Fahlavīāt

something that has been borrowed from other languages, especially Arabic. Although some Iranian poetry, such as official Persian poetry and classical Kurdish poetry, have followed this foreign system, others poetic traditions, including those of folk Persian, folk Kurdish as well as folk and classical Gūrānī, did not follow this system.

continued the oral tradition of the Parthian and later minstrels following, in early Islamic times, the principles of Middle Iranian prosody.‖ Of course, the same state can be true about Gūrānī and Kurdish.

A major fact about Middle Iranian poetry is, as Khāleqī Mutlaq (2010) notes, the connection between poetry, music, and singing. These three elements were strongly connected to each other. Khāleqī Mutlaq also notes the profession of the xunyāgar. A xunyāgar wrote poems and sang them while playing an instrument. The instrument was normally a stringed instrument (for example, a barbat, tanbur, or čang). The writer of Tārīx-e Sīstān also explains that the Persians used to sing with the rud (a stringed musical instrument) and they sung in the xusravānī manner (Tārīx-e Sīstān 2002, pp. 209-210). The profession of the xunyāgar continued after the coming of Islam too. Rudakī (who lived during the Samanid dynasty) was the most famous poet to sing his poetry accompanied by a čang. Nizāmī, in his famous article Čahār Maqāle ‗four articles‘ (ed. by Qazvīnī in 1909), tells a short story about Rudakī. He writes that Amir Nasr Ibn-e Ahmad had spent about four years with his army in Heri. During this time, the soldiers wished to go back to their wives and children in Bukhara, but they were afraid to tell this to him directly. So they asked Rudakī to express their request in a song that would impress the Amir. So Rudakī went to the Amir with his čang and sang his famous poem: ―bu-y ju-ye Mulīān āyad hamī‖. He so deeply impressed the Amir that the Amir immediately took with his army back to Bukhara (op. cit., pp. 31-33). This story illustrates for us that, even until the time of Rudakī, these three elements (music, poetry and singing) were connected with each other. The close connection between music, poetry, and singing was probably maintained by the fahlavīāt poets and then later also by Gūrānī and Kurdish poets. As Azkāyī (1996:197) indicates, today, the awrāma in the Kurdish area is called the hora and the one who sings one, a horaxān, is a person that like the xunyāgar sings in the mountains of Kurdistan.

Some of the fahlavī poets are unknown by name, and some are known. Some of the famous poets include Hamadānī, Esfahānī, Anvār, Abharī, Zākānī, and Ardabīlī (compare with Ħuseini Kāzerūnī 2000:51). Tafazzoli (2006:123-128) notes that there were composers from different cities, such as Ardabīl, Maragha, Hamadān, Esfahān, Kāšān, Qazvīn, Rey, Tabrīz, besides others.

The most famous representative of the fahlavīāt poets is Bābā Tāher Hamadānī, to whom many poems are credited. Edward Heron Allen quotes from a historical source, Rāħat Al-Sodūr va Āyat Al-Sorūr (written in 1202-3), noting that Bābā Tāher lived during the Seljuq

dynasty (1037-1194). According to this source, Bābā Tāher had met Toghrol Baig Seljuqi (who ruled between 1037-1063),⁵³ which means that Bābā Tāher was alive during the middle of the eleventh century. The fahlavīāt, especially the fahlavīāt of Bābā Tāher, were also normally sung with instrumental accompaniment (see Allen 1976:183).⁵⁴

There has nevertheless been much discussion about the fahlavīāt and their meter. In the analysis of the metrical system of the fahlavīāt, many scholars mention two things. The first is that the role of music should be considered, and the second is that there is some doubt as to the originality of the poems due to poor transmission by the manuscript copyists (see Hadank 1926:37). These two factors complicate the analysis of the metrical system of the fahlavīāt.

Besides those two assumptions, it is also assumed by a few scholars that, as in official Persian poetry,⁵⁵ the metrical principles of the fahlavīāt are based on the quantity of syllables.

According to Qays Rāzī (Qazvīnī 1973), the fahlavīāt were composed following the pattern of one type of Persian baħr-e hazaǰ meter, a pattern called baħr hazaǰ-e mosadas-e maħzuf, which involves two mafāʕīlon feet (ᴗ - - -) followed by one faʕulon foot (u - -), that is, where a line had eleven syllables with this structure: u - - -/ u - - -/ u - -. Each ―fahlavīāt” was composed of four lines of this structure. In contrast, Qays Rāzī recognizes that the fahlavīāt do not show a regular metrical system based on the quantity of syllables. He explains that the fahlavīāt poets did not use the same regular feet in all four lines. For example, for one line, one kind of baħr hazaǰ was used, such as mafāʕīlon mafāʕīlon faʕūlon (u - - -/ u - - -/ u - -), and for another line, a kind of baħr mašākel was used, such as fāʕelāton mafāʕīlon faʕūlon (- u - - / u - - - / u - - ), or a different combination of feet was used, like mafulāton mafāʕīlon faʕūlon (- - - -/ u - - -/ u - -) in the first line and then in the next line mafāʕīlon faʕūlon (- u - -/

u - - ) (compare with Qays Rāzī 1973:28-29 and page 172). According to the opinion of Qays Rāzī, this type of metrical system, which was used by fahlavī poets, was not correct. He claimed that the poets of the fahlavīāt were ignorant about meter and therefore made many mistakes (compare with op. cit., p. 29).

