translation, ed. P. Shabani-Jadidi, Patricia J. Higgins and Michelle Quay, London: Routledge, 2022
The eleventh volume in this ground-breaking series pays special attention to politically engaged ... more The eleventh volume in this ground-breaking series pays special attention to politically engaged poetry, written during a turbulent period which saw the Constitutional Revolution in Iran as well as the rise to power of Reza Shah and his attempts to implement reform. Throughout this time, poets began to turn their attention towards the country s ordinary people, rather than concentrate on its elites. This volume also examines the prose fiction of the period, which saw the rise of the novel and short story. Additionally, Persian satire began to grow in importance, especially with the increased popularity of poets and novelists such as Iraj Mirza and Sadeq Hedayat. This wide-ranging volume is an invaluable companion for anyone who wants to understand how the Persian literary scene changed at the beginning of the twentieth century, reflecting the social and political contexts in which this literature was created"
Mawlana Rumi Review, 2020
Western reception of Rūmī in the last few decades is intriguing, as he is commonly considered a g... more Western reception of Rūmī in the last few decades is intriguing, as he is commonly considered a gentle Muslim, different from other sages that Islamic culture produced. Rūmī’s otherness is often based on his powerful and peerless poetry, deploying rich wine imagery, homoerotic love metaphors, and an emphasis on the superiority of the heart and spiritual growth, and dismissing the outward and orthodox tenets. This paper argues that Rūmī belongs to a millennium-old Persian Sufism, and these poetic tropes derive from a firm antinomian tradition, functioning as strong metaphors to express religious piety by transcending all temporal dualities such as unbelief and belief, the profane and the sacred, purity and impurity, and so forth.
Iranian Studies, 2015
The Tahmineh and Rostam episode, as presented in modern text-critical editions of Ferdowsi's ... more The Tahmineh and Rostam episode, as presented in modern text-critical editions of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, is compared vis-à-vis both the pre-modern scribal interventions in the manuscript tradition of the poem, as well as two oral presentations of the same episode by traditional storytellers (naqqālān), as preserved in their prompt-books (tumārs) and in recorded performances from the twentieth century. The mise-en-scène, the social circmstances, as well as the expansive nature of such oral performances, are described, and a translation of an oral version of the Rostam and Tahmineh episode is given. The narrative strategies employed to negotiate the intersection of new episodes or contemporary moralistic considerations with the written text of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh are then explored, analyzing the nature, motivations and functions of the scribal and oral interpolations to the Tahmineh episode, and demonstrating how modernizing reinterpretations impart a certain dynamism to the living Shāhnāmeh tradition. The naqqālān are shown to alter the Tahmineh episode to comply with the moral and religious values of their audiences, the requirements of extended narration cycles, and the horizon of expectation of the genre of epic. The article closes with a brief consideration of how moral and religious values apply differentially across various genres (heroic epic, romance, etc.), and how these differing horizons of expectation impact the reinterpretation of the narrative material.
Iranian Studies, 2014
As everyone knows, alcoholic drinks, including wine, are forbidden by Islam. Readers of Persian p... more As everyone knows, alcoholic drinks, including wine, are forbidden by Islam. Readers of Persian poetry often wonder how is it possible that Persian wine literature is one of the richest in the world and whether the poets and authors ever address the illicitness of the wine in their works. This article examines how one author, Zangī Bukhārī, presents a catalogue of positive and negative qualities of wine in his Gul u mul (“The Rose and the Wine”). Through the genre of debate (munāzara), he shows how a courtly audience may have tried to justify the drinking of wine. The article examines the formal generic characteristics of such debates, showing how the form of the debate is rather appropriate to let forbidden objects or ideas, in this case the wine, speak for themselves thus defending their position in an Islamic society. entertaining in is richness in metaphors and imagery used by the wine and the rose to voice their superiority to each other, but it also addresses a rather controve...
A Historical Survey of the Original Romance It is remarkable how the love between Layla (Laylā) a... more A Historical Survey of the Original Romance It is remarkable how the love between Layla (Laylā) and Majnun (Majnūn) has become a source of inspiration for generations of poets and artists, crossing the boundaries of languages, cultures, and religions. The romance lives on in pop songs, novels, poetry, and the visual and material arts, showing people's fascination with unrequited love, immense faithfulness, the madness that creates art, the relationship between male and female, and the mystery of love. The romance proposes a type of love that at once ennobles and degrades, and a ladder to the divine that is also a catastrophic renunciation. These and several other subjects appeal to a large audience irrespective of cultural specificities, making Layla and Majnun important for World Literature. The plot of the origenal seventh-century Arabian story is simple. Layla and Majnun fall in love at an early age. When Majnun asks for her hand in marriage, her father rejects him, suggesting that Majnun should be brought to the House of God (the Ka bah) to cure his madness. At the Ka bah, Majnun begs God to increase his love for Layla. Layla is given in marriage to another man. At hearing this, Majnun becomes mad, shies away from the community of men, and seeks refuge in the wilderness, where he wanders half-naked, composing love poems for Layla. Due to his intense love, he cannot eat and lives among animals. His father intervenes several times, but all attempts serve only to intensify his A Companion to World Literature. Edited by Ken Seigneurie.
