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Reconstructing the Geography of an Early Safavid Tazkirah: The Tuhfah-i Sami (ca. 957/1550) of Sam Mirza
Abstract
Biographical anthologies (tazkirahs) have always been among the central sources for Persian literary history. They offer, among other things, information about poets' lives; perspectives on stylistic trends in given contexts; and documentation of practices such as javab-gu'i (imitatio) and extemporaneous verse composition. Researchers have traditionally utilized tazkirahs by focusing on notices for individual poets, or perhaps a few poets at a time. It is often the case that one is studying a certain figure, and so one looks for discussion of him or her across a range of tazkirahs -- treating the texts as reference sources. This can be a productive approach, but there are aspects of literary anthologies that are unlikely to come into focus without more sustained reading. One such feature is the sense of geography that can be developed in a tazkirah. Where are the poets from, and where do they ply their trade? Are there distinct clusters? Does the author include descriptions of migration? To answer such questions, we need to invest the time to explore an anthology on its own terms. This paper will present some of the conclusions resulting from a comprehensive study of an early Safavid tazkirah, the Tuhfah-i Sami (ca. 957/1550). It was written by Sam Mirza (d. 975/1567), a brother of Shah Tahmasb who served as titular governor of Harat in his youth, and later as custodian of the Safavid shrine in Ardabil, before being imprisoned and put to death. The Tuhfah contains over seven hundred notices on individuals who had some engagement with Persian or Turkic poetry, representing a wide range of socioeconomic strata. Most were contemporary with the author. While the entries in this tazkirah tend to be brief, an overwhelming majority of them offer some information about geographic origins -- at least by attaching a nisbah to a poet's name. A review of this data yields several interesting results. There are, unsurprisingly, cities and regions that have disproportionate representation in the Tuhfah. In a few cases, Sam Mirza indicates the local dominance of a certain group, for instance, a sayyid family in Qazvin known as the Sayfiyah. And in the section of the tazkirah that focuses on Turkic poets, we sometimes find mention of an individual's tribal affiliation, apparently in lieu of geographic origin. It is possible to recover a bit of the vision of the world that Sam Mirza embedded in this work.
Discipline
Literature
Geographic Area
Afghanistan
Azerbaijan
Caucasus
Central Asia
Iran
Iraq
Mashreq
Ottoman Empire
Sub Area
None