User:LouisAragon/sandbox/Fattahi Nishapuri

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/fattahi-nisaburi

Muḥammad ibn Yahyā Sībak Nīshāpūrī, best known as Fattāḥī Nīshāpūrī (died 1448), was a Persian poet and calligrapher of the Timurid period. He was one of the most significant poets and calligraphers under Timurid ruler Shah Rukh ((r. undefined – undefined)1409–1447).

Biography
Fattahi was born at an uncertain date in Nishapur in Khurasan (present-day northeastern Iran). In his literary works, he mostly used "Fattahi" as pen name (takhallus). According to the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam, this pen name reveals that Fattahi Nishapuri held great linguistic skills; the word "fattāḥī" is an anagram of taffāḥ, the Arabic equivalent of the Persian word sībak, which literally translates as "little apple". Additionally, fattāḥī is the adjectival form of one of the names attributed to God in Islamic tradition, i.e. al-Fattah, which translates as "the Opener". In addition to "Fattahi", he also used "Asrārī va Khumārī" as a pen name in his poetic work Asrārī va Khumārī.

Fattahi worked at the library of prince Baysunghur, son of Timurid ruler Shah Rukh. He is also recorded in the biograpies of poets (tadhkiras) for his skill in metrics, which he taught to the famed Timurid-era poet Ali-Shir Nava'i.

Works
Fattahi was a master in rhetoric and adopted an ornate style throughout his ouevre. He is known for his allegorical tales and his most important allegoric poem, Ḥusn va Dil ("Beauty and Heart") became very popular among his contemporaries. Many later Persian-language authors emulated Fattahi's Ḥusn va Dil. However, it was not only limited to Persian-language authors; Turkish, Urdu and Hindi-language writers also emulated the poem later on. The poem was translated several times, mostly into Turkish but also into English, German and French.

He also wrote a long love poem of rhymed couplets (mathnawi) named Qiṣṣa-yi shāhzāda-yi Ḥusn va shāhzāda-yi Dil ("The story of Princess Beauty and Prince Heart") and Dastūr-i ʿushshāq ("The lovers' rule"), which he completed in 1437. Through a large amount of fictional characters and secondary tales inserted in the main plot, the poem narrates about the love story between a certain Prince Dil (heart) and Princess Ḥusn (beauty). Prince Dil is the son of King ʿAql (mind) who was king of the western realm of Badan (body). Princess Ḥusn was the daughter of King ʿIshq (love), who ruled as king over the eastern realm of Dīdār (sight). In many ways, Fattahi's love poem can be read as an allegory on Nizami Ganjavi's poem Khosrow and Shirin. He also wrote a summarised version of this poem in sajʿ (rhymed and rhythmic prose); this work is considered to be one of the best examples of ornate prose from the Timurid period, and it was also translated many times.

Many of Fattāḥī’s works were unpublished and there is thus some uncertainty as to their exact titles and content. Nevertheless, there is still much that can be said of Fattāḥī’s oeuvre. For starters, Fattāḥī composed a Dīvān (collection of poems) that includes, in its published version, his ghazal (lyrical) and rubāʿī (quatrain) poems. Fattāḥī also wrote the Shabistān-i khiyāl (“The chamber of fantasy”) in prose and line verses in 843/1440. This text contains a famous munāẓira (dispute) between Gul (rose) and Daff (a type of drum used in classical and popular music). One of the unpublished treaties that he penned concerns ʿilm-i ʿarūḍ (science of metre) and tajnīs (figure of speech; paronomasia). Another work worthy of mention is Dīvān-i Asrārī va Khumārī, a parody of hashish smokers and wine drinkers along the lines of the parodies by Busḥāq Aṭʿima (d. 827/1424 or 830/1427) and Niẓām al-Dīn Maḥmūd Qārī of Yazd (fl. ninth/fifteenth century) who had, respectively, composed dīvāns on food and clothes in order to mock classical Persian poetry and the ghazals of Ḥāfiẓ (d. 792/1390) in particular (Nīshāpūrī, Ḥusn va Dil, 22–3). It is also known that Fattāḥī wrote the Taʿbīrnāma-yi manẓūm (“The versified book on oniromancy”) on the interpretation of dreams and there are a number of other works attributed to him.

Since the ninth/fifteenth century literary historians have concurred that Fattāḥī is the uncontested master of allegoric language in Persian literature and have recognised his skilful use of rhetorical devices in all literary genres. Fattāḥī was one of the first to advance Persian literature beyond the classicism of Ḥāfiẓ.

Daniela Meneghini Bibliography

Works by Fattāḥī Nīshāpūrī

Ḥusn va Dil, ed. Ḥasan Dhūlfaqārī and Pīrūz Arasṭū, Tehran 1386sh/2008, ed. and trans. Manijeh Vossoughi Nouri, Cœur et Beauté ou Le livre des amoureux, Paris 1997

Dastūr-i ʿushshāq (Ḥusn va Dil), ed. Ghulām Riḍā Farzānapūr, Tehran 1351sh/1972

Dastūr-i ʿushshāq. The book of lovers. The allegorical romance of Princess Husn (Beauty) and Prince Dil (Heart), ed. Robert S. Greenshields, London 1926

Dīvān-i ghazāliyyāt va rubāʿiyyāt, ed. Mahdī Muḥaqqaq and Kabarī Bustān Shīrīn, Tehran 1381sh/2002.

Studies

Alessandro Bausani, Fattāḥī, EI2

Ḏabiḥ-Allāh Ṣafā, Ḥosn o Del, EIr

Sārā Jabarī, Ḥusn va Dil khvānish-i ṣūfiyāna-yi Khusraw va Shīrīn, Matnshināsī-yi Adab-i Fārsī, 4/4 (1391sh/2013), 69–92

Jan Rypka, History of Iranian literature (Dordrecht 1968), 284–5

Iḥsān Yārshāṭir, Shiʿr-i Fārsī dar ahd-i Shāhrukh, Tehran 1334sh/1955

Tahsin Yazici, Fattāḥi Nišāburi, EIr. Cite this page Meneghini, Daniela, “Fattāḥī Nīshāpūrī”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Edited by: Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson. Consulted online on 14 December 2020  First published online: 2020 First print edition: 9789004435957, 20210501, 2021-3