Table Of ContentFAKHRADDIN GORGANI
TRANSLATED FROM THE PERSIAN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY
DICK DAVIS
MAGE PUBLISHERS
ALTOONA
Google
Original from
Digitized by
PENNS TATE
Copyright © 2008 Dick Davis
Some sections of this translation have previously appeared in
The Hudson Reviewa nd The New Criterion.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced
or retransmitted in any manner whatsoever,
except in the form of a review,w ithout the
written permission of the publisher.
Front and back jacket paintings by Reza Abbasi circa 1630, Sarre
Collection, 1910; and Art and History Trust, Houston, Texas.
Persian calligraphy by Amir Hossein Tabnak
Map by Karen Rasmussen, Archeographics
data
Library of congtess cataloging-in-publication
Fakhr al-Din Gurgani, ft. 1048.
[Vis va Ramin. English]
Vis & Ramin / Fakhraddin Gorgani ; translated from the Persian with an
introduction and notes by Dick Davis. -- 1st hardcover ed.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-933823-17-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
I. Davis, Dick, 1945- II. Title. III. Title: Vis and Ramin.
PK645l .F28V5l 3 2008
398.220955--dc22
2007041742
First hardcover edition
ISBN 1-933823-17-8
ISBN 13: 978-1-933823-17-l
Printed and manufactured in U.S.A.
MAGE BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT BOOKSTORES,
THROUGH THE INTERNET
OR DIRECTLY FROM THE PUBLISHER:
MAGE PUBLISHERS, 10J2-29TH STREET NW
WASHINGTON, DC 20007
202-342-1642 • [email protected] • 800-962-0922
VISIT MAGE ONLINE AT
WWW.MAGE.COM
Google
Original from
Digitized by
PENNS TATE
CONTENTS
•••
INTRODUCTION . . VIII
• • • • • •
. xiv
THE PRONUNCIATION OF NAMES .
• • •
. xlvi
A GEOGRAPHY OF VIS AND RAMIN
• • •
THE BEGINNING OF THE TALE 1
• • • • •
9
THE BIRTH OF VIS
• • • • • • •
VIS AND VIRU 17
• • • • • • • •
VIS AND MOBAD . 39
• • • • • • •
. 123
VIS AND RAMIN .
• • • • • •
VIS RETURNS TO HER MOTHER . 143
• • • •
RAMIN COMES TO VIS IN THE DEVILS, FORTRESS . . 197
MOBAD ENTRUSTS VIS TO THE NURSE . . 245
• •
. 299
RAMIN AND GOL •
• • • • • •
v1s's LETTER TO RAMIN . 325
• • • • •
RAMIN RETURNS TO VIS . 363
• • • • •
THE END OF THE TALE. . 453
• • • • •
NOTES. . 499
• • • • • • • •
APPENDIX: COMPARISONS FOR THE BODY . . 515
•
-v-
Google
Original from
Digitized by
PENNS TATE
Google
Original from
Digitized by
PENNS TATE
For .tif(cfram
Go gle
Original from
Digitized by
PENNS TATE
.
; . .- - ,. ·~, . ... . . •.
•. . . ., ' ., .. ..,. . ,){, ~.I '.. . . ,• : ::..• • ..1:'. ' -,~ ~'_ ,.,;: .-.., ·. . .".. . .,, . '. ' ' .•.,. , . .., • ,. . .'.. .. . ..,. ,,
'
INTRODUCTION
vis
between 1050 and 1055 by the
AND RAMIN WAS WRITTEN
Persian poet Fakhraddin Gorgani; it is the first major Persian
romance, and one of the most extraordinary and fascinating
love narratives produced anywhere in the medieval world,
Islamic or Christian.
Vis and Ramin is Gorgani,s only surviving long work, and
no more than three other short scraps of extant verse are
ascribed to him. We know virtually nothing about the poet,
apart from what he tells us in the exordium and conclusion
to his poem. Remarks by medieval poets about themselves
have to be treated with care; many such comments, especially
boasts, and complaints likely to elicit sympathy, tend to be
drawn from a common stock and to vary little from one poet
to another. In general, the less specific self-referential remarks
made by medieval poets are, the more unreliable they are.
