نگاهی تازه به قصیده ای از هلالی جغتایی استر آبادی

Hilālī Jaghata’ī is one of the poets of tenth century AH,
. One of Hilālī’s few known qasidas—frequently mentioned in the tazkeras—is the qasida he composed in praise of ʿUbaydullāh Khān Uzbek.
Two different views regarding this qasida have thus far been proposed in the tazkeras.
This study aims to critique both existing viewpoints and presents new verses—found in the Jung-e Sharaf and the tazkera Nafāʾis al-Maʾāthir—to reassess the first group’s claim that the qasida was composed on the arrival of ʿUbaydullāh Khān. It further proposes the possibility that the poem was in fact composed in the mode of iʿtidhār (poetic apology), intended as a plea for forgiveness and a means for escaping from death.‌
Accordingly, this study tries to address two key questions: How can the newly found verses of the qasida in praise of ʿUbaydullāh Khān Uzbek contribute to a clearer understanding of the poet’s intent? And how does this qasida relate to the tradition of apologetic poetry? Employing a descriptive–analytical method and relying on library sources and documents, the study then introduces the rhetorical technique of iʿtidhār and offers a brief overview of its background in Persian literature.

Introduction

The collected works of many poets have been published across different periods; however, with the discovery of manuscripts closer to the poet’s lifetime, new critical editions may emerge, resulting in the addition or removal of verses from their divans. During the Timurid era (771–911 AH), the sheer number of poets and their works is particularly noteworthy. In this period, which spans the eighth and ninth centuries AH, not only were many poets added to the history of Persian literature, but numerous biographical anthologies (tazkeras), miscellanies (safīnas), and poetic anthologies (jungs) were also produced in manuscript form by poets and writers, enriching the repository of written works. Among these, jungs and safīnas have played an important role both in identifying the works of poets whose divans had never been compiled and in remedying deficiencies in the divans of poets whose collected works had become incomplete or lost. These manuscripts have also been instrumental in shedding light on many historical events previously shrouded in ambiguity.
Since many manuscript sources—such as safīnas and jungs—survive as unique, standalone copies, and since their scribes seem to have prioritized the tastes and preferences of the audience of their own time, these works are valuable for understanding the literary inclinations of the period in which they were compiled. On the other hand, certain flaws are also evident in such materials. In some jungs and safīnas, scribes, either to present a greater variety of poems by a single poet or to include samples from more poets in the collection, attempted to shorten poems by removing some verses, producing abbreviated versions of ghazals and qasidas. This issue can be resolved by collating multiple manuscript witnesses, thereby allowing the reconstruction of a more complete form of the poems.
Among the notable poets of the tenth century whose poetry has suffered from such complications is Hilālī Jughātāyī Astarābādī. Although Hilālī’s divan was printed several times in India and later edited and published in Iran by Professor Saeed Nafisi, limited access to additional manuscripts introduced weaknesses into that edition. Aside from Hilālī’s Laylī u Majnūn mathnavi, which has not yet been critically edited or published, his qasidas also appear to warrant serious scholarly attention. Research on Hilālī’s qasidas has not been conducted as thoroughly as it should, and since only four qasidas are present in the manuscripts examined by Nafisi, safīnas and jungs can serve as valuable resources in advancing this line of study.
 
2-   Research methodology
The present study has been conducted using an analytical–descriptive method based on library research. Since part of the findings derives from manuscript sources, a portion of this research has been carried out on the basis of editing a handwritten manuscript.
 
