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Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture

www.dabirjournal.org

ISSN: 2470-4040

No.7.2020Digital Archive of Brief notes & Iran Review

Special Issue: Hellenism and Iran

xšnaoθrahe ahurahe mazdåDetail from above the entrance of Tehran’s fij ire temple, 1286š/1917–18. Photo by © Shervin Farridnejad

The Digital Archive of Brief Notes & Iran Review (DABIR) ISSN: 2470-4040www.dabirjournal.org

Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and CultureUniversity of California, Irvine1st Floor Humanities GatewayIrvine, CA 92697-3370

Editor-in-ChiefTouraj Daryaee (University of California, Irvine)

EditorsParsa Daneshmand (Oxford University)Shervin Farridnejad (Freie Universität Berlin/Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien)Judith A. Lerner (ISAW NYU)

Book Review EditorShervin Farridnejad (Freie Universität Berlin/Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien) Advisory BoardSamra Azarnouche (École pratique des hautes études); Dominic P. Brookshaw (Oxford University); Matthew Canepa (University of Minnesota); Ashk Dahlén (Uppsala University); Peyvand Firouzeh (Cambridge Univer-sity); Leonardo Gregoratti (Durham University); Frantz Grenet (Collège de France); Wouter F.M. Henkel-man (École Pratique des Hautes Études); Rasoul Jafarian (Tehran University); Nasir al-Ka‘abi (University of Kufa); Andromache Karanika (UC Irvine); Agnes Korn (CNRS, UMR Mondes Iranien et Indien); Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (University of Edinburgh); Jason Mokhtarain (University of Indiana); Ali Mousavi (UC Irvine); Mahmoud Omidsalar (CSU Los Angeles); Antonio Panaino (University of Bologna); Alka Patel (UC Irvine); Richard Payne (University of Chicago); Khodadad Rezakhani (History, UCLA); Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis (British Museum); M. Rahim Shayegan (UCLA); Rolf Strootman (Utrecht University); Giusto Traina (University of Paris-Sorbonne); Mohsen Zakeri (University of Göttingen)

Copy Editor: Philip GrantLogo design by Charles LiLayout and typesetting by Kourosh Beighpour

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Contents

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1Articles1 Domenico Agostini: On Jerusalem and Luhrāsp: A Closer Look2 Daryoosh Akbarzadeh: Collapse of Sasanian Empire3 Kiumars Alizadeh: The earliest Persians in Iran toponyms and Persian ethnicity4 Elshad Bagirow: Sassanid toreutics discovered in Shemakha, Azerbaijan as artistic metalwork

in the art of Sasanian Iran5 Majid Daneshgar: An Old Persian-Malay Anthology of Poems from Aceh6 Morteza Djamali, Nicolas Faucherre: Sasanian architecture as viewed by the 19th century

French architect Pascal-Xavier Coste7 Shervin Farridnejad: Cow Sacrifijice and the Hataria’s Dedicatory Inscription at the Zoroastrian

Shrine of Bānū-Pārs8 Hasmik C. Kirakosian: New Persian Pahlawān9 Khodadad Rezakhani: Notes on the Pahlavi Archives I: Finding *Haspīn-raz and the Geography

of the Tabarestan Archive10 Yusef Saadat: Contributions to Middle Persian lexicography11 Diego M. Santos; Marcos Albino: Mittelpersisch rōzag ‘Fasten’12 Ehsan Shavarebi; Sajad Amiri Bavandpour: Temple of Anahid and Martyrdom of Barshebya

Special Issue: Hellenism and Iran13 Jake Nabel: Exemplary History and Arsacid Genealogy14 Marek Jan Olbrycht: Andragoras, a Seleukid Governor of Parthia-Hyrkania, and his Coinage 15 Rolf Strootman: Hellenism and Persianism in the East

Reviews16 Chiara Barbati: Review of Benkato, Adam. Āzandnāmē. An Edition and Literary-Critical Study

of the Manichaean-Sogdian Parable-Book. Beiträge Zur Iranistik 42. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2017. 216 p., 42 images, ISBN: 9783954902361.

17 Majid Daneshgar: Translation of Persian and Malay Literary Works in Malaysia and Iran18 Yaser Malekzadeh: Review of Ghafouri, Farzin. Sanǧeš-e manābeʿ-e tārīḫī-ye šāhnāme dar

pādšāhī-ye ḫosrō anūšīravān [The Evaluation of Historical Sources of Shāhnāme in the Reign of Khusraw Anūshīravān]. Tehran, Mīrās̱-e Maktūb. 2018. 577+17 pp. ISBN 9786002031310.

