Manuchehri

Abu Najm Ahmad ibn Qaus ibn Ahmad Manuchehri (Persian: ابونجم احمد ابن قوص ابن احمد منوچهری دامغانی‎), a.k.a. Manuchehri Damghani, was an 11th-century court poet in Persia and Afghanistan.

He was from Damghan in Iran and he is said to have invented the form of musammat (stanzaic poems) in Persian poetry and to have written the best examples of this form. He traveled to Tabarestan and was admitted to the court of King Manuchihr of the Ziyarid dynasty. It is from here that he acquired his pen-name. He later was a royal poet in the court of Sultan Shihab ud-Dawlah Mas'ud I of Ghazni (or Ghazna), son of Mahmud of Ghazna.

He left behind a divan, a collection of his shorter poems. His works were extensively studied and translated into French by Albert Kazimirski de Biberstein in 1886.

Manuchehri died in 1040 CE.

Sample Poetry

The following are the opening lines of one of his most famous musammāt:

خیزید و خز آرید که هنگام خزان است‎
باد خنک از جانب خوارزم وزان است‎
آن برگ رزان بین که بر آن شاخ رزان است‎
گویی به مَثَلْ پیرهن رنگرزان است‎
دهقان به تعجب سرِ انگشت گزان است‎
کاندر چمن و باغ نه گُل ماند و نه گلنار‎
xīzīd-o xaz ārīd ke hengām-e xazān ast
bād-e xonok 'az jāneb-e Xārazm vazān ast
ān barg-e razān bīn ke bar ān šāx-e razān ast
gū'ī be masal pīrahan-ē rang-razān ast
dehqān be ta'ajjob sar-angošt-gazān ast
k-andar čaman-ō bāq na gol mānd o na golnār

Metre:

– – | u u – – || u u – – | u u – – (3.3.14)
Get up and bring fur clothes[1] as autumn is here
A cold wind is blowing from Khwarazm yonder
Look at that vine-leaf which is on that vine-bough
It looks like the shirt of dyers
The farmer is biting his finger with wonder
As in lawn and garden neither rose remains nor pomegranate flower.

There are 35 stanzas, each of three couplets, with the rhyme scheme aaaaax, bbbbbx, cccccx, etc. The poet plays on the similar sounding words xīz "rise", xaz "marten", xazān "autumn", and on razān "vines" and razān "dyeing".

The metre is 3.3.14 in Elwell-Sutton's system, one of the various metres traditionally known as hazaj.[2] (See Persian metres.)

Bibliography
  • Browne, E. G. (1906). A Literary History of Persia. Vol 2, chapter 2, especially pp. 153–156. ISBN 0-7007-0406-X
  • Clinton, Jerome W. (1972). The divan of Manūchihrī Dāmghānī; a critical study. (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica.)
  • Elwell-Sutton, L. P. (1975)."The Foundations of Persian Prosody and Metrics". Iran, vol 13. (Available on JSTOR).
  • Kazimirski, A. de Biberstein (1886). Manoutchehri: Poète persan du 11ème siècle de notre ère (du 5ième de l'hégire): Texte, traduction, notes, et introduction historique. Paris. Klincksieck. (Another copy, dated 1887).
  • Patton, Simon; Azadibougar, Omid (2016). "Basil Bunting's Versions of Manuchehri Damghani". Translation and Literature, Volume 25 Issue 3, Page 339-362, ISSN 0968-1361. (Edinburgh University Press).
  • Rypka, Jan History of Iranian Literature. Reidel Publishing Company. ASIN B-000-6BXVT-K
  • Shokrpour, Robab; Mahmoudi, Khosrow, Ata Azimi, Seyed Mohammad (2014). Manifestations of Joy in Manouchehri Damghani poetry. International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 2014, 3(3): 210-222.
  • Tolouei, Azar A. (2004) The Impact of Moallaghat-e-Sab-e on Manuchehri. Journal of the Faculty of Letters and Humanities (Tabriz). Winter 2004 , Volume 46 , Number 189.

See also

References
  1. Clinton translates as "silk brocade"; but Kazimirski (p. 321, note on line 14) points out that here the other meaning of "fur" is more appropriate. The animal used for fur is the marten.
  2. Elwell-Sutton (1975), p. 82.


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