Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan: Revisiting the Fad'a'il-i Balkh

284 Pages·2014·3.552 MB·English

by  Arezou Azad

Title Pages
Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan:
Revisiting the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh
Arezou Azad
Print publication date: 2013
Print ISBN-13: 9780199687053
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199687053.001.0001
Title Pages
(p.i) Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan
(p.ii) Oxford Oriental Monographs
(p.iii) Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan
This series of monographs from the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of
Oxford, makes available the results of recent research by scholars connected
with the Faculty. Its range of subject matter includes language, literature,
thought, history, and art; its geographical scope extends from the Mediterranean
and Caucasus to East Asia. The emphasis is more on specialist studies than on
works of a general nature.
Editorial Board
John Baines, Professor of Egyptology
Bjarke Frellesvig, Professor of Japanese Linguistics
Christopher Minkowski, Boden Professor of Sanskrit
Charles Ramble, University Lecturer in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies
Robert Thomson, formerly Calouste Gulbenkian Professor of Armenian Studies
Geert Jan van Gelder, Laudian Professor of Arabic
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Title Pages
(p.iv)
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© Arezou Azad 2013
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First published 2013
Impression: 1
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Title Pages
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Dedication
Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan:
Revisiting the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh
Arezou Azad
Print publication date: 2013
Print ISBN-13: 9780199687053
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199687053.001.0001
Dedication
(p.v) For Reza
Page 1 of 1
Acknowledgements
Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan:
Revisiting the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh
Arezou Azad
Print publication date: 2013
Print ISBN-13: 9780199687053
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199687053.001.0001
(p.viii) Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor Edmund Herzig and Professor Deborah Klimburg-
Salter, my supervisors throughout my doctoral study, which is the progenitor of
this book, for all their patience and support. For answering many of my
questions, and reading and commenting on my work at various stages I am
grateful to Adam Silverstein, Charles Ramble, Chase Robinson, Firuza
Abdullaeva, Hugh Kennedy, Luke Treadwell, Marina Rustow, and Teresa
Bernheimer. During this time, I profited from the suggestions and comments
offered by Jürgen Paul, Patricia Crone, Richard Bulliet, and Wilferd Madelung.
Many scholars have shared their knowledge about Balkh’s texts and their
history, and I am particularly grateful to the following for their considered
responses: Ali Mir-Ansari, Christopher Melchert, Edmund Bosworth, Emilie
Savage-Smith, Geert Jan van Gelder, Eyyüp Said Kaya, Teresa Fitzherbert, and
Thomas Welsford. Sylvie Berthier of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Maria Szuppe of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Elena
Tanonova of the St Petersburg-based Department of Oriental Manuscripts of the
Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as Nauman Dawoodi and Arif Naushahi in
Pakistan helped me with unpublished material and manuscripts.
In Afghanistan, Omara Khan Massoudi of the Kabul National Museum, Philippe
Marquis and Roland Besenval of the Délégation archéologique française en
Afghanistan (DAFA), and Jolyon Leslie in particular shared their knowledge on
the material culture of Balkh.
I would like to thank the staff of Oxford University’s Oriental Institute Library
for allowing me to keep a space full of books throughout my research, and the
staff at the Bodleian Library for their untiring assistance, as well as James Allan
and the Khalili Research Centre for the Art and Material Culture of the Middle
East for facilitating my use of a workspace. I am also grateful for the research
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Acknowledgements
funding and support provided by the Faculty of Oriental Studies, the Leverhulme
Trust, the Barakat Trust, St Cross College, Corpus Christi College, and the
University of Vienna. At Oxford University Press, I am deeply grateful for all the
feedback and advice (p.ix) from the anonymous reviewers, Lizzie Robottom,
Caroline Hawley, Tony Williams, Hanna Siurua, and Elizabeth Stone of the OUP
-editorial team, as well as the series editors of the Oxford Oriental Monographs.
I thank my family and friends for their warmth and loyalty, and most of all my
lovely daughter who was born as this book was being written and whose smile
brightens up any grey day in Oxford. This book is dedicated to the most
wondrous of humanitarian workers, friends, and partners, Reza Hosseini: your
love, inspiration, and unwavering optimism will always stay alive.
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Note on Dates, Citations, and Transliterations
Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan:
Revisiting the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh
Arezou Azad
Print publication date: 2013
Print ISBN-13: 9780199687053
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199687053.001.0001
(p.x) Note on Dates, Citations, and
Transliterations
Dates are given according to the lunar or solar hijrī and Gregorian calendars but
centuries are only given in the Gregorian dates (thus ‘96/714–15’ and ‘eighth
century AD’). Pre-Islamic dates are given according to the Gregorian calendar
and annotated with ‘AD’ (i.e. ‘anno domini’) and ‘BC’ (i.e. ‘before Christ’).
The translation of names necessitates the transliteration into Latin script of
material from Persian and Arabic. Where more than one orthographic form of
names exists, one out of a set of valid options has been selected (thus ‘Naw
Bahār’ rather than ‘Nū Bahār’). Personal names and most other lexical elements
from Arabic and Persian are rendered in the International Journal of Middle East
Studies system for transliterating Arabic for all common letters and Persian for