But Gorgani is very specific about two things: his patron,s
identity and the circumstances under which his poem was
written, and there seems no reason not to take his account
at face value. In I 050, the Seljuk sultan Abu Taleb Toghrel
• • •
Vis & Ramin
VIII
Google
Original from
Digitized by
PENNS TATE
Beg left the city of Isfahan under the control of one 'Amid
Abu,l Fath Mozaffar. Gorgani says that he accompanied the
new commander to the city, who commissioned the poem
from him as an entertainment, during their sojourn there.
Other sources confirm that 'Amid Abu'l Fath Mozaffar was
the ruler of Isfahan from 1050 to 1055, which gives us the
date for the poem,s composition. Gorgani,s name suggests
that he, or his family, was from an area to the east of the
Caspian, either the town of Gorgan itself, or the surround
ing countryside, which was also called Gorgan. The town
and its surroundings figure quite prominently in Vis and
Ramin (geographically, it is about halfway between the two
main areas of the poem's action), and it may be that the tale
was thought of as a largely local story in the places where
the poet grew up. We know, however, that it enjoyed a wider
currency than the merely local, as the Arab poet Abu Nawas
mentioned it in the eighth century, three hundred years or
so before Gorgani wrote his version. Twice in the course of
telling his lovers, story Gorgani refers in general terms to his
age, but the two instances seem to contradict one another. At
one point he tells us that his own days of romantic involve
ments are long over, suggesting that he is at least middle aged,
and then at the very end of the poem he asks his friends to
pray that God will ''Forgive the youth who wrote this pretty
story." All we know for sure about Gorgani is that he wrote
his poem in Isfahan at some point between 1050 and 1055,
and that he was familiar with the atmosphere and protocol
of a local ruler,s court; we can guess that he was probably
Introduction ix
Google
Original from
Digitized by
PENNS TATE
. ." . . ' .' .. .' . . . '9 .;, , ......
,. .. ,. . ..... .. . '. ., •• +. • • , ,..., . , ... . .' '
~
from the area to the east of the Caspian known as Gorgan.
Occasionally, in the course of Vis and Ramin, he will address
his reader or auditor directly, and sometimes when he does
this he recommends generosity as a noble course of action;
these remarks are probably there as a hint to remind 'Amid
Abu'l Fath Mozaffar of his duties as a patron.
The eleventh century was a period when a number of
Persian authors were interested in writing versions of stories
from pre-Islamic Iran. The country had been conquered by
the Arabs in the seventh century, and then subsumed into
the Arab and Moslem caliphate. Iran had existed as an inde
pendent country, and as the ruler of much of Western Asia,
for most of the previous millennium, and the conquest was
such a shocking reversal of fortune that it took some time for
the culture to recover. Persian poetry of the eleventh century
shows a strong nostalgia for the stories and civilizations of
pre-Islamic Iran, for a time when Persian political and cul
tural hegemony in Western Asia was unquestioned, and its
rulers could style themselves King of Kings without apol
ogy. The most spectacular example of this literary nostalgia
is Ferdowsi's great epic, the Shahnameh (completed in 1010
cE), and Gorgani's Vis and Ramin is another instance of it. In
some ways Vis and Ramin is an even more interesting exam
ple than the Shahnameh;u sually when Ferdowsi comes across
a pre- Islamic custom of which Islam disapproves he glosses
over it, or, if mention of it is unavoidable, he is shamefaced
about it. Gorgani makes no bones about such moments and
seems to make no effort whatsoever to trim his tale to suit
x Vis & Ramin
Google
Original from
Digitized by
PENNS TATE
, .:.. ..~ :. , . .•· .,►:: , •• :.,, .
.
'
,. + ~ • • • • + .•, ..
