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The Interpretation of Nizami’s Cultural Heritage in the Contemporary Period

Shared past and cultural legacy in the transition from the prism of national literature criteria

by Rahilya Geybullayeva (Volume editor) Christine van Ruymbeke (Volume editor)
©2020 Conference proceedings 506 Pages

Summary

This book fills a void in the field of pre-modern literature written in Persian. It is the first scholarly publication in English language on and around the poet Nizami Ganjavi written by important Western and Non-Western scholars, enriching the field with an awareness of their knowledge and research interests.
The multidisciplinary volume initiates a much-needed dialogue it initiates a much-needed dialogue between the metropolitan and postcolonial academic points of view.
By the example of Nizami’s poems it shows how different academic circles interpret Medieval authors in relation to modern-day national identity and national cultures. Unlike in Europe and USA, in the USSR citizenship and ethnicity, like two modern official different criteria of identity, became a stumbling block in the division of cultural heritage of the past. Irredentism is a central topic in the post–Soviet Union world and gives a voice to the peripheral rather than to the metropolis with its colonial arguments. The richness and usefulness of this volume is that the contributions that take this innovative standpoint are put side by side with others, which remain within the traditional literary analysis and examine Nizami’s creative thoughts on human, society, women, or justice.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the editors
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Acknowledgments
  • Preface
  • CONTENTS
  • List of Contributers
  • Part I Nizami and Theories of Identity for the Literary-Cultural Heritage in a Discourse of Collapsing Identities
  • Modern Interpretations of Nizami or Moulds without Moulds: National Literature Criteria, Shared Past and IrredentaHarvard UniversityRgeybullayeva@fas.harvard.edu (Rahilya Geybullayeva)
  • Introduction
  • Part 1. An excursion into the criteria of national literature: Ill-fitting moulds or changing dominant elements
  • Part 2. Historical semantics related to medieval literature: Literature/ədəbiyyat – between rules for writing and moral rules
  • Historical semantics: Literature/ədəbiyyat – rules for writing or morality?
  • Historical semantics: ədəbiyyat/Folklore – Literature/Folklore?
  • Language of the text: between classical literature and local tradition
  • Part 3. Nizami in the concept of “National Literature Criteria”
  • Part 4. National identity through the prism of empire/periphery: The example of Soviet literature
  • Part 5. Shared past and literature in transition: Ethnos and territory, national literature and irredenta
  • National literature and culture through the prism of Irredenta or Metropolis/periphery
  • The “Start Date Criterion” of national history in irredentist claims- the supposed ancestors of modern peoples
  • Theories of Irredentism in the/Eastern and Western Cultures through Their History: A Postcolonial and Existential Semiotic Approach (Eero Tarasti)
  • Introduction
  • Azerbaijani mugham for the transmission of a classical poetry
  • Postcolonial ideas
  • Persian and Arabic philosophy: Mysticism within Sufism
  • Oriental philosophy
  • The philosophy of Ibn-Arabi
  • Avicenna (Ibn-Sina)
  • The Construction of Nations from Nizami to Mahmood Kashqari (Anuar Galiyev)
  • Introduction: Map, museum and “The Imagined Community”
  • “War of Memory” as the right to territory
  • Mahmood Kashqari and Yousif Balasaqunlu between Turkic people
  • Parallels between Balasaqun and Kahsqari with Navoi in the context of national identity struggles
  • Struggle for cultural heritage in the Caucasus: Nizami and Shota Rustaveli
  • Nezami’s Eskandar Nama as Historical Fiction and Condemning Irredentism1 (Christine van Ruymbeke)
  • Historically referenced actions and facts as background for his literary agenda
  • The distinction between fact and legend in medieval intellectual world or beyond historical chronicles: Literary dimension in Eskandar-Nama
