In Indo-Persian literary culture, women are categorically disadvantaged or excluded for reasons ascribed to their gender; Siraj al-Din ‘Ali Khan Arzu, for example, writes that since women cannot be prophets, they are not capable of being poets. Thus, the inclusion of women in tazkirah (literary anthology) sources is seen from within the tradition as an unusual and strange phenomenon. For example, the author of a tazkirah devoted to women poets who goes by the penname of Fakhri Hiravi (fl. 1555) sees the poetry of women as very strange and says, in the preface to his tazkirah, “because it was surprising to see the jewels from their mining of nature, upon completion I name this short piece Javahir al-‘Ajayib (Jewels of Wonder).” This tazkirah is remarkable not only because it was written about poetesses but also because it was written from the position of surprise. In this paper, I will study the element of surprise in Hiravi’s tazkirah to understand why it was exceptional to have poetesses in the tazkirah tradition at large, what were the reasons for that surprise, and how that surprise was managed by subsequent writers. As a case study, I will focus on the figure of Mihri, a famous poet from the Timurid period. Hiravi writes that it was out of astonishment at her verse that he was inspired to compose a whole anthology dedicated to women poets; as such, she is a crucial figure in the anthology. It is clear that Mihri was a significant in her milieu, and that her reputation was even protected by some writers. At the same time, her presence was naturally disruptive of social norms; the resulting anxieties can be seen in the way Hiravi is placed in sexually explicit and transgressive settings, as though providing the proper context to admit her figure into the literary canon of the tazkirah. I then examine how Mihri’s image gets narrowed down to certain things focusing on her womanhood in later tazkirahs written after Hiravi. We find that over time, the surprise and anxiety generated by an outstanding woman poet is managed by tailoring Mihri’s life to fit conventional tropes about unconventional women.

Ottoman Literary Historiography, at least until recently, has shown no interest in dealing with issues regarding the contextual meaning of what a pre-modern literary text narrated. Accordingly, important questions are usually not addressed in this field of scholarship, such as what was the meaning of specific narratives chosen to take place in the complex texture of a text woven with extractions from various sources, and what can this choice tell us about textual strategy. In my study, I will attempt to ask these questions in the context of one of the most important examples of Ottoman biographies of poets (tazkirah) in 16th century, Âsik Celebi’s Mesairu's-Suara by looking into the anecdotes it provides about Aq Qoyunlu ruler Ya‘qub and his vizier Qadi Saen-al-din Savaji. Given that Mesairü's-Su'ara was a canonical text which was limited only to poets who wrote in the Ottoman language, the writer’s choice in including narratives whose characters were not even poets but leaders of a historically rival state seems strange. However I will argue that these stories are tokens of an intertextual relationship between our tazkirah and texts circulated in the Persianate world, namely Hakim Shah-Muhammad Qazvini’s Hesht-Bihisht which was a Persian translation and expansion of Alishir Navai’s famous tazkirah Macalisu’n-Nafa’is, Jami’s Baharestan and Idris-i Bidlisi’s Diwan-i du sarayanda az qarn-i nuhum Qadi Isa Sawaji wa Šhayh Najm ad-Din Mas'ud (the latter two being protégés of Ya’qub). I will try to explain why an Ottoman tazkirah writer commemorated an Aq Qoyunlu ruler and vizier, by demonstrating how this choice is a result of Âsik Çelebi’s desire to underline Mesairü’s-Su'ara pertinence to this politically and intellectually interrelated world and to prove its credibility.

This paper considers Ahmad b. Abd al-Halim Ibn Taymiyya’s multi-layered criticism and polemical strategies, which he directs against any attempts to attribute the Ash’arite theological teachings to the main figures of classical Sufism. Ibn Taymiyya construes Sufi teachings as ontologically irreconcilable with speculative theology, and in so doing, tries to construct his own history of Sufism by engaging in the recollection of the memory of its main historical figures. Focusing mainly on his Kitab al-Istiqama, which contains a commentary on a major source for the early history of Sufism - Epistle on Sufism by Abu al-Qasim Abd al-Karim al-Qushayri, this paper shows how Ibn Taymiyya confronts al-Qushayri’s theological interpretations of Sufi utterances with his own exegesis based on his intimate familiarity with Sufi literature and concepts. Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary to the Epistle reveals the polyphony and multi-layered nature of his polemical narrative. Criticizing al-Qushayri, the famous Hanbali scholar utilizes and reinterprets Sufi images and sayings in order to wage two debates simultaneously - one against the author of the Epistle, and the other against his contemporaries – Ash’arite theologians and philosophically minded followers of the monistic teachings of Ibn Arabi. On the one hand, Ibn Taymiyya tries to prove that the authoritative figures of early Sufism have never engaged in speculative theology. On the other hand, the utterances of the famous Sufis, which al-Qushayri interpreted in accordance with the Ash’arite theology, Ibn Taymiyya creatively represents as refutations of the monistic ideas of Ibn Arabi, which have been evidently widespread in his era. Using the Epistle to develop a broader theological discussion, Ibn Taymiyya speaks through his criticism with both: Ash’arite theologians of the past (like al-Qushayri) and those of them who fiercely debated him in Cairo and Damascus. The goal of his critical project is to prove that his contemporary mutakallims have no ideational connection with authoritative Sunni scholars and Sufis of the first centuries of Islam. The analysis of Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary on al-Qushayri’s epistle shows that his relationship to various trends in Islam was much more complicated than the dichotomy “pro/contra”. It could be said, that he tried to harness the Sufi archive – using Foucauldian terminology – for his own ideological purposes – in order to win a struggle over a much larger archive – the “Sunni canon”, from the rival theological school of Ash’arism.

The growing body of published, critical editions of Persian tazkirahs (‘Poetic Remembrances’) has brought fresh possibilities within the reach of historians of the literary tradition. Assessing the dynamics and potentials of the genre itself is an increasingly plausible task, as is tracing the development of how individual poets and certain poetic styles were remembered and contested. My paper pursues the latter ambition, examining the fluctuating legacy of the Safavid poet, Mirza Jalal Asir (d.1639), as recorded in the tazkirah literature. Asir was a well-connected member of the Safavid elite, based in its capital, Isfahan, and reportedly married to a daughter of Shah ‘Abbas himself. But beyond these basic facts, we learn little about his life from the tazkirahs written in the century following his death. Rather, tazkirah writers of the 17th and early-18th centuries seemed increasingly concerned with contesting his innovative and notoriously abstruse poetry, dubbed by many as exemplary of the tarz-i khayal, or “imaginative style”. Complex and cerebral to some, merely the incomprehensible ramblings of a drunkard to others, Asir’s verse achieved a great deal of influence over the next century, acquiring admirers and imitators across the Persianate world. My paper will explore the role played by tazkirah writers in codifying the tarz-i khayal, interrogating the interplay of biography, association, persona, and literary criticism in efforts to both canonise and marginalise the style of poetry he came to represent. In doing so, we shall see how the discussion of Asir’s verse reflects a wider discourse in the early modern Persian literary community, as well as evidencing the expanding function of the tazkirah genre itself.