, ,· ~ •. r '·•'
Islamic sensibilities; similarly,a lthough Ferdowsi's diction is
relatively conservative, Gorgani's is at times even more so,
and his poem is a major source for lexicals urvivals from pre
Islamic Persian into the Persian of the post-conquest period.
In his poem's introductory material Gorgani implies that he
understands ''Pahlavi'' (pre-Islamic Persian) well - we have
no way of verifying whether this was true or not - and he
will occasionally refer us to the meaning of Pahlavi words
or phrases, as when he gives us the etymology of Khorasan
(page 139).
In a series of cogently argued articles,1 the twentieth-cen
tury Russians cholar Vladimir Minorsky drew on geographical,
philological, and historical evidence to demonstrate that the
story of Gorgani's Vis and Ramin derives from the Parthian
period. The Parthians ruled Iran from 247 to 224 so
BCE CE,
the tale comes from around the beginning of the Christian
era, give or take a century or two. The dominant religion of
Iran during the period of Parthian rule was Zoroastrianism .
•
We have then a Parthian/Zoroastrian story that is being retold
by an author who has grown up in an Islamic milieu and has at
least a nominal allegiancet o Islam. As might be expected, the
text is often a kind of cultural palimpsest, with both cultural
and religious traditions present; even when one is brought
into especial prominence the other usually remains discern
ible in the background. Perhaps deliberately,G organi begins
1 VladimiMr inorsky"V, isu RaminA: ParthiaRn omanceB,"u lletino f the
Schoool f Orientaal ndA fricanS tudiesV, ol.X I,1 943-46,p p.7 41-763;V ol.
XII,1 947-1948p, p.2 0-35;V ol.X VI,1 954,p p.9 1-2; "NewD evelopments,"
Vol.X XV1, 962,p p.2 75-286.
xi
I tttroductiOtl
Google
Original from
Digitized by
PENNS TATE
.
. .. .
.. ..
·
and ends his tale by invoking both cultures simultaneously; at
the opening of the story he mentions both Korab and Kasra
in one image; Korab is a figure from the Qur, an, Kasra from
pre-Islamic Persian history; at the end of the tale he imagines
the Islamic angel Rezvan looking down on the Zoroastrian
temple of Borzin, where Vis,st omb is located.
V1s
THE Soc1AL WORLD OF AND RAMIN
The first thing that strikes any reader of Vis and Ramin is the
very peculiar nature of the marriage customs that seem to be
in place at the beginning of the poem. These customs are (a nd
were in Gorgani,s time) as bizarre to Middle Eastern readers as
to Western readers, as they belong not only to the Zoroastri
anism of two millennia ago, but also to the marriage customs
of the pre-Islamic Persian royal dynasties. Marriages that are
now universally regarded as incestuous were relatively com
mon among the pre-Islamic dynasties of Iran, and were even
seen as especially praiseworthy.2 In the ancient world, royal
incest was of course not unique to Iran; it was also common
in the Egyptian royal dynasties, and the pharaohs were usually
married to their own sisters. The brother-sister marriage that
2 Confirmatioonf the relativec ommonnesins p re-IslamiIcra no f marriages
thatw ouldn owb e regardeads incestuouiss providedb yt he Sasanian
law book,T heB ooko f a ThousanJdu dgement(sIn troductiotnra, nscription
andt ranslatioonf the Pahlavtei xt, notesg lossarayn di ndicesb yA nahit
PerikhaniaTnr.a nslatefrdo mR ussiabny NinaG arsorianB.i bliothecPae rsica,
CostaM esa,1 997)T. hisc ontainsla wsr elatingto brother-sistemr arriage
(p.2 37,s ection1 05,5 -10; p. 281,A 18,7 -12; p. 315,A 36,6 -12),f ather
daughtemr arriage(p .3 3,3 , 11-14;p .121,4 4, 13-14;p . 235,1 04,1 2-14)
andm other-somn arriage(p .3 3,4 , 1-4).
.
.
\'is & Ramin
Google
Original from
Digitized by
PENNS TATE
