Secular Literary Representations in Judeo-Persian
By DALIA YASHARPOUR
As a
natural consequence of nearly 3,000 years of living on Iranian soil, Jewish
identity became inextricably connected to Iran and was thereby shaped by
Iranian history, culture, and language. Judeo-Persian (hereafter, JP), written
in modern Persian with Hebrew characters, is the vehicle with which Iranian
Jewry recorded intellectual and creative literary syncretism. Jews most likely
abandoned Hebrew and Aramaic for Persian well before the Islamic conquest of
the mid-seventh century. In fact, the earliest existing modern Persian records
are Judeo-Persian documents dated to the eighth and ninth century CE.
Manuscripts copied by scribes up to the end of the 19th century
reveal a body of literature containing a wide range of topics—both religious
and secular—in prose and verse, with varying styles and levels of
sophistication. While not in the scope of this survey, it is important to note
that JP intellectuals read Hebrew and Arabic as well as Persian, and also
authored Hebrew works. Just as (in the last millennium of its development)
classical Persian poetry occupied a central position in Persian literature, JP
poetry is equally central to JP literature.
JP works in manuscripts appear in no systematic order. In any given manuscript
one may come upon compositions on disparate subjects such as astrology, poetry,
medicine, folklore, biblical commentary, and lexicons. It is not uncommon to
find transliterations of the classical Persian poetry in manuscripts that also
contain Hebrew and JP liturgical hymns. Jews were as enamored of Persian lyric
and narrative poetry as their Iranian compatriots; the original versified works
produced by Iranian Jewish poets attest to the fact that their sense of
literary aesthetic was completely shaped by it. Among other factors, linguistic
and socio-economic elements impacted the quality of JP poetry. Needless to say,
its value does not lie in how it compares to the classical Persian corpus but
in the distinct body that reflect a people’s world view and sense of self.
From the beginning of the 14th century, JP poets composed original versified
epics paraphrasing and elaborating on the narrative portions of the Hebrew
Bible. The standard did not value innovation, but rather the embellishment and
refinement of set literary conventions. Though no JP transliterations of
Ferdowsi’s (d. 1010) “Book of Kings” have survived, there can be no doubt that
JP poets read and faithfully emulated what Persian speakers viewed, and still
regard today, as Iran’s national epic. Shahin (13-14th century) was
the first to do so by versifying the books of the Torah as well as content from
the books of Esther and Ezra. Subsequent JP poets such as Emrani (d. 1536) and
Khajeh Bokharai (16-17th century) regarded him as their great
predecessor and perceived themselves to be following in his footsteps. Emrani
versified accounts found in the canonical books of Joshua, Ruth, and I and II
Samuel. Khajeh Bokharai produced a versified account of the Book of Daniel.
Subject aside, the poetic form, overall structure, prosody, poetic devices,
motifs and themes, depiction of characters, and scenes found in these
compositions, closely mirror Ferdowsi’s Persian epic.
The third and final category is that of original JP verse containing little or
no Hebrew vocabulary or Jewish content. Emrani, mentioned above for his epic
treatment of biblical accounts, also wrote a lyric mystical composition
entitled “The Book of the Cup-bearer,” which draws extensively from Hafiz’s
work of the same title, as well as from themes found in the poetry of Saadi and
Khayaam. Emrani also composed a relatively short pietistic poem entitled “In
Praise of Forbearance.” Elisha ben Shemuel (17th century) took the
use of non-religious subject matter further by composing an adaptation of the
Buddha biographies he entitled, “The Prince and the Sufi.” As with most JP didactic poetry predating it,
this work drew from Jewish, Iranian, and Islamic traditions of wisdom
literature; however it is mostly devoid of specifically Jewish content. Of the
lyric poems composed by Benjamin ben Mishael (17th-18th
century), “I Wish to Walk in the Rose Garden” is particularly noteworthy
for its eroticism and intimate tenderness. Two other lyric poems penned by him
indicate his bitter resentment of women born of an unhappy marriage.
While the use of Hebrew characters excluded Jewish poets from actively
participating in Persian literary circles, it did not preclude them from
reading and responding to the literature itself. JP poetry of a secular nature
is just one creative manifestation of Iranian Jewry’s complete acculturation
into Iran.
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