53 Yaghmā Journal 1976, no. 3, pp. 183-185; no. 4, pp. 217-222.

54 Yaghmā Journal 1976, no. 3, pp. 183-185.

55 As mentioned in Chapter 2, the metrical system of official Persian poetry is based on the quantity of syllables.

In this system, combinations of long and short syllables occur in a larger construction termed a foot. A line is composed of combinations of different feet or the same feet (in each line there are either three or four feet).

With some exceptions, the position of long and short syllables must occur in a regular pattern throughout a poem.

The following example will illustrate what Qays Rāzī meant:⁵⁶

(14) man ân pīr-om ke xânand-om qalandar I am that old man (master) who is called qalandar - - - - / u - - - / u - -

na xân-om bē, na mân-om bē, na langar

I have no house, nor place to stay, nor anchor

u - - - / u - - - / u - -

ro, hama⁵⁷ ro varâyom gerd-e gētī (in the) day, all the day, I wander around the world

- u - - / u - - - / u - -

šo darâya,⁵⁸ va o sang-ē nehom sar (when) night comes, I lay my head upon a stone.

- u - - / u - - - / u - -

In the above poem, one can see that the first foot in each of the four lines is different. In the first line, the first foot is composed of four long syllables; in the second line, it is composed of a short syllable followed by three long syllables; and in the last two lines, it contains a long syllable followed by a short syllable, followed by two long syllables.

According to Qays Rāzī, this sort of variety in the first foot (that is, the different patterns of long and short syllables) illustrates a mixing of different meters that is not allowed.

The assumption that fahlavī poets or their later copyists made mistakes led to additional copyists making changes to the poems in order to adapt them to a certain metrical system. In other words, the copyists assumed that each line in fahlavīāt meter should be composed of exactly the following three feet: u - - -/ u - - -/ u - -. But when (as in the above example) the different lines began with different feet, such as with mafʕūlāton (- - - -), the copyists tried to regularize these feet to mafāʕīlon (u - - -). Therefore, it is difficult at the present time to determine the true metrical system of the fahlavīāt.

Other scholars have held views that were different from the position of Qays Rāzī. For example, Nātel Khanlarī (1958:71-73) concluded that the metrical system of the fahlavīāt is

56 I have taken this example from the book Bābā Tāher-Nāme by Parvīz Azkāyī. I have used his transcription system.

57 The word that I have transcribed in Latin script as hama has been transcribed by Azkāyī with a double mm, that is, as hamma. He does not explain why he uses mm in this word.

58 Azkāyī has transcribed this word as dar‟âya.

not based on the quantity of syllables, but that it is instead based on the number of syllables and to some degree on the syllable stress patterns. Thus, he considered the two constituents, stress and number of syllables, to be the basis for meter in the fahlavīāt.

Rezāyatī Kīshe Khale (2005) and Sādeqī (2000) also criticize the analysis of Qays Rāzī.

They argue that the metrical system of the fahlavīāt was probably not based on the quantity of syllables, and therefore they claim that the metrical system of the fahlavīāt should not be compared to the metrical system of official Persian poetry.

To summarize this section ( 4.2), we have noted the views of scholars and cited some examples of fahlavīāt poetry that show that the metrical principle of the fahlavīāt is different from the metrical principle of official Persian and Arabic poetry. Although many questions remain, it seems that fahlavīāt meter is not a pure system based on the quantity of syllables.

In earlier sections in this dissertation (in Chapter 3), we have argued that, in Pre-Islamic poetry, quantity of syllables was not a metrical constituent, but that instead the meter was based on the three metrical constituents of syllable number, syllable stress pattern, and position of caesura. Moreover, in section 4.1, we argued that these same three metrical constituents (and not syllable quantity) were relevant to the meter of the rare documented cases of early New Persian poems where it was clear that the Arabic metrical system had not yet affected the metrical system.

Later in the section on the traditions of folk poetry in Kurdish and Gūrānī, we will see in a similar way that quantity of syllables has no metrical value, but instead it is, again, syllable number, syllable stress pattern and caesura position that count as the primary metrical constituents.