  • Sources by Nizami: Integrating data found in “all” available Alexander cycles, in all kinds of languages?
  • Stressing the Greek-Macedonian heredity of Eskander by Nizami vs. Ferdowsi’s attribution to Eskander of an Iranian lineage
  • Shah-Nama in Sasanian elite context: Sasanian historiographer: A promoter of the social and political value instead of an investigator of facts
  • Between philosophical necessity for truth, historical fiction and historical accuracy
  • Nizami and Goethe’s “Orientalism”1 (Prof. Dr. Eva-Maria Auch)
  • Nizami in the context of early German Oriental studies
  • So how did Nizami’s work make it into the German scholarly world and archives?
  • Nizami and Goethe as representatives of an “idea of world literature”
  • Can Goethe’s works be seen as a form of Orientalism?
  • The Cultural Heritage and Irredenta of Poetry: How the Persian Poetry of Omar Khayyam, Nizami Ganjavi, Rumi and Hafez Enriched and Redeemed the Unacknowledged Space of English Poetry (Jonathan Locke Hart)
  • Defending poetry in English
  • Part II Concepts, Characters and Values of Nizami
  • Wise Words from Nizami, the Sage of Ganja (Ismail Serageldin)
  • Part 1. Global ethics today
  • Five fundamental goals: Peace, freedom, justice, equality, stainability peace
  • Freedom
  • Justice
  • Equality
  • Sustainability
  • Part 2. On governance and values
  • Governance
  • Values
  • Part 3. What Nizami said
  • Power and intrigue
  • Peace
  • On pluralism
  • Nizami’s depiction of women
  • On behavior and reforming society
  • The path to wisdom
  • The Wordsmith: Further Reflection on the Source of Nezami Ganjavi’s Creativity1 (Kamran Talattof)
  • Turkic Literary Image in Nizami Ganjavi’s Works (Tahire Mammed)
  • Introduction
  • Turkic beauty, or Turki-Parizad, in Nizami’ soeuvre
  • Wise Turkic women who guide royalty
  • Khamsa: The Source of Wisdom and Civilization (Nasib Goyushov)
  • Introduction
  • Explanation of the topic
  • Justice in Nizami Ganjavi’s Philosophical Heritage (Mail Yaqub)
  • Introduction
  • Nizami Ganjavi and philosophy
  • Human being and his position in Nizami Ganjavi’s philosophy
  • King and the concept of justice
  • Nizami and Utopia
  • Khamsa Quintet as a Collection of Shared Values of the Oriental Renaissance: A Contemporary Take on the Nizami and Nava’i Question (Zohra Aliyeva)
  • Introduction
  • The Khamsa tradition in classical Islamic poetry and Ali Shir Nava’i
  • Common moral values in Nizami and Nava’i’s works: Dignity and honor
  • Common moral values in Nizami and Nava’i’s works: Poetic word and its power
  • Common moral values in Nizami and Nava’i’s works: Motif and plot
  • Nizami Ganjavi’s Works as the Inspiration for Azerbaijan’s Present-Day Promotion of Multiculturalism (Bella Sirajgizi Musayeva)
  • Introduction
  • Tolerance in Nizami’s creativity and year of multiculturalism in Azerbaijan
  • Race and faith tolerance
  • Love and “otherness”
  • Coexistence of different cultures in the mirror of Nizami’s texts
  • Part III Nizami’s Heritage in the Discourse of Medieval Symbols and Regional Concepts
  • Nizami on Alchemy (Hamlet Isakhanli)
  • Introduction
  • Immortality. The legend of Alexander of Macedonia (by Nizami Ganjavi)
  • Nizami’s character of the Alchemist Mary the Copt
  • Hermes, Balinus … and Nizami
  • Alchemical metaphor in Nizami
  • Nizami, alchemical mercury and colours
  • Nizami’s Ferdowsi and alchemy
  • The Motif of Journey to the Underworld in Nizami Ganjavi’s Iskandar-Nama (Parvana Isayeva Bekir)
  • Introduction: Journey to the underworld
  • The motif of journey to the underworld to find the water of life in Nizami Ganjavi’s Iskandar-Namah and its parallel with Sumerian and Oghuz epics
  • Symbols of the underworld motif in Iskandar-Nama: Old man, Khizr, Ilyas, and Zoomorphic creatures
  • An Analysis of the Conflict between Iranian and Greek Discourses, Considering Alexander’s Character in Nizami’s Iskandar-Nama (Nasrin Faghih and Malek Marzban)
  • Introduction
  • Sharaf-Nama and Igbal-Nama
  • Iranian civilization discourse and Greek civilization discourse
  • Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory
