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Spinning Stories: The Evolution of the Dāstān as a Genre

The word and the genre dāstān is unrecognisable as a theoretical category. Even great works of the genre like the Ḥamzanāma that have been popular for centuries in Iran and the Indian Subcontinent have been relegated to the literary sidelines. Research on dāstān literature has long been an academic backwater in the study of medieval Persian literature, first and foremost because of the evaluative and hierarchical approaches to literature still prevalent in the field.

This panel aims to look at the dāstān as a genre category that requires a poetics of its own so that the word and the genre ceases to be a verbal nomad. It is an attempt to define the dāstān as a genre both in the mediaeval period and in contemporary times and open it to inquiry and debate for a larger academic audience. In this regard, the first paper titled “Dāstān: A Theory” seeks to understand the genre as an ‘areligious’ and ‘ahistorical’ storytelling space. It uses the words ‘areligious’ and ‘ahistorical’ as antonyms of irreligious and fictional and not as opposites of religious and historical. The implication being that the religiosity and historicity of the dāstān, though omnipresent, is held in abeyance for the duration of the story.

The second paper titled “What Can Medieval Persian Folk Narratives in Prose Tell Us About the Poetic Canon(s)?” aims to show the importance of the dāstān genre as an integral part of the literary system of mediaeval Persian literature by examining verse insertions authored by various poets and found in some of the dāstāns. This investigation will help assess the reception of particular poets in the periods when specific dāstāns were compiled and/or copied; as such, it will enhance our knowledge of the nature and make-up of poetic canon(s) and the mechanisms of their formation as time- and place-sensitive entities.

The third paper, “Ḥamzanāma: The Various Versions” investigates and compares the different versions of the dāstān in Iran and in India. While there are many different manuscripts of the Ḥamzanāma, only a few have been scholarly investigated. The paper will compare four manuscripts spanning five centuries to gauge and analyse how this specific dāstān developed over time and geographical space.

The fourth paper titled “Dismembering the Dāstān” discusses the damage done to the Mughal Ḥamzanāma when the story-text was separated from the miniature paintings. These paintings were sold for their artistic value without regard to the inspiration behind them: the narrative.

Presentations

Dāstān: A Theory
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The word and the genre ‘dāstān’ is unrecognisable as a theoretical catergory. Even great works of the genre like the Ḥamzanāma that have been popular for centuries in Iran and the Indian Subcontinent have been relegated to the literary sidelines due to lack of patronage and critical engagement. This paper is an attempt to define the dāstān as a genre in contemporary times and open it to inquiry and debate for a larger academic audience. I argue that dāstān is a genre that exists at the religious and historical margins without being associatively reductive.

Primarily rooted in Islamic storytelling and based on venerated religious or cultural personalities and incidents, the capaciousness of the dāstān genre allowed it to be narrated by master craftsmen—the dāstāngūs or the qiṣṣa-khwāns—for whom storytelling was bread and butter. Today, storytelling within this tradition is sparse and critical engagement negligible. This paper theorises the dāstān as ahistorical and areligious. I use the words ‘areligious’ and ‘ahistorical’ as antonyms of irreligious and fictional and not as opposites of religious and historical. The implication being that the religiosity and historicity of the dāstān, though omnipresent, is held in abeyance for the duration of the story.

Storytelling and a reclamation of the dāstān as a genre in the Muslim world today can allow us to engage critically and retrospectively with the issues confronted by Islam and the Islamic. More specifically, this paper engages in two contemporary examples of storytelling and relates them to stories from the Ḥamza narrative from the Indian Subcontinent. The first of these is based on the news story of Osama-Bin-Laden’s burial at sea and the other on Salman Rushdie’s ‘plagiarism’ of stories from the Ḥamzanāma.

Ḥamzanāma: The Various Versions
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The Hamzanāma is the magnum opus of the dāstān tradition in the Muslim world and is known in numerous versions and redactions. This paper investigates the relations among four different versions of the Hamzanāma, spanning five centuries, in an attempt to gauge and analyse how this specific dāstān developed over time and geographical space. Only two of these four versions have garnered attention from researchers. First is the classic version, studied in detail by Van Ronkel (1895), who compared it with the Arabic, Malay, and Javanese versions. The Tehran edition by Jaʿfar Shuʿar (1968), which has 69 chapters, and the Bombay lithograph edition (1894–5), comprising 70 chapters, are considered to be variants of this version. The second is the famous Mughal illuminated manuscript commissioned by Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605). While the paintings have been closely studied by art historians, the narrative itself has not gained much scholarly attention. Besides these two, an abridged version titled Zubdat al-Rumuz was compiled by Hājjī Qiṣṣa-khwān Hamadānī in 1613 in the Deccan and another one, Rumuz-i Hamza, was published in seven volumes between 1857 and 1860 in Tehran. Several other versions of the Hamzanāma exist in Iran and in the Indian Subcontinent but only a few have undergone serious scholarly investigation. This paper aims to rectify the situation making the first step towards a comprehensive inquiry into one of the fascinating representatives of the long-standing storytelling tradition.

