Nasirāy-e Hamedāni: A Study on the Life and Works of a Famous and Outstanding Writer and Poet of Safavid Time

  Safavid literature provides valuable information about the literary history of Iran due to its social influence and also its geographical and temporal broadness. In spite of its relative distinction from previous periods, the literature of this period can still elucidate a number of unclear points about ancient Persian literature due to enjoying the features of medieval history and culture as well as the literary characteristics of Classic time. However, the prose works of this era have been mostly neglected in researches because it was assumed that their value was much less than their verse counterparts and there is not much wit in them. Due to this, there is almost no knowledge about the quality and quantity of this part of Safavid literature today. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to explore the life and works of one of the masters of prose, especially the literary genre of "Dibaje", in that period, i.e. Nasirāy-e Hamedāni. This famous writer and poet of Safavid era was much more famous in India than Iran and he himself has emphasized this obscurity within his works. Unfortunately, due to prevailing lack of attention to the literature of this period by today's researchers and also slovenliness of the past men of letters in talking about their lives such information about Nasirā is very vague and unclear, in such way that the story of his life and works have been mixed with a number of his contemporaries, and proper and authentic information about him cannot be acquired unless his works are accessed and scrutinized. Although these difficulties have been mentioned in the literature review section, it should also be remarked that without any exaggeration the authors of this paper provide an account of the life and works of Nasirāy-e Hamedāni and his status in Persian literature, particularly the Hindi style, for the first time by accessing to all the known and accessible works of Nasirā and correcting as well as exploring such works.

To date there is no research paper or independent book about Nasirā and his works and there is only some brief descriptions of his life and some oft-quoted words. The aim of this paper is to acquire some information about his life and works by accessing to all the existent manuscripts of his works in Iran and correcting them. After his own works, tazkirehs are the most authentic sources for exploring his life and works and some information about the issue of this paper is obtained by providing a typology and evaluating the authenticity of these sources and comparing them with respect to the content and age. The oldest source in which Nasirā has been mentioned is Kheir-ol-Bayān tazkireh which provides some novel information about him. The second source is 'Arafāt al-'Āsheqin tazkireh by Ohadi in which the author describes the life of this poet as well as the life of one of his co-citizens, i.e. Khājeh Nasirodin ibn Khājeh Mahmoud Hamedāni, and because of this the later tazkireh-writers have mixed the life and works of these two poets. The third old and important source which has quoted some new and documented words about Nasirāy-e Hamedāni is NasrĀbādi tazkireh. Other sources are simply a copy of these sources or they offer some weak and instable ideas that in this paper we attempt to explore and evaluate them in order to finally identify and recognize the true status of this poet in the literature of Safavid time by investigating and analyzing the works of this poet from historical and rhetorical perspectives.
3. Nasirāy-e Hamedāni, his Life and Works
Like many other great figures of Persian literature there is no information about the birth date and early years of Nasirā's life and even it should be mentioned that there is only some chronological information about the last fifteen years of his life. It seems that he first came from Hamedan to Isfahan and learned some courses in the classes of some great figures like Mozafar Monnajem and Sheikh Bahāei (NasrĀbādi, 1378, p. 241; Sistani, 1386, p. 325) and then set out to Shiraz for completing his education and became the student of Shah Taqiodin Mohammad Nasābeh. Apparently due to the indifference of Isfahan's great figures to him or his attachments to Shiraz he went from Isfahan to Shiraz and completed his education there for some years and accompanied the great men of that city and even praised some of its officials.

It seems that he was in Deccan in the spring of 1021 but the exact time of his entrance to and exit from India is not known. His exit from India and entrance into Iran was definitely before 1025. It has been stated that the date of his death is 1030 and there is no proper information about his children and relatives.
Other than scientific works ascribed to Nasirā which are generally in the fields of philosophy and logic in either Arabic or Persian, his literary works can be categorized into verse and prose ones. However, regarding typology, his verse works include mostly panegyric odes, love sonnets and dilemma poems whereas his prose works are mainly Dibajes and on-demand letters. In a Dibaje he wrote for his epistolary, while providing an artistic and humble introduction of himself, he points to his "writing insanity" and talks about how his friends enticed him to collect "dispersed writings" and "distracted sheets" and then very briefly talks about the chapters and sections of his prose works. These works can be classified as following: 1) Dibajes which may be the very sermons and are epistolary writings that the writer has written about the works of others and sometimes his owns, 2) the epistolary works which include Ekhvāniāt and Moltamesāt