  • Alexander in western and Iranian sources
  • Alexander in Nizami’s Isgəndər-nama
  • The conflict between Iranian and non-Iranian discourses in Nizami’s Iskandar-Nama
  • The Fight Against Evil in Nizami and Shakespeare: A Typology of the Development of Literary Characters (Majnun, Bahram, and Hamlet) (Teymur Kerimli)
  • Introduction
  • “Geniuses are the orphans of their epoch…”1
  • “That which is new and also old is speech, and on this speech some speech is to be used…” (Nizami) “Words, words, words…” (Shakespeare)
  • The fight against words and evil: Majnun, Bahram, and Hamlet
  • Evil, Majnun, and “Majnunism” as the philosophy of insanity
  • Nizami Ganjavi: Dialogue as a Mode of Thinking (Sudabe Aghabalayeva)
  • Introduction
  • Nizami and his didactic style
  • Nizami and the universal concept of love
  • Dialogue mode of thinking as a path to wisdom
  • Poetics of Nonverbal Behavior in Nizami Ganjavi’s Epic Poem Khosrow and Shirin (Rustam Kamal)
  • Introduction
  • Gestures and factors shaping semiotics
  • Nonverbal behavior patterns and means accompanied by emotional and psychological states of heroes in Khosrow and Shirin
  • Putting a hand on one’s eye as a gesture
  • Palace etiquette rules
  • Biting one’s finger and touching one’s nose with a finger, and the meaning of surprise
  • Part IV Archetypes Considered as Regional Motifs through the Caucasus, the Middle East, and Europe
  • Leyla as the Image of Beloved: An Archeology Trial, from Nizami to Eric Clapton (Mehmet Kalpakli)
  • “Seven Beauties” in Translation of Yan Rypka (Rafik Novruzov)
  • Introduction
  • Prologue of the poem
  • Stories
  • Analyses of “Seven Beauties” According to Maykl’s Bern’s Interpretation (Khalil Yusifli)
  • Introduction
  • Critique of Michael Barry’s views on Nizami’s ethnic origin
  • Michael Barry about Shirin’s ethnic origin
  • The problem in the logic of Michael Barry’s “Turkish or Persian” dilemma
  • Regional Literary Tradition from Nizami to Vagif: Milestones in the Development and Transformation of Azerbaijani Ashug Song Lyrics in Georgian Poetry (Irakli Kenchoshvili)
  • Role of Persian and Azerbaijani poetic school
  • Reasons behind the influence of Azerbaijani poetry on the formation and development of Georgian poetry of the 18th centuries
  • The tradition of iconography of the ashiq (beloved) and some echoes of “Layla and Majnun” in Georgian literature
  • The ashug song lyrics and change of cultural vector: Focus on the West
  • Ashug poetry in Georgia: From elite literature to popular culture
  • Early 20th century: The synthesis of the West and East in Georgian poetry
  • Farhad: Mythical Character or Historical Figure? (Fidana Musayeva)
  • Introduction
  • Traces of Farhad in History?
  • Farhad as a mythological character
  • Farhad in the works of poets who came before and after Nizami
  • Nizami’s epic: Farhad’s and Shirin’s love or Farhad’s love?
  • Identities of Nizami’s Heroes in Modern Interpretation: Following the Traces of Shirin’s Character Harvard UniversityRgeybullayeva@fas.harvard.edu (Rahilya Geybullayeva)
  • Introduction
  • Nizami’s role in the Shirin archetype
  • Shirin in historical chronicles: Turkish, Armenian, Aramaean?
  • Aramaean Prototypes: Shirin – Sira – Seirem – Siren – Rosapha
  • Aramaean tribe before Bible, in Bible, and modern Aramean-Christians
  • Part V Love and Love Allegory in Medieval Muslim Literary Representation
  • Philosophy of Love in Nizami Ganjavi’s Khamsa in the Context of Sufism (Azada Rustamova)
  • Introduction or symbolism and allegory of unveiled in Nizami’s works
  • The teaching of Wahdat Al-Wujud doctrine
  • Uzri love in Nizami’s works: Spiritual union between the lover and the beloved
  • Differences between the Sufi divine love and Uzri love concept
  • “Turkish poem isn’t worthy of him?”
  • Real Beauties or Mythical Houris? (Aydin Talibzadeh)
  • Bahram Gur, from birth to death, and his real age
  • Seven beauties and the Castle of Khavarnaq
  • Seven beauties: Real humans or mythical houris in Islamic faith?
  • Possible similarities between Islamic houris and Greek harpies?
  • Transformation of black into white: Colors, domes and their symbols