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No.7.2020Digital Archive of Brief notes & Iran Review

ISSN: 2470 - 4040

Special Issue: Hellenism and Iran

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Translation of Persian and Malay Literary Works in Malaysia and Iran

Majid Daneshgar(Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg)

Archives suggest that Hendrik Karel Jan Cowan was one of the European pioneers who argued that the Persian Poet, Saʿdī Shīrāzī (d. c. 1291), was introduced to the Malay-Indonesian world through Indian Muslims in the 15th century. In 1940, he noticed a poem by Saʿdī inscribed on the tomb of Nāʾinā Ḥusām al-Dīn (d. c. 1420) in North Sumatra, Indonesia.1 Subsequently, other Dutch scholars, including Voorhoeve among others, discussed the contribution of Persian to Malay language sources.2

Very soon, Iranians and Malays themselves started to pay particular attention to the historical and cultural ties between the two communities.3 The fijirst known work in Persian about the relationship between Persia and the Malay-Indonesian world was produced by renowned Persian author Ahmad Suhayli Khvansari (d. 1994). In his short article, on the basis of MS.3696 (Safijinah-yi Sulayman) in the Malek Museum, Tehran, it is mentioned that Shah Sulayman Safavi (r.1666–1694) decided to send a commercial

1- H. K. J. Cowan, “A Persian Inscription in North Sumatra”, in Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 80/1 (1940), 15–21.

2- Petrus Voorhoeve, ‘Perzische invloed op het Maleis’, in B.K.I. 108/1 (1952), 92–93.3- For a review of the literature see Majid Daneshgar, “The Study of Persian Shi‘ism in the Malay-Indonesian World: A Review of

the Literature from the Nineteenth Century Onwards,” Journal of Shi‘a Islamic Studies 7/2 (2014), 191–229.

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delegation to Siam (Thailand) in 1097/c.1686.4 In 1963 Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas then opened up a discussion in Malaysia, showing how Persian had influenced Malay-Indonesian Islamic mysticism in general and that of the famous Malay thinker, Hamza Fansuri (d. c.16th century), in particular.5

Persian to Malay TranslationsDespite the growing interest in Malay-Persian [-Shīʿī] studies, very few classical Persian works have

been translated into the Bahasa Melayu language. Archives suggest that apart from A. Hamilton's Malay rendition of Khayyām's "Rubaiyāt" in 1932, one of the fijirst classical Persian works translated into Malay (using Romanized script by local scholars) was the Tadhkirat al-Awliya’ (“Memoirs of Saints”) of Farīd al-Din ʿAṭṭār (d. c. 1221) by Abdul Majid bin Haji Khatib in 1977.6 Surprisingly, he translated ʿAṭṭār’s work from the “abridged” Urdu version of Bankey Behari published in 1970. Later on, Mohd Ajmal Abdul Razak Al-Idrus (d. 2017) translated Rumi’s Masnavi into Malay in 2011.7

In 2017, Malaysian scholars translated Saʿdī’s masterpiece the Gulistān (‘the Rose Garden’) into Malay as “Taman Mawar”8, published by the Malaysian Press, Islamic Book Trust in association with the Cultural Center of the Embassy of Iran in Kuala Lumpur. It has a prawacana (‘foreword’) by Muhammad Bukhari Lubis, a Malaysian professor whose interest is Persian poetry and literature. The translator(s) of the Gulistān mainly consulted Persian online sources and printed volumes (not manuscripts), as well as Richard J. Newman’s 2004 English translation. According to the editorial note, the translation is not literal but conceptual (terjemahan ini iala terjemahan maʿnawi, bukan lafzi atau literal). Qurʾanic verses are also rendered on the basis of the Malay exegesis, “Tafsir Pimpinan al-Rahman kepada Pengertian al-Qurʾan” by Abdullah M. Basmeih.

