Jami, Pari Khan Khanom, and Mohtasham: Ideology, Patronage, and Poetics in Sixteenth-Century Iran

In Naqāvat al-āthār (composed 1598), Ashufta’i Natanzi fulsomely lauds the literary discernment and patronage of Shāh Tahmāsp’s daughter, Pari Khān Khānom. To substantiate his praises, Natanzi recounts that she selected eighty ghazals by the master late-Timurid poet ‘Abd al-Rahmān Jāmi (d. 1492). She then commissioned “the most fluent of the wordsmiths and the most eloquent of poets ancient and modern,” Mohtasham Kāshāni (d. 1588), to write responses (javāb) to these poems, which he duly delivered along with several qasidas in her praise. This anecdote is intriguing from several perspectives. The project as a whole and the choice of Jāmi in particular seem to contradict the ideological program of the new Safavid dynasty. Stories from Esmā’il’s reign describe the destruction of Jāmi’s tomb and literary works as exemplifying the Sunni hegemony that the new Safavid ideology was determined to overthrow. Pari Khān Khānom’s patronage also runs counter the widespread image of Safavid indifference and even hostility to secular poetry on the grounds of religious piety. But this paper will focus on the implications of this anecdote for understanding the history of Persian poetics. Although the results of Pari Khān Khānom’s commission are no longer preserved as a self-standing collection, the many javābs to Jāmi scattered throughout Mohtasham’s collected works lend credence to Natanzi’s story. While Mohtasham’s poems clearly pay homage to Jāmi, they also work to revise and displace the poetic program of the late Timurid era. A close comparative reading of one of Jāmi’s poems with Mohtasham’s response will serve to illustrate this complex dynamic.