  • Abstinence strengthens the spirit
  • Experiences of Prohibition and Transgression in Nizāmī’s Portrayal of Khosrow and Shirin (Emadeddin Naghipour)
  • Introduction
  • Dichotomy of work/sexual taboo
  • Dual experience: Of prohibitions and of transgressions
  • Economy of imagery and economy of characterization
  • Nizāmī’s incorporation of art and Foucault on painting
  • Part VI Archetypes from the Caucasus and the Indian Subcontinent
  • Layli o Majnun from Nizami’s Classic to Bollywood Screen: Influence and Adaptation in Comparative Theory (Sudha Swarnakar)
  • Introduction or comparative literature moves from its European Frontiers
  • A Sufi flavor in Nizami’s Layli o Majnun
  • Ill-fated lovers theme in Indian region and Amir Khusrau
  • Stylistic elements’ visuality of Nizami’s and Amir Khusrow’s verses in Indian cinema
  • The Poetry of Nizami Ganjavi and Its Interface with Indian Poetic Tradition: A Study of the Mathnawis of Amir Khusraw (Naseem Ahmad Shah)
  • Introduction
  • Nizami’s Khamsa
  • Imitators of Nizami’s poetry in Persian
  • Impact of Nizami on Khusraw
  • The Discovery of the Muraqa’-i-Akbari of Khamsa
  • Crossroad Points Generated by Nizami Ganjavi’s Literary Model Building in Eastern and Western Literature (Rafael B. Huseynov)
  • The main parameters of Nizami’s influence
  • The tradition of nazira in Eastern literature and features of the canonization of Nizami’s heritage
  • The Saqi Nama genre, created by Nizami. The adoption of this literary form in Western literature
  • Translations of Nizami’s literary works into European languages and the transition of the Khamsa model to the West
  • Features of the transfer of Nizami’s plots into the French cultural environment
  • Nizami as the Creator of Literary Legends (Afag Yusifli)
  • Metaphorical characteristics of Nizami’s Leyli and Majnun
  • The connection of Leyli and Majnun’s plot with Nizami’s biography
  • The symbolic nature of Salim Amiri’s character
  • Part VII Regional Archetypes and Recycling Motifs in Nizami’s and Rustaveli’s Creativity
  • Rustaveli, Nizami’s Contemporary. Revisiting Some Poetical and Aesthetical Principles (Irma Ratiani Maka Elbakidze / )
  • Introduction
  • “Ideal reality” or the Rustaveli canon as a new stage in Georgian literature
  • Oriental poetic parallels of the area: Rustaveli’s work and oriental poetic Mijnuri motif
  • Two Stories from the Middle Ages and the Baroque Period: Nizam and Guramishvili (Gaga Lomidze)
  • Comparing “The Seven Beauties” and “The Gay Summer”
  • Renaissance vs. classical rationalism
  • Part VIII Nizami’s Heritage in Musical Interpretation and Applied Arts
  • Nizami and the Western Arts (Maria Teresa Giaveri)
  • “Tourandocte”, Orientalisme and Turqueries in the West: Anonymous in Nizami’s poem, in the Frenchman’s version adopts a name
  • La Princesse de la Chine, Turandot, daughter of Turan, on the Western stage: Disappearance and revival
  • Turandot in opera
  • Turandot in the theatrical tradition after Mille et un Jour
  • Back for the foundation text, the poem by Nizami “Haft-Peykar”: Original pages and the subsequent metamorphoses of the story
  • Nizami Ganjavi’s Oeuvres as a Source of Inspiration for Contemporary Art, Dance and Cinema and a Means of Building Successful Cultural Diplomacy (Asli Samadova)
  • Introduction
  • The story of continuity: From Nizami to Puccini. Origins
  • Princess Turandot by Nizami and Puccini
  • Seven Beauties poem. Vertigo sound installation at Shirvanshakhs Palace
  • Three Royal Copies of Nizami’s Khamsa from the Tabriz School of Art as a Reflection of a Three-Century-Long Tradition (Jamila Yusif Hasanzadeh)
  • Manuscript from 1405 to 1410: Beginnings of the Tabriz-style Khamsa tradition
  • Tabriz miniature art in Nizami’s Khamsa during the reign of two Azerbaijani rulers: Sultan Yaqub Ak Koyunlu and Shah Ismail
  • Shah Tahmasib’s Khamsa: The pinnacle of Safavid miniature painting
  • The Fine Arts in Nizami’s Epics (Prof Em. J.Christoph Buergel)
  • “Love at first sight of picture” and others
  • Bahram Gur and the Seven Beauties
  • Music
  • Healing power of music
  • Book Scope
  • Information About Editors