letters that are specific to Persian. However, a number of relatively well-known
toponyms are transliterated in the form in which they are most familiar (thus
‘Bukhara’ rather than ‘Bukhārā’). Several well-known political titles are also
Latinized without diacritics (e.g. sultan), unless they appear in a transcription or
form part of a name. Words that feature in the Oxford English Dictionary have
been Latinized as in the dictionary (unless the transliteration appears in a
published title, personal name, or is a direct quote from a Persian or Arabic
language text). Such words include Sufi (instead of Ṣūfī) and bazaar (instead of
bāzār).
Where Arabic nouns are used in the plural to designate a term with no precise
equivalent in English, the plural is usually given in the Arabic singular with the
English plural –s added (such as faqīhs rather than fuqahâʾ). Exceptions are
made with words that are better known in English in their plural forms (thus
͑ulamâʾ not ͑ālims).
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Note on Dates, Citations, and Transliterations
For the excerpted translations of the base text, the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh, I have stayed
as faithful as possible to the manuscripts. I present a first-time set of English
excerpted translations, and apply the translation principle of being accurate to
the meaning and natural to the English language. In this way a readership that
is unfamiliar with the source text will readily understand it.
Where the base text does not clearly specify by name a set of multiple subjects
or issues introduced earlier, and the subject of the (p.xi) phrase is not clear, the
translation into English includes added pronouns or names to help the reader
grasp the meaning more easily. Arabic religious formulae which the author or
translator shortened in the base text, such as by dropping the preposition and
pronoun (e.g. Ar. ῾anhu, ‘from him’), are extended to their standard format. For
example, riḍā allāh has been translated as ‘may God be pleased with him’. The
translations into English include transcriptions of key terms and toponyms based
first on the Paris manuscript (Persan-115), with variant readings from the other
manuscripts if the script is not legible or the edited version appears inadequate.
Manuscript references are given with the folio number and side (‘a’ for the recto
and ‘b’ for the verso side) and line number. Thus, line 4 of the recto side of the
fifth folio of the Paris manuscript is indicated as ‘Persan-115, fol. 5a, line 4’.
Dotted consonants in the manuscripts are rendered with a different set of dots
and lines than is the convention today, and frequently the copyists left out the
dots altogether. Some undotted characters can be transcribed in multiple ways.
Where the meaning of the word is obvious the transcription will follow
accordingly; and where it is unclear the defective characters are reflected as
they appear in the manuscript (e.g. Panj r.sh, which may be Panj resh, i.e. ‘Five
Mounds’, in Persan-115, fol. 195a, line 3, but we cannot be sure).
Finally, I have not corrected the Arabic orthography where it is deviant (e.g. ijna
which should read ijnatin, that is, with a tā’ marbūṭa in Persan-115, fol. 6a, line
3). The retention of errors is justified according to the formidable Arabic editor
Alfred Beeston by the fact that these orthographic inconsistencies ‘are valuable
pointers to the actual usage of the time, and an editorial policy of regularizing
them eliminates evidence of the historical evolution of the language’.1
Notes:
(1) A. F. L. Beeston (ed. and trans.), The Epistle of the Singing-Girls of al-Jāḥiẓ
(Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1980), 9.
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Abbreviations1
Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan:
Revisiting the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh
Arezou Azad
Print publication date: 2013
Print ISBN-13: 9780199687053
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2014
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199687053.001.0001
1
(p.xii) Abbreviations
(p.xii) Abbreviations1
(I) Bibliographic Resources and Reference Works
BNF
Bibliothèque Nationale de France
CHI
Cambridge History of Iran, 7 vols
CPED
Francis Joseph Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English
Dictionary
DAFA
Délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan
EI2
The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition
EI3
The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd edition
EIr
Encyclopaedia Iranica
GAL
Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, 5 vols &
supps
GAS
Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, 11 vols
LHP
Edward Granville Browne, A Literary History of Persia, 4 vols
MDAFA
Mémoires de la délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan
Q
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Abbreviations1
The Qurʾān. English translation with parallel Arabic text by M. A. S.
Abdel Haleem, [2004] 2010
Storey
C. A. Storey, Persian Literature; A Bio-bibliographical Survey, 5 vols
Stori/Bregel’
Ch. A. Stori (ed. and tr. Iu. Bregel’), Persidskaia literatura; Bio-
bibliograficheskii obzor, 3 vols
(II) Journals
BSOAS
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
CAJ
Central Asiatic Journal
IJMES
International Journal of Middle East Studies
(p.xiii) Ir Sts
Iranian Studies
JA
Journale asiatique
JESHO
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
JRAS
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
REI
Revue des études islamiques
St Ir
Studia Iranica
ZDMG
Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft
(III) Legend to Key Sources Related to the FaḌā’il-i Balkh
FB, ed. AḤḤ
Faḍāʾil-i Balkh, ed. ῾Abd al-Ḥayy Ḥabībī. Tehran edition
Persan-115
Faḍāʾil-i Balkh, manuscript at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
(Identified as ‘pa’ in Ḥabībī’s edition)
C-453-1
Faḍāʾil-i Balkh, manuscript at the St Petersburg Branch, Russian
Academy of Sciences (Identified as ‘lā’ in Ḥabībī’s edition)
C-453-3
Faḍāʾil-i Balkh, manuscript at the St Petersburg Branch, Russian
Academy of Sciences (Identified as ‘lab’ in Ḥabībī’s edition)
PAK
Faḍāʾil-i Balkh, manuscript in the personal possession of Khalil al-
Rahman Dawoodi in Lahore, Pakistan (Not in Ḥabībī’s edition)
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