What Can Medieval Persian Folk Narratives in Prose Tell Us about the Poetic Canon(s)?
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In scholarly literature the mediaeval Persian folk narratives in prose are variously defined as folk stories as popular romances, or as heroic novels. For lack of a better option, I adopt the emic definition of dāstān as their genre designation. Dāstāns are capacious fictional prose narratives with branching plots, which relate the heroic-romantic adventures of their eponymous heroes, often with a religious, Islamic emphasis. Their composition and transmission are connected with the institution of professional or semiprofessional storytellers (muḥaddithūn, qiṣṣa-khvānān or naqqālān). Notwithstanding the importance of dāstāns for a better understanding of the evolution of medieval Persian narrative writing, as well as of the issue of orality and the interplay between the oral and the written, their research has long been an academic backwater in the study of mediaeval Persian literature, first and foremost because of the evaluative and hierarchical approaches to literature still prevalent in the field. Dāstāns are usually perceived as not sufficiently sophisticated, if not outright primitive, ostensibly lacking the complexity and refinement of classical Persian poetry and prose. The paper aims to show the importance of this genre as an integral part of the literary system of mediaeval Persian literature by examining verse insertions authored by various poets and found in some of the dāstāns compiled (or copied) before the tenth/sixteenth century (e.g., Samak-i ʿayyār, Fīrūzshāh-nāma, Abū Muslim-nāma). The statistical and qualitative analysis of the corpus of verse insertions will highlight: (1) the predilection for specific poets; (2) the differentiation within the corpus of the poetry of individual poets (e.g., among the poems of Niẓāmī’s Khamsa), which usually remains imperceptible behind the laudatory, but all too general stances of the tadhkiras; (3) the patterns of insertion and the function of the inserted poetry in folk narratives versus, for instance, the often prosimetric ornamental prose (nathr-i fannī). This investigation will help to assess the reception of particular poets in the periods when specific dāstāns were compiled and/or copied; as such, it will enhance our knowledge of the nature and make-up of poetic canon(s) and the mechanisms of their formation as time- and place-sensitive entities, as reflected in mediaeval folk literature.

Dismembering the Dāstān: The Damage of the separation of the text from the illustration in Epic manuscript Painting and Literature.
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Dāstāns inspired illustrations. From the epic poetry of the Shahnameh and the narrative tales of the Hamzanama, Stories of love, War, Court and Chivalry were depicted in dramatic performances and sumptuous manuscripts for the enjoyment of prince and public alike.

However, over the years, as the tradition of epic storytelling waned, the illustrated manuscripts of the genre came to be valued primarily for their illustrations. Pages were taken and sold for their pictorial value with little heed paid to the damage done to that which had originally inspired them; the narrative.

This paper discusses two different manuscripts in the context of the separation of their texts from their illustrations: The Mughal Hamzanama, and the Safavid Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasb.

The 360 tales of Mughal Hamzanama were said to have been illustrated by 1400 paintings of which only about 200 are known today. As in most manuscripts, each illustration was backed by text. As was customary, the relevant text faced its illustration, but the large size of the folios, which were held up to audiences at Akbar’s court, led to the presumption that each folio was meant to stand as an independent unit. One consequence was that once separated, and in many cases damaged, little effort was made to link the folios in a narrative sequence of text and illustration. This resulted in the extreme destruction of the Mughal Hamzanama.

The Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasb is the most magnificent Shahnameh in existence both in terms of the unprecedented number of illustrations, (258) and the presence and quality of the work of Iran’s most illustrious artists. It remained intact until 1970 after which, over twenty years, 140 of its illustrations were separated: 78 were gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the rest sold and spread over private and public collections. Finally in 1994 it was returned to Iran with 118 of its miniatures, 503 double sided pages of text, Shamsa, and binding in a historic and controversial exchange with the Willem De Kooning Painting “Woman III.”

This paper studies the impact, and measures damage that the separation of text from illustration has caused these two manuscripts through the narrative of the Hamzanama’s “Zumurrud Shah Cycle”, and the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasb’s "Seven Trials of Rostam Cycle.”

The Committee for Protection of Eyesight and the First School for Blind Student in Iran: An Oral History Project
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Till before 1938, problems and shortcomings for blind individuals in Iran were abundant. The lack of a hygiene policy and medical assistance for the blind inflicted irreparable damage to their cause. After this period, with the gradual return of the Iranian medical students graduated from European academic institutions, they faced a huge number of eye patients with infectious diseases.

This paper will focus on a brief review of the history of diagnosis and eradication of infectious eye disease such as Trachoma in Iran. The paper will also pay attention to the process of establishment of the Committee for Eye Protection and also the method of building and equipping the fist special school for the blind in Iran.

The above school was a joint production of the Iranian Committee for Eye Protection, the American Lions Club number 354, and the Iranian local charity assistance. The school, which began its function in early 1960s, has attracted a remarkable number of blind students across many cities in Iran during its half century of activity.

In this compound school serving both the blind and semi-blind students, many patients get vocational and conventional education from various school to university undergraduate levels and get prepared to join professional life in the society.

The time period for these educations is from 1938 to 1979. The methodology for this study is oral history using tape records of about seventy hours of memoirs of the founder, personnel, and graduate students from the early two decades of the work of the school and also library archives.