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ʿAbd al-Razzāq Beg Dunbulī (759 words)

ʿAbd al-Razzāq Beg Dunbulī was born in Khūy in 1176/1762–3. His father, Najafqulī Khān (d. 1199/1785), had participated in Nādir Shāh's (r. 1148–60/1736–47) campaigns as a prominent and leading member of the Dunbulī, a Turkish-speaking Kurdish tribe located around Khūy, in western Azerbaijan. Acting governor of Tabrīz even earlier, Najafqulī Khān was officially appointed as beglarbegī by Karīm Khān Zand (r. 1163–93/1750–79) in 1177/1764. To ensure the loyalty of tribal governors, Karīm Khān forced them to send family members as hostages to his court. This is why ʿAbd al-Razzāq was sent at the age of ten to Shiraz to replace his older brother Faḍl ʿAlī Beg, and he stayed there for fourteen years. ʿAbd al-Razzāq received an excellent education and made the acquaintance of many scholars and literati in the Zand capital. The time spent in Shiraz is captured in his Ḥadāʾiq al-janān (“Gardens of the heart”; Bahār 3:320–31 has two examples of this unpublished work), a highly mannered work that was the model for his Tajribat al-aḥrār wa-taṣliyat al-abrār (“Temptation of the pure and examination of the righteous”), an eclectic mix of historical narrative, literary anthology and biography.

After the death of Karīm Khān, ʿAbd al-Razzāq was caught in the Zand succession struggles. Together with other hostages he was transferred to Isfahan (1196–9/1782–5), until they were set free by Āghā Muḥammad Khān (d. 1212/1797), when he conquered the city in 1199/1785. The new freedom did not turn out pleasant, as ʿAbd al-Razzāq realised upon his return to Āzerbāijān. ʿAbd al-Razzāq was unfamiliar with the intricacies and the brutality of the tribal politics, which he witnessed in the struggles between the two major clans of the Dunbulī. The fourteen years spent constantly on the move and in exile in Qarābāgh, Shirvān, and Tehran are depicted in the moving autobiographical entry in his poetic anthology Nigāristān-i dārā (282–96).

After the consolidation of Qājār power around 1214/1799, ʿAbd al-Razzāq was summoned by Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shāh (r. 1211–50/1797–1834) to Tehran and received royal patronage at the court. When ʿAbbās Mīrzā (d. 1249/1833) was sent to subdue revolts in Azerbaijan in the same year and later assumed the provincial governorship of Tabrīz, ʿAbd al-Razzāq formed part of his retinue. He witnessed the wars against Russia in 1804–12 and 1826–8, the first of which takes up most of the space in what is probably his best known work, the chronicle Maʾāthir-i sulṭāniyya (“Royal illustrious deeds”). Written in straight, clear prose, without the mannerisms of his poetic works, Maʾāthir-i sulṭāniyya is one of the most important chronicles of the early Qājār period. After a short introduction on the rise of the Qājārs, it covers the reign of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shāh from 1214/1799 to 1241/1825–6. At the same time, it is one of the earliest works printed (1241/1827)—still in typeset letters—in Iran. An earlier and, in parts, differing version was translated by Harford Jones Brydges as The dynasty of the Kajars (1833).

ʿAbd al-Razzāq Beg died in 1243/1827–8 in Tabrīz. Many of his literary works are still in manuscript form (a list of books attributed to him is found in Tarbiyat, Dānishmandān-i Ādharbāyjān, 354–6) and deserve more detailed studies. His command of a wide variety of literary styles and modes of expression—the poet Bahār, d. 1951, compares him at the same time to Vaṣṣāf, fl. eighth/fourteenth century, Saʿdī, d. 691/1291 or 694/1294, and al-Juwaynī, d. 681/1283—marks him as the archetype of a Zand homme de lettres and, in many ways, a high point of the Persian literary tradition. His fascinating life, with its highs and lows, also typifies the transition from the Zands to the Qājārs and the long thirteenth/nineteenth century.

Christoph Werner

Cite this page Werner, Christoph, “ʿAbd al-Razzāq Beg Dunbulī”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Edited by: Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson. Consulted online on 12 January 2019  First published online: 2008 First print edition: 9789004171374, 2008, 2008-2

Najafqulu Khan II