Short Article :Yādgār: A Technical Official (Dīwānī) Term in Šāhnāma

In Firdausī’s Šāhnāma (1010 AD), in the story of the reign of Hurmazd-i Nūšīnrawān, after Parmūda, the son of Sāva-Šāh, comes under the protection the Šāh and Bahrām Čōbīn, Bahrām commands the secretaries to count and record the treasures of the fortress where Parmūda was kept captive in. Here the poet says:The secretaries set forth with fearful hearts/From dawn   ̶ until three watches of the night had passed Much yādgār (?) was blacked/But was not written [all of the treasure] eventually  As it appears, this word has been recorded in the narrative of Farāmarz-nāma in the region of Kūhmareh Sorxī of Fars province in the form of yāzgār/yadhgār, meaning “leather scroll”. Accordingly, one of the researchers by presenting attestation from Arabic texts and showing the term ayādkārāt al-furs in the texts of Kitāb al-Masālik wa al-mamālik, and Kitāb al-Aqālīm (both by Iṣṭaxrī, 10th AD) also concluded that ayādkārāt al-furs “were scrolls (ṭūmār) on which the images of the kings of ancient Iran, the marzpāns, the Zoroastrian clerics (hērbeds and mowbeds), and their stories were recorded”. In the following of the mentioned article due to the presence of this term in Arabic texts, the same meaning of “leather scroll”, which is used in the region of Kūhmareh Sorxī, has been accepted for the word yādgār in the verse in question.

So far, researchers have expressed various opinions about this word (see Aydenloo, 2007 → “Važe-ī farāmūš šode az Šāhnāmeh dar farhang-hā”; Khatibi, 2007 → “Yāzgār ya yādgār”; Sadeghi, 2007 →  “Darbare-ye yāzgār”; Naghzguy-Kohan, 2009 →“Yāzgār va Yādgār va enšeqāq-e avvalīyye”). What is mentioned in the Notes on the Šāhnāmeh (Khaleghi Motlagh, 2012) about this word, is a summary of these discussions. The author of the notes finally concluded that yādgār used in the above verse refers to “paper, writing and sawād”.

In my view, first of all, it is not necessary to elaborate the meaning of ayādkārāt al-furs in Arabic texts; It is obvious that in Middle Persian ayādgār, which later became yādhgār and yādgār, means “note”, “treatise”, “treatise of biography”; Secondly, the meaning of “leather scroll”, which is based on the narrative of Farāmarz-nāma in Kūhmareh Sorxī of Fars, refers to the appearance of these treatises, not the lexical and terminological meaning of the word yādgār.But the word yādgār in Šāhnāma, as it appears, is a technical official (dīwānī) term and the poet has probably quoted this word from Abū-Manṣūrī’s Šāhnāma; because yādgār has been used only once in this sense in the Šāhnāma, whereas Firdausī could easily have used the word “paper” instead, without affecting the meter of the poem. Therefore, to find attestation for this term, the first step is to examine the historical texts and the books of Āyīn-i dabīrī. After much searching, the author found this word only in Zayn al-axbār (1051 AD) Gardēzī. Gardēzī mentions yādgār/yadhgār after the “royal mandate” (manšūr) and “register” (sijill) and then speaks about the “bags of couriers (barīdān)” and the “safe-conducts” (amān-nāma-hā), which indicates that yādgār was a ministerial (dīwānī) term. Since Gardēzī most likely quoted this news from Mas‘ūdī’s (d. 957 AD) Murūj al-dhahab (The Meadows of Gold), it will be helpful to find out the Arabic equivalent of this term in this book. Mas‘ūdī in the Meadows of Gold under the “mention of the Sassanid kings …” has spoken of the treatises (rasāʼil) and registers (sijillāt) and then tadhkirāt, and Gardēzī has placed yādgār-hā as equivalent to the word tadhkirāt. Therefore, most likely, the term tadhkira, which was translated from Arabic to Persian in the Islamic era, was equivalent to the word ayādgār in Middle Persian. Now, if the meaning of tadhkira is understood, the meaning of the word yādgār in the above phrases and Firdausī's Šāhnāma will also become clear.The word tadhkira in Persian, in addition to its general meanings, has been a dīwānī term and has three different meanings that we often see in Persian historical-literary texts such as Tārīx-i Bayhaqī (11th century) and Tarǰama-yi tārīx-i Yamīnī (13th century):     1- List (siyāha) of presents and goods;  2- Script and note (in the specific sense of official letter or message); 3- A written request or complaint addressed to the king and the nobles to receive a reply.  In the verse in question in this article, the word yādgār refers exactly to the first meaning, that is, “list (siyāha) of goods”, and most likely, Firdausī quoted this word from Abū-Manṣūrī’s Šāhnama. This is a testament to his commitment to the source used. Now the question that arises here is whether in pre-Islamic sources the word ayādgār had other meanings besides “note”, “treatise”, “treatise of biography” or not? The author thinks that the answer to this question is ‘yes’. The reason is its use, in a sense other than the common meanings, in the text of the History of Sebeos. Thomson, the English translator of the History of Sebeos, uses the word “letter” for yektar and states in the footnote that the word has no attestation for use prior to Sebeos. It should be noted that Sebeos used yetkar here for a specific meaning, otherwise, he could have used commonly used words such as “paper” or “letter” to refer to this letter as he has used in  few lines lower. In another attestation in the same book, this word is used to mean “account”, which is somewhat close to the meaning of the word yādgār in the verse discussed in the Šāhnāma.

According to what has been said, the word yādgār in the verse in question in Šāhnāma was a technical official (dīwānī) term meaning “goods report” or “goods list” (siyāha), and it is not a general term. What reinforces this conjecture is the association of this word with other dīwānī terms in Zayn al-axbār. In addition, the use of the word yetkar in the History of Sebeos, which is a loan word from Middle Persian, confirms the use of this word with the specific meaning of the letter or note. The author thinks that ayādgār also had various meanings in the Middle Persian, which, although not available to us, traces of them are left in Armenian. The word tadhkira in the dīwānī terms of the Islamic era is also the Arabic equivalent of the word yādgār before Islam.