Hunar-nama explained

Hunar-nama should not be confused with Hünername.

Hunar-nāma ('the book of excellence', also transliterated Honarnāme) is a 487-distich Persian mathnavī poem composed by ‘Uthmān Mukhtārī at Tabas in the period 500-508 (1105-13 CE), when he was at the court of Seljuqs in Kirmān. The poem is dedicated to the ruler of Tabas, Yamīn al-Dowla (aka Ḥisām ad-Dīn Yamīn ad-Dowla Shams al-Ma‘ālī Abū ’l-Muẓaffar Amīr Ismā‘īl Gīlakī, and can be read as a 'letter of application' demonstrating Mukhtārī's skill as a court poet.^[1] It has been characterised as 'perhaps the most interesting of the poems dedicated to Gīlākī'.^[2]

Form

The poem is unique among masnavīs for portraying a young poet being tested, not by a more senior poet as in other medieval Persian poems, but by an astrologer. Moreover, is also unique for including a series of riddles (ten in all) on the spiritual, intellectual, and military ideals for a king.^[3] These in turn have a distinctive structure: each has ten distichs posing ethical questions, followed by two distichs in which the poet delivers his answers.^[4] The riddles in particular serve to showcase Mukhtārī's virtuosity in poetic description. The poem is also among the earliest to have been written in the khafīf metre.^[5]

Contents

The poem begins of a cosmological survey, which descends from heaven to earth before culminating in praise of God and his Prophet. The second half of the poem narrates the reverse process: the striving of the poet's persona to proceed from a mundane existence to spiritual perfection. He achieves this by going on a journey and meeting an astrologer, who tests his wisdom with riddles

It was translated into English by A. A. Seyed-Gohrab.^[6]

Sources and influences

Though rather different, the Hunar-nāma may have drawn some inspiration from the Rowshanā’ī-namā by Nāṣir-i Khusrow (d. 1075). It may in turn have inspired Sanā’ī's Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqa, Seyr al-‘ibād, and Kār-nāma.^[7] The testing of the poet's wisdom recalls similar tests of young men's wits in Persian epic and romance texts such as Khosrow ud Redak, Asadī's Garshāsp-nāma, and Firdow's Shāh-nāma.^[8]

Editions and translations

• Humā’ī, Jalāl ad-Dīn, Funūn-i balāghat va ṣanā‘at-i adabī (Tehran, 1975) [critical edition]
• Seyed-Gohrab, A. A., Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), pp. 156-99 includes translations of the riddles.

Notes and References

1. J. T. P. Bruijn, Of Piety and Poetry: The Interaction of Religion and Literature in the Life and Works of Hakīm Sanā’ī of Ghazna (Leiden, 1983), p. 153.
2. G.E. Tetley, The Ghaznavid and Seljuk Turks: Poetry as a Source for Iranian History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), p. 138.
3. A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), p. 150.
4. A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), pp. 28-29.
5. Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, 'A Mystical Reading of Nizāmī’s Use of Nature in the Haft Paykar’, in A Key to the Treasure of the Hakīm: Artistic and Humanistic Aspects of Nizāmī Ganjavī’s ‘Khamsa’, ed. by Johann-Christoph Bürgel and Christine van Ruymbeke (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2011), pp. 181-93 (at p. 188).
6. A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), pp. 148-50.
7. A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), pp. 150-52.
8. A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), p. 163.