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  • Pearls of Persia: The Philosophical Poetry of Nāṣir-i Khusraw ed. Alice C. Hunsberger
  • Daniel Beben
Pearls of Persia: The Philosophical Poetry of Nāṣir-i Khusraw, ed. HunsbergerAlice C., 2012. London & New York: I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, xxix + 286 pp., £25.00. isbn: 978-1-78076-130-5 (hbk).

The verse of the eleventh-century Persian author Nasir-i Khusraw has long been recognized by modern and pre-modern observers alike for its uniquely philosophical and didactic quality. The fifteenth-century anthologist Dawlatshah Samarqandi, for example, characterized Nasir’s Divan as ‘a collection of sound and firm wisdom (hikmat), admonition (mawʿizah), and discourses (sukhanan).’1 Yet while modern scholarship on the figure of Nasir-i Khusraw has likewise widely recognized his talent in both the areas of poetry and philosophical prose, far less attention has been paid to the relationship between these two aspects of his legacy or to the study of philosophical themes within his verse. This topic is the subject of the volume under review here, which is edited by Alice Hunsberger, author of the preeminent English-language biography of Nasir-i Khusraw. The volume developed from a 2005 conference marking the millennium anniversary of Nasir’s birth at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, organized in conjunction with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, titled ‘The Philosophical Poetry of Nasir-i Khusraw’.

In her introduction, Hunsberger surveys both the life and works of Nasir-i Khusraw as well the English, French, German, and Persian-language scholarship on the relationship between Nasir’s verse and philosophy. Hunsberger charts how enlightenment-era thought led to an understanding among European scholars of poetry and science as operating in separate spheres. Later, under the influence of nineteenth-century Romanticism, a notion developed among many European observers that ‘poetry should be concerned only with emotions or feelings.’ This perspective, in turn, has influenced generations of scholars’ approaches to the study of Nasir-i Khusraw’s poetry and its [End Page 379] relationship with his philosophical work, leading to a bifurcation in the study of his prose and verse. Hunsberger then turns to a brief survey of the genre of philosophical poetry within the Persian literary tradition. The introduction concludes with an overview of the volume’s contributions. The volume consists of three sections on the following themes: (1) Speech and Intellect; (2) Philosophical Poetry: Enlightening the Soul; and (3) Nasir-i Khusraw’s Poetics. Due to constraints of space I will not attempt to survey all the contributions, but rather will focus on a selection in order to illustrate some of the broader themes and issues addressed in the volume.

The first section presents chapters from Faquir Muhammad Hunzai, M.J. Esmaeili, Daniel Rafinejad, and Leonard Lewisohn. Hunzai’s chapter explores the role of the intellect (ʿaql) in the writings of Nasir-i Khusraw. Hunzai argues that rather than positing a dichotomy between the role of the philosopher and the theologian, Nasir instead presents a four-fold division of the Muslim ummah, based on the belief of various groups regarding the processes of revelation (tanzil), esoteric interpretation (taʾwil), and the intellect. The first are the literalists, who blindly accept the tanzil and reject the taʾwil. The second are the philosophers, who reject the tanzil and claim to be guided by an unmediated intellect. The third group are the theologians (mutakallim), who accept the tanzil but hold the taʾwil to be applicable to only a select handful of allegorical verses. The fourth group accepts the necessity of both the tanzil and taʾwil, and uphold the right of the Prophet’s descendants (the Shiʿi imams) to conduct the esoteric interpretation.

The contribution by Daniel Rafinejad explores Nasir’s own conception of poetry. In particular, he explores an important aspect of Nasir’s poetry which has remained largely ignored, namely the role of emotional expression and self-reference. Rafinejad draws a comparison here with the American poet William Wordsworth, arguing that Nasir-i Khusraw would find resonance in Wordworth’s definition of poetry as ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.’ Nasir’s employment of emotion, Rafinejad...

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