3-  Discussion
Most biographical compilers who have mentioned the account of Hilālī’s murder at the hands of ʿUbaydullāh Khān have believed that, after the Uzbek ruler seized control of Khurasan, he first brought Hilālī into his service, but the intrigues of envious rivals led him to have the poet killed in the Chahārsūq of Herat. Ḥasan Beg Rūmlū, while noting the treachery of the envious toward Hilālī and their efforts to erase him from the pages of history, considers Hilālī’s Shianess to have been the pretext by which ʿUbaydullāh Khān and his associates sent him to his death (see Rūmlū, 1957: 291). Riżāqolī Khān Hedāyat in Riyāż al-ʿĀrifīn, Shaykh Abū’l-Qāsem Anṣārī in Salm al-Samāwāt, and Sām Mīrzā in Tuhfat-e Sāmī likewise maintain that Hilālī was executed for being a Shiite. (see Hedāyat, 1926: 238; Anṣārī, 1961: 398; Sām Mīrzā, 1935: 94). Ẓabīhullāh Ṣafā, in his History of Persian Literature, echoes the view of Sām Mīrzā and repeats the same account (see Ṣafā, 1984, vol. 4: 433).
Others, such as Eskandar Beg Monshī in Tārīkh-e ʿĀlam-ārā-ye ʿAbbāsī, recount that a satirical poem Hilālī composed against ʿUbaydullāh Khān—and which eventually reached the Uzbek ruler—was the cause of the poet’s death (Rūmlū, 1957: 294). Upon seeing this poem, ʿUbaydullāh Khān ordered Hilālī’s arrest and imprisonment, and in the end had him executed in the Chahārsūq of Herat (Eskandar Monshī, 1935: 43). The splendid qasida Hilālī had earlier composed in praise of ʿUbaydullāh (the very qasida examined in this study) was of no avail, and the ruler nevertheless commanded the poet’s execution.
Hilālī’s well-known qasida in praise of ʿUbaydullāh Khān Uzbek contains thirteen verses in Hilālī’s printed divan. However, in the Jung-e Sharaf it appears in nineteen verses (Sharaf, n.d.: 55), and in the biographical anthology Nafāyes al-Maʾāther it is recorded in twenty verses (Kāmī Qazvīnī, 2016: 608). By combining the verses found in these two sources, the qasida consists of a total of twenty-three verses.
 
4- Conclusion
Regarding Hilālī’s well-known qasida composed in praise of his own killer, ʿUbaydullāh Khān Uzbek, two general views have been proposed. Some scholars hold that the poem was written in honor of ʿUbaydullāh Khān upon his arrival in Khurasan after its conquest. Others believe that Hilālī composed it in an attempt to appease ʿUbaydullāh Khān after having angered him with satirical verses, though the effort ultimately proved futile. Several biographical compilers likewise attribute the poet’s execution at the order of ʿUbaydullāh Khān to Hilālī’s adherence to Shiʿism.
An examination of the newly identified verses of Hilālī’s celebrated qasida in praise of ʿUbaydullāh Khān Uzbek—preserved in Jung-e Sharaf and Nafāyes al-Maʾāther—greatly strengthens the likelihood that the poem was not composed to welcome ʿUbaydullāh Khān to Khurasan, but is instead an example of poetic apology (shiʿr-e eʿtezār)—a qasida written to seek forgiveness and escape the ruler’s anger and punishment. This issue, which had long remained a point of disagreement in historical and biographical sources, becomes considerably clearer with the addition of these newly found verses and the evidence presented above, increasing the probability that the poem was composed as an attempt to avert the wrath of the Uzbek khan.
Since the version of this qasida printed in Hilālī’s divan edited by Saeed Nafisi contains far fewer verses—and given that we identified one verse present in the divan but absent from Jung-e Sharaf and Nafāyes al-Maʾāther, as well as verses appearing in Jung-e Sharaf but not in Nafāyes al-Maʾāther, and vice versa—it is highly probable that the verses presented here as “new findings” do not constitute the complete text of the qasida. Moreover, a review of Hilālī’s newly discovered qasidas indicates that most of his qasidas contain more than thirty-five verses, and thus it seems unlikely that a “splendid” qasida—especially one composed in a desperate bid to save his own life—would consist of only twenty-one verses.
A systematic examination of jungs and biographical anthologies, particularly those dating from or close to the tenth century AH, will likely yield additional verses of this qasida in the future. Finally, it should be noted that the possibility of later interpolation must also be considered, and the authenticity of the newly found verses cannot be affirmed with absolute certainty.
 

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