''Hunar-nāma'' ('the book of excellence', also transliterated ''Honarnāme'') is a 487-distich Persian ''
mathnavī'' poem composed by
‘Uthmān Mukhtārī Abū ‘Umar ‘Uthmān b. ‘Umar Mukhtārī Ghaznavī (born c. 467/1074-75, died 513×15/1118×21) was a Persian poet of the Ghaznavids, an empire originating from Ghazna located in Afghanistan. He had patrons at the courts of the Qarakhānids, t ...
at
Tabas
Tabas () is a city in the Central District of Tabas County, South Khorasan province, Iran, serving as capital of both the county and the district.
History Early history
The history of Tabas dates back to pre-Islamic times. It was an im ...
in the period 500-508 (1105-13 CE), when he was at the court of
Seljuqs
The Seljuk dynasty, or Seljukids ( ; , ''Saljuqian'',) alternatively spelled as Saljuqids or Seljuk Turks, was an Oghuz Turkic, Sunni Muslim dynasty that gradually became Persianate and contributed to Turco-Persian culture.
The founder of the S ...
in
Kirmān
Kerman (; ) is a city in the Central District of Kerman County, Kerman province, Iran, serving as capital of the province, the county, and the district.
History
Kerman was founded as a defensive outpost, with the name Veh-Ardashir, by Ard ...
. The poem is dedicated to the ruler of Tabas,
Yamīn al-Dowla (aka Ḥisām ad-Dīn Yamīn ad-Dowla Shams al-Ma‘ālī Abū ’l-Muẓaffar Amīr Ismā‘īl Gīlakī, and can be read as a 'letter of application' demonstrating Mukhtārī's skill as a court poet. It has been characterised as 'perhaps the most interesting of the poems dedicated to Gīlākī'.
Form
The poem is unique among ''masnavī''s for portraying a young poet being tested, not by a more senior poet as in other medieval Persian poems, but by an astrologer. Moreover, is also unique for including a series of
riddles
A riddle is a :wikt:statement, statement, question, or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or Allegory, alleg ...
(ten in all) on the spiritual, intellectual, and military ideals for a king. These in turn have a distinctive structure: each has ten distichs posing ethical questions, followed by two distichs in which the poet delivers his answers. The riddles in particular serve to showcase Mukhtārī's virtuosity in poetic description. The poem is also among the earliest to have been written in the ''
khafīf'' metre.
Contents
The poem begins of a cosmological survey, which descends from heaven to earth before culminating in praise of God and his Prophet. The second half of the poem narrates the reverse process: the striving of the poet's persona to proceed from a mundane existence to spiritual perfection. He achieves this by going on a journey and meeting an astrologer, who tests his wisdom with riddles
It was translated into English by A. A. Seyed-Gohrab.
Sources and influences
Though rather different, the ''Hunar-nāma'' may have drawn some inspiration from the ''
Rowshanā’ī-namā'' by
Nāṣir-i Khusrow
Nasir Khusraw (; 1004 – between 1072–1088) was an Isma'ili poet, philosopher, traveler, and missionary () for the Isma'ili Fatimid Caliphate.
Despite being one of the most prominent Isma'ili philosophers and theologians of the Fatimids and ...
(d. 1075). It may in turn have inspired
Sanā’ī's ''
Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqa'', ''
Seyr al-‘ibād'', and ''
Kār-nāma''. The testing of the poet's wisdom recalls similar tests of young men's wits in Persian epic and romance texts such as ''
Khosrow ud Redak'', Asadī's ''
Garshāsp-nāma'', and Firdow's ''
Shāh-nāma
The ''Shahnameh'' (, ), also transliterated ''Shahnama'', is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 distichs or couplets (two-line verses ...
''.
[A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, ''Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry'' (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), p. 163.]
Editions and translations
* Humā’ī, Jalāl ad-Dīn, ''Funūn-i balāghat va ṣanā‘at-i adabī'' (Tehran, 1975)
ritical edition* Seyed-Gohrab, A. A., ''Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry'' (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), pp. 156-99 includes translations of the riddles.
References
{{reflist
Persian literature
12th-century Persian books