The book starts with the famous dībācheh ‘preface’ of Saʿdī, which is translated as “muqadimmah”. However, as the term dībācheh was widely used in classical and pre-modern translations of Saʿdī’s Gulistān in various Islamic languages, it would have been more accurate if the Malaysian translator(s) had used this classical term in the Malay rendition.9 The work also fails to provide readers with original Persian terms in footnotes/endnotes, or with an index. This is despite the fact that original Arabic phrases (e.g., Qurʾanic verses) are clearly shown throughout the work. Also, the translation is sometimes unclear. For instance, to translate: عبیری یا مشکی تو گفتم the translator(s) says, “Aku bertanya: “Apakah engkau ambergris atau ,بدو kasturi?” (xxiii). However, it would have been more appropriate if s/he had translated it as “Berkata aku padanya: engkau kasturi atau anbar/ambergris.”10

4- Ahmad Suhayli Khvansari, “Karevan-e Siam: Ravabet-e Doust i-yi Siam ba Iran dar ‘Ahd-e Shah Sulayman-e Safavi,” Danish-e Mehr 7 (1333/1954), 432–436. On the “Ship of Sulayman” see also Mohammad Ibrahim, The Ship of Sulaiman, ed. J. O’Kane, Persian Heritage Series XI (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), and Muhammad Ibrahim, Safijinih-yi Suleimani: Tashih va Ta‘liqat, ed. ‘Abbas Faruqi (Tehran: University of Tehran Press, 1356/1977).

5- For a list of al-Attas’ works related to Persian language and culture, see Daneshgar, “The Study of Persian Shi‘ism in the Malay-Indonesian World,” 191–229.

6- Syekh Fariduddin ‘Attar, Tazkiratul-Awliya’, trans. Abdul Majid bin Haji Khatib (Kelantan: Pust aka Aman Press, 1980).7- Rumi, Karya Agung Mathnawi Jalaluddin Rumi, trans. Mohd Ajmal Abdul Razak Al-Idrus, 6 vols. (Kuala Lumpur: the Malaysian

National Inst itute of Translation, 2012).8- Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Saʿdī al-Shīrāzī, Taman Mawar (Selangor: Islamic Book Trust s in association with the Cultural Center of the

Embassy of Iran in Kuala Lumpur, 2017). It would have been better if the term Gulist ān had been translated as “Taman Bunga Mawar.”

9- See Ms 08, kept in the Shoults Collect ions, University of Otago Library: the commentary on Dībācheh of Gulīst an in Ottoman Turkish. 10- To read about the Malay translation of Saʿdī’s poem see my "An Old Persian-Malay Anthology of Poems from Aceh". Dabir 7

(2020), 61-90.

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Malay to Persian Translations A small number of Malay language resources have been introduced in Iran. Lexicographic works are the

principal works in which authors or editors merely attempt to show commonalities between the Persian and Malay languages and terms, without attempting any in-depth analytical examination of history, culture, and civilization. Alessandro Bausani (d. 1988) was a leading Iranologist who drew the attention of Iranians to the status of Persian culture in Indonesian literature. He delivered a lecture on this topic at the University of Tehran, later published, in 1966.11

Recently, a volume which included the Persian translation of three works by the renowned Malay mystic, Hamza Fansuri, has been published in Tehran, also supported by the Cultural Center of the Embassy of Iran in Kuala Lumpur. Amir Hossein Zekrgoo and Leila Haji Mahdi Tajer have translated three prose works by Fansuri including Asrār al-ʿĀrifīn (‘The Secrets of the Gnostics’), Sharāb al-ʿĀshiqīn (‘The Drink of Lovers’) and al-Muntahī (‘The Adept’).12 In so doing, they consulted original manuscripts (e.g., Cod. Or. 7291 in Leiden) as well as S. M. N. al-Attas’ English transliteration and translation. These three treatises, as well as his other poetic works, clearly suggest that Fansuri was deeply impressed by Persian poetry and mysticism, and frequently cited the works of Shaykh Maḥmūd Shabestarī (d. c. 1320), ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. c. 1429), and ʿAṭṭār, among others.

Zekrgoo and Tajer, who should be congratulated for their important work, have produced a descriptive introduction rather than a critical one, inasmuch as they view Fansuri as a “faithful Sufiji disciple and sage mystic”.13 They also take his treatises for granted and pay no attention to the long history of so-called “Fansuri Studies” in Western academia, going back to the 1920s.14 Moreover, they overlooked critical approaches to al-Attas’ interpretation, such as Carool Kersten’s:

The repeated emphasis placed by al-Attas on what he calls the ‘rationalistic’ aspects of the substance of Islamic thought stand in strange contrast to the overwhelming mystical and theosophist contents of Hamza Fansuri’s oeuvre, which are best articulated and systematised in his prose works: Asrar al-ʿarifijin…, Sharāb al-ʿashiqīn…, and al-Muntahī…15