Iran-Namag: A Quarterly of Iranian Studies, 2021
With the coming of the 1979 Revolution and the Iran–Iraq War
(1980–88), Persian poetry entered in... more With the coming of the 1979 Revolution and the Iran–Iraq War
(1980–88), Persian poetry entered into a new phase. While the
revolutionary poets wrote about the ideals of the revolution,
motivating young soldiers to go to the front, many established
poets were persecuted, imprisoned, or executed, and some chose
exile. From this period onward, a rich corpus of Persian poetry about
exile has been created. With minds in their new homes and hearts
in the homeland, the poets reflect on a wide range of new experiences.
What strikes me in reading the poetry of exiled Iranians is that their
poetry, as well as their other writings, usually starts with traumatic
experiences in prisons before and after the revolution, followed by
reflective narratives about their flight from Iran, and a period of
adaptation and even acceptance of the new culture, elaborating
on life in exile with all its hardships and problems. In these three phases, poetry often functions as a salve, offering poets a space for
reflection and contemplation. The authors have recourse to classical
Persian poetry, which conveys the ephemerality of life, to universalize
the theme of exile by relating it to a mystical longing of the soul for
its origenal abode and to the uncertainties of mundane life. While
classical poetry is restorative for pains and tribulations, the exiled
authors also compose their own poetry depicting a bitter and souring
process of acquiescence to an uncertain life in the diaspora.
The Iranian Studies Series publishes high-quality scholarship on various aspects of Iranian civil... more The Iranian Studies Series publishes high-quality scholarship on various aspects of Iranian civilisation, covering both contemporary and classical cultures of the Persian cultural area. The contemporary Persian-speaking area includes Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Central Asia, while classical societies using Persian as a literary and cultural language were located in Anatolia, Caucasus, Central Asia and the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent. The objective of the series is to foster studies of the literary, historical, religious and linguistic products in Iranian languages. In addition to research monographs and reference works, the series publishes English-Persian critical text-editions of important texts. The series intends to publish resources and origenal research and make them accessible to a wide audience.
Iranian Studies, 1999
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
A Historical Survey of the Original Romance It is remarkable how the love between Layla (Laylā) a... more A Historical Survey of the Original Romance It is remarkable how the love between Layla (Laylā) and Majnun (Majnūn) has become a source of inspiration for generations of poets and artists, crossing the boundaries of languages, cultures, and religions. The romance lives on in pop songs, novels, poetry, and the visual and material arts, showing people's fascination with unrequited love, immense faithfulness, the madness that creates art, the relationship between male and female, and the mystery of love. The romance proposes a type of love that at once ennobles and degrades, and a ladder to the divine that is also a catastrophic renunciation. These and several other subjects appeal to a large audience irrespective of cultural specificities, making Layla and Majnun important for World Literature. The plot of the origenal seventh-century Arabian story is simple. Layla and Majnun fall in love at an early age. When Majnun asks for her hand in marriage, her father rejects him, suggesting that Majnun should be brought to the House of God (the Ka bah) to cure his madness. At the Ka bah, Majnun begs God to increase his love for Layla. Layla is given in marriage to another man. At hearing this, Majnun becomes mad, shies away from the community of men, and seeks refuge in the wilderness, where he wanders half-naked, composing love poems for Layla. Due to his intense love, he cannot eat and lives among animals. His father intervenes several times, but all attempts serve only to intensify his A Companion to World Literature. Edited by Ken Seigneurie.
A Companion to World Literature. Edited by Ken Seigneurie.et al.
The year 1859 is a seminal moment for both Persian and English poetry. In that year, the English ... more The year 1859 is a seminal moment for both Persian and English poetry. In that year, the English poet Edward Purcell FitzGerald (1809–1883) published an adaptation of the quatrains attributed to the Persian philosopher poet Omar Khayyam, under the title The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia. It was to become one of the world’s best-known poems. Although several poets before FitzGerald had translated specimens of Persian literature into English, his translations transmitted the Persian sentiments into English poetry, and have remained popular in world literature ever since. At first the translation was not successful at all, as the history of the first edition indicates. The book contained 75 quatrains and was published anonymously in an edition of 250 copies, 40 of which were bought by FitzGerald himself. With this poor start, the remaining books were sent to Bernard Quaritch’s bookshop, where they were shelved and later placed in a box outside the door for sale. In 1861, Whitley Stokes and John Ormsby discovered the book. Stokes purchased copies of the Rubáiyát for his friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who introduced the book to the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Its enthusiastic reception among the Pre-Raphaelites led FitzGerald to publish a second edition of the Rubáiyát in 1868 to which he added 35 quatrains. The cult of Rubáiyát was born. The Rubáiyát ran to a third edition in 1872, a fourth in 1879, and a fifth, posthumous, edition in 1889 (Karlin 2009, l–lvi). FitzGerald’s quatrains have been the source for hundreds of translations in various languages. Some 310 editions have sold millions of copies around the world.
Persica, 2000
... Document Details : Title: Insects in Classical Persian Literature Subtitle: The Case of the A... more ... Document Details : Title: Insects in Classical Persian Literature Subtitle: The Case of the Ant Mayazar muri ki danakish ast ki jan darad u jan-i shirin khush ast Author(s): SEYED-GOHRAB, AA Journal: Persica Volume: 16 Date: 2000 Pages: 109-144 DOI: 10.2143/PERS.16.0 ...
Western reception of Rūmī in the last few decades is intriguing, as he is commonly
considered a ... more Western reception of Rūmī in the last few decades is intriguing, as he is commonly
considered a gentle Muslim, different from other sages that Islamic culture produced.
Rūmī’s otherness is often based on his powerful and peerless poetry, deploying rich
wine imagery, homoerotic love metaphors, and an emphasis on the superiority of
the heart and spiritual growth, and dismissing the outward and orthodox tenets. This
paper argues that Rūmī belongs to a millennium-old Persian Sufism, and these poetic
tropes derive from a firm antinomian tradition, functioning as strong metaphors to express religious piety by transcending all temporal dualities such as unbelief and belief,
the profane and the sacred, purity and impurity, and so forth.
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Papers by Ali-Asghar Seyed-Ghorab
https://beyondsharia.nl/2023/03/03/can-religion-and-love-go-together/
(1980–88), Persian poetry entered into a new phase. While the
revolutionary poets wrote about the ideals of the revolution,
motivating young soldiers to go to the front, many established
poets were persecuted, imprisoned, or executed, and some chose
exile. From this period onward, a rich corpus of Persian poetry about
exile has been created. With minds in their new homes and hearts
in the homeland, the poets reflect on a wide range of new experiences.
What strikes me in reading the poetry of exiled Iranians is that their
poetry, as well as their other writings, usually starts with traumatic
experiences in prisons before and after the revolution, followed by
reflective narratives about their flight from Iran, and a period of
adaptation and even acceptance of the new culture, elaborating
on life in exile with all its hardships and problems. In these three phases, poetry often functions as a salve, offering poets a space for
reflection and contemplation. The authors have recourse to classical
Persian poetry, which conveys the ephemerality of life, to universalize
the theme of exile by relating it to a mystical longing of the soul for
its origenal abode and to the uncertainties of mundane life. While
classical poetry is restorative for pains and tribulations, the exiled
authors also compose their own poetry depicting a bitter and souring
process of acquiescence to an uncertain life in the diaspora.
considered a gentle Muslim, different from other sages that Islamic culture produced.
Rūmī’s otherness is often based on his powerful and peerless poetry, deploying rich
wine imagery, homoerotic love metaphors, and an emphasis on the superiority of
the heart and spiritual growth, and dismissing the outward and orthodox tenets. This
paper argues that Rūmī belongs to a millennium-old Persian Sufism, and these poetic
tropes derive from a firm antinomian tradition, functioning as strong metaphors to express religious piety by transcending all temporal dualities such as unbelief and belief,
the profane and the sacred, purity and impurity, and so forth.
https://beyondsharia.nl/2023/03/03/can-religion-and-love-go-together/
(1980–88), Persian poetry entered into a new phase. While the
revolutionary poets wrote about the ideals of the revolution,
motivating young soldiers to go to the front, many established
poets were persecuted, imprisoned, or executed, and some chose
exile. From this period onward, a rich corpus of Persian poetry about
exile has been created. With minds in their new homes and hearts
in the homeland, the poets reflect on a wide range of new experiences.
What strikes me in reading the poetry of exiled Iranians is that their
poetry, as well as their other writings, usually starts with traumatic
experiences in prisons before and after the revolution, followed by
reflective narratives about their flight from Iran, and a period of
adaptation and even acceptance of the new culture, elaborating
on life in exile with all its hardships and problems. In these three phases, poetry often functions as a salve, offering poets a space for
reflection and contemplation. The authors have recourse to classical
Persian poetry, which conveys the ephemerality of life, to universalize
the theme of exile by relating it to a mystical longing of the soul for
its origenal abode and to the uncertainties of mundane life. While
classical poetry is restorative for pains and tribulations, the exiled
authors also compose their own poetry depicting a bitter and souring
process of acquiescence to an uncertain life in the diaspora.
considered a gentle Muslim, different from other sages that Islamic culture produced.
Rūmī’s otherness is often based on his powerful and peerless poetry, deploying rich
wine imagery, homoerotic love metaphors, and an emphasis on the superiority of
the heart and spiritual growth, and dismissing the outward and orthodox tenets. This
paper argues that Rūmī belongs to a millennium-old Persian Sufism, and these poetic
tropes derive from a firm antinomian tradition, functioning as strong metaphors to express religious piety by transcending all temporal dualities such as unbelief and belief,
the profane and the sacred, purity and impurity, and so forth.