cover

Bibliographic Information published by the
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the
Library of Congress.

About the editors

Rahilya Geybullayeva holds a PhD (1989) from Lomonosov Moscow State University and is the founder of the Azerbaijan Comparative Literature Association. She is a recipient of UNESCO, Carnegie, and Fulbright Fellowships; served as a visiting scholar at SOAS University of London (Intercultural Dialogue Regular Programme), at the Comparative Literature Department, University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA (project ”Conception of National Literature”), at the Berkeley University of California (Berkeley Program in Eurasian and East European Studies), and at the Anthropology Department of Harvard University. Her ongoing project is identity through the prism of Past in the future: rules to follow at the Anthropology Department, Harvard University.

Christine van Ruymbeke holds a PhD (1997) in Persian studies from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and taught for several years at her home university before moving to Cambridge in 2002. She is Ali Reza and Muhamed Soudavar Reader in Persian literature and culture at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in Cambridge (UK). She is a fellow, tutor and the college praelector at Darwin College, University of Cambridge (UK). She is a long-standing member of the councils of multiple learned societies, including the Royal Asiatic and Ancient India and Iran Trust. She works on classical (medieval and pre-modern) Persian literature, with a special focus on the masnavis of Nezami of Ganja (12th c. AD) and on the Persian versions of the Kalila and Dimna fables (12th–16th c. AD).

About the book

This book fills a void in the field of pre-modern literature written in Persian. It is the first scholarly publication in English language on and around the poet Nizami Ganjavi written by important Western and Non-Western scholars, enriching the field with an awareness of their knowledge and research interests.

The multidisciplinary volume initiates a much-needed dialogue it initiates a muchneeded dialogue between the metropolitan and postcolonial academic points of view.

By the example of Nizami’s poems it shows how different academic circles interpret Medieval authors in relation to modern-day national identity and national cultures. Unlike in Europe and USA, in the USSR citizenship and ethnicity, like two modern official different criteria of identity, became a stumbling block in the division of cultural heritage of the past. Irredentism is a central topic in the post–Soviet Union world and gives a voice to the peripheral rather than to the metropolis with its colonial arguments. The richness and usefulness of this volume is that the contributions that take this innovative standpoint are put side by side with others, which remain within the traditional literary analysis and examine Nizami’s creative thoughts on human, society, women, or justice.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Acknowledgments

Our gratitude comes first and foremost to Nizami Ganjevi International Centre of Baku for unflagging encouragements and efficient support right from the beginning of the project. Thanks to Arzu Tebrizli, the enthusiastic coordinator of the project and representative of the Centre, who never failed us and gave her time and energy to secure the funding for the translation. She enthusiastically endorsed the idea of this publication and gave her time and energy to secure the funding for the translation. Special thanks also go to all the contributors without whom this book would never have come into existence. Our colleague Fidana Musayeva and family member Hial Sadigov are given special mention here for their marvelous support and encouragement throughout this editorial process which often seemed endless. We want to thank Feride Buyuran, Sevda Kerimova, Emil Bagırov, Anne Thompson-Ahmadova for their incredible work in translating into English many contributions which are originally written in Azerbaijani or Russian. We also thank our assistants from the Azerbaijan Comparative Literature Association, Elnara, Meleyke, Ülker, who were always ready to help unify the contributions across the maze of the Western and post-Soviet reference systems. We are indebted to Ute Winkelcoetter from the Publisher team, who supported the initial idea of bringing together debates on existing affinities and new identities.

We are confident that all the actors together have put their energy and hard work into producing this volume and also paid a wonderful tribute to the values upheld by the great Nizami from Ganja.

Preface

This book, the result of the conference on Nizami in modern interpretation (Baku, 2018: https://complit.ca/2017/11/12/cfp-the-interpretation-of-nizamis-cultural-heritage-in-the-modern-period/) examines how the literary-cultural heritage of the medieval period can be interpreted within present-day theoretical concepts of national attribution and spill over into multi-disciplinarity with ties to research in disciplines such as comparative literature, theory of literature, cultural history, postcolonial studies, area studies, and semiotics.

The topic encompasses questions of identity in cultural legacy, and of the interaction between existing affinities and new identities. These questions are examined through the prism of the literary tradition found within Nizami’s creativity, or of national identity in the context of a shared past and its modern interpretation.

This volume is the third multi-authored collection on Nizami Ganjavi published within the last 50 years. This is an astonishingly small research output when compared to the importance of the poet-philosopher’s oeuvre, who more than deserves a prominent place within world-literature. Nizami Ganjavi, who lived in present-day Azerbaijan in the second half of the twelfth century CE, earned his fame with five long narrative poems written in Persian. He lived in an especially rich cultural region and period and he has influenced generations of authors in the Persian-written sphere, stretching to the Ottoman and Mughal empires.

The editors’ distinctive choices for the 37 participants to the volume gives it a unique depth and breadth and shows the vastness and richness of Nizami Ganjavi’s work, heritage and influence. This is the first volume published in English, which gives such prominence