11- Alessandro Bausani, “Ta’thīr-e Farhang va Zabān-e Fārsī dar Adabiyyāt-e Andunizī”, in Dāneshkada Adabiyyāt va ʿUlūm-e Insānī Dānishgāh Tehran 53 (1345/1966), 4–15. A few non-Iranian scholars, however, obtained their PhDs researching the inf luence of Persian on Malay-Indonesian languages, or comparing the two. Among them, for example, see Mohammad Zafar Iqbal, “Ta’thir-e Zaban va Adabiyyat-e Farsi va Farhang-e Irani dar Zaban va Adabiyyat-e Farhang-e Andonezi” (‘the Inf luence of the Persian Language and Literature and Iranian Culture on the Indonesian Language and Literature and Culture of Indonesia’) (PhD. Thesis, University of Tehran, 1384/2005); Bast ian Zulyeno, “Tarjoma-yi Kitab-e Taj al-Salatin Athar-e Bukhari al-Jawhari az Matn-e Malay-e Qarn-e Hefdahom-e Miladi va Tatbiq ba Siyasat-nama-yi Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk al-Tusi (‘The Translation from Malay Text to the Persian of Bukhari el-Jauhari Kitab-e Taj al-Salatin from the Seventeenth Century A.D. and a Comparison with Khauje Nizam al-Mulk al-Tusi’s Siyasat-Name’) (PhD. Thesis, University of Tehran, 1391/2012). See also Bast ian Zulyeno, “Sast ra Persia; Perjalanan Panjang Menuju Nusantara dari Siyāsat Nāme sampai Tajussalatin,” Media Syariah 15/1 (2017), 117–124.

12- Hamza Fansuri, Se-risālah Asrār al-ʿĀrif īn, Sharāb al-ʿĀshiqīn, al-Muntahī, eds. and trans. Amir Hossein Zekrgoo va Leila Haji Mahdi Tajer (Tehran: MirasMaktoob, 1397/2018).

13- Ibid., 16.14- See H. Kraemer, Een Javaansche Primbon uitde Zest iende Eeuw (Leiden: Trap, 1921).15- Carool Kerst en, Hist ory of Islam in Indonesia: Unity in Diversity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

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It would also have been useful for readers if the translators had discussed the reception of Fansuri’s mystical perspective among Malay classical fijigures like Nūr al-Dīn al-Ranīrī (d. c. 1658) “who managed to convince the Sultan of Aceh that its teachings were heretical.”16 Useful too might have been some discussions of, among many others, (a) J. Doorenbos’ comprehensive study of Fansuri’s writings;17 (b) L. F. Brakel’s precise analyses of Fansuri’s biography and practices;18 and (c) G.W.J. Drewes and Brakel’s English edition of Fansuri’s poem, in which they consider, among other topics, “Hamzah’s knowledge of Persian.”19

Despite lacking critical perspective, translation of classical works in Malaysia and Iran have fijilled a huge gap, which allows local scholars to get more familiar with the role of poetic literature in the development of Islamic mysticism across the Muslim world and, more importantly, to produce critical and groundbreaking pieces spontaneously and persistently.

16- Zailan Morris, “Fansuri, Hamza,” The Biographical Encyclopedia of Islamic Philosophy, edited by Oliver Leaman (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 91–92.

17- J. Doorenbos, De Geschriften van Hamzah Pansoeri. Leiden: Batteljee & Terpst ra (Ph. D Thesis, Leiden State University, 1933).18- L. F. Brakel, “The Birthplace of Hamzah Fansuri,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 42/2 (1969),

206–212; and L. F. Brakel, “Hamza Fansuri. Notes on: Yoga Pract ices, Lahir dan Zahir, the “Taxallos”, Punning, A Difffij icult Passage in the Kitab al-Muntahi, Hamzah’s Likely Place of Birth and Hamza’s Imagery,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 52/1 (1979), 73–98. Also, see: Vladimir I. Braginsky, “Towards the biography of Hamzah Fansuri. When did Hamzah live? Data from his poems and early European accounts,” Archipel 57/2 (1999), 135–175.

19- G.W.J. Drewes and L.F. Brakel, The poems of Hamzah Fansuri/edited with an introduct ion, a translation, and commentaries, accompanied by the Javanese translations of two of his prose works (Dordrecht-Holland; Cinnaminson-U.S.A.: Foris Publications, 1986).