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THE THREE FEATURED POETS--Hafez, Jahan Khatun, and Obeyd-e Zakani--are in many ways very different from one another, but they have three things in common: the first is a recommendation to cultivate the private life and, if possible, to stay away from politics and the powerful; the second is a love for their city and a deep appreciation of its beauty; and the third is a constant preoccupation with the nature of love and desire. Despite these similarities, all three are, in their own ways, quite unique.
HAFEZ is the most celebrated of Persian lyric poets. His poems are, deliberately, highly ambiguous, and many of them can be read as being addressed either to God, or to a loved person, or to both.Similarly, their celebration of wine and the pleasures of conviviality can be read literally, or as a metaphorical recommendation of the intoxications of mysticism. For example, the poem that begins:
I’ve known the pains of love’s frustration – ah,
don’t ask!
I’ve drained the dregs of separation – ah, don’t
ask!
I’ve been about the world and found at last
A lover worthy of my adoration – ah, don’t ask!
So that my tears now lay the dust before
Her door in constant supplication – ah, don’t ask!
Last night, with my own ears, I heard such words
Fall from her in our conversation – ah, don’t ask . . .
JAHAN KHATUN is the only Persian medieval woman poet whose complete
works have come down to us. Despite the fact that she is a very great
poet, no selection of her poems has ever been translated into English
before (or, as far as I am aware, into any European language)
I swore I’d
never look at him again,
I’d be a sufi, deaf to sin’s temptations;
I saw my nature wouldn’t stand for it -
From now on I renounce renunciations.
OBEYD-E ZAKANI, the most famous obscene poet in Persian, and a contemporary of both Jahan Khatun (about whom he wrote some very scabrous
verses), and Hafez. He has been justly compared with both Rabelais and Villon. For him, love has neither the delicacy and charm that we find in Jahan Khatun’s love poems, nor the passion and abandon that we find in those of Hafez; rather it is something wholly physical which is both pleasurable and irritating, and which he writes about with great cynicism, and often in openly obscene language, as when he begins a poem:
Devil, and then angel - is it the same you?
Which are you then, my prick? How should I name you?
You and your vulva friend - no man alive
Can hope to get away from you, or tame you . . .
Some of the most fascinating human epochs lie in the borderlands between history and mystery. So it is with the life of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire in the sixth century B.C. By conquest or gentler means, he brought under his rule a dominion stretching from the Aegean Sea to the Hindu Kush and encompassing some tens of millions of people. All across this immense imperium, he earned support and stability by respecting local customs and religions, avoiding the brutal ways of tyranny, and efficiently administering the realm through provincial governors. The empire would last another two centuries, leaving an indelible Persian imprint on much of the ancient world. The Greek chronicler Xenophon, looking back from a distance of several generations, wrote: “Cyrus did indeed eclipse all other monarchs, before or since.” The biblical prophet Second Isaiah anticipates Cyrus’ repatriation of Jews living in exile in Babylon by having the Lord say, “He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please.”
Despite what he achieved and bequeathed, much about Cyrus remains uncertain. Persians of his era had no great respect for the written word and kept no annals. The most complete accounts of his life were composed by Greeks. More fragmentary or tangential evidence takes many forms – among them, archaeological remains, court records in subject lands, and the always tricky stuff of legend.
Given these challenges, Discovering Cyrus: The Persian Conqueror Astride the Ancient World is a remarkable feat of portraiture. In his vast sweep, Reza Shaghaghi Zarghamee draws on sources of every kind, painstakingly assembling detail, and always weighing evidence carefully where contradictions arise. He describes the background of the Persian people, the turbulence of the times, and the roots of Cyrus’ policies. His account of the imperial era itself delves into religion, military methods, commerce, court life, and much else besides. The result is a living, breathing Cyrus standing atop a distant world that played a key role in shaping our own.
