Performing Kingship: Structure, Function, and Presentification in the Injuid and Muzaffarid Qasida

This paper will examine a significant corpus of post-Ilkhanid royal Persian qasidas (those of ‘Ubayd-i Zakani, d. 1371) to provide insight into the processes of poetic image-making engaged in by panegyrists at the Injuid and Muzaffarid courts of fourteenth-century Shiraz. Focusing on this substantial and hitherto under-discussed body of praise poems, this paper will explore how ‘Ubayd-i Zakani structured his poems to enable his audience not only to visualize ideal markers of kingly glory (farr), but to make those ideal elements of Iranian monarchy actual by presentifying them before their very eyes. Furthermore it will be shown that, as the poetic articulation of court ceremonial, the post-Ilkhanid Persian qasida worked in tandem with the physicality of the performance setting (the royal palace, pavilion, or pleasure garden) to project a bold regal image, one that was vital to Mongol successor city states such as those founded by the Injuids and the Muzaffarids as they vied with one another to claim the cosmic right to wield cultural and political authority in their turbulent century.