Mytho-Political Remakings of Ferdowsi's Jamshid in the Lyric Poetry of Injuid and Mozaffarid Shiraz

Journal article

This study examines the Jamshid of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and its later reception, specifically the Islamic refashioning of Jamshid in fourteenth-century Shiraz, as evidenced in the ghazals of Hāfez (d. 1389), and the lyric poetry of Kh^vāju-ye Kermāni (d. 1352 or 1360), and ʿObeyd-e Zākāni (d. 1371). Hāfez, Kh^vāju, and ʿObeyd used literary devices such as talmih (allusion) and ubi sunt to both engage with and reshape the past, and this refashioning of the past was employed to legitimize their patrons’ authority to rule from Shiraz. The article culminates in an exploration of the mytho-political dimensions of the conflation of Jamshid with Solomon and the intimate association of this composite figure with Fars in the Ilkhanid and post-Ilkhanid periods. Poetry is treated here as a productive force that both shapes and is shaped by the socio-political circumstances of its composition, performance, and reception. In order to locate the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century reconfiguration of Jamshid within its geo-mythological context, use has been made of the concept of lieu de mémoire as a means through which to unpack the trans-historical cultural impact on Shiraz of the ancient Achaemenid and Sasanian ruins that surround the Islamic city; ruins that have for more than two millennia embedded a sense of proximity to history in the land and peoples of Fars.

Authors: Brookshaw, D

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Routledge
• Journal: Iranian Studies
• Volume: 48
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 463-487
• Publication date: 2015-05-01
• DOI: 10.1080/00210862.2014.1000617
• EISSN: 1475-4819
• ISSN: 1475-4819
• Language: English
• Keywords: kingship; ʽObeyd-e Zākāni; Persian poetry; lyric poetry; Hāfez; Khvāju-ye Kermāni; Shahnameh; Solomon; Ferdowsi; Jamshid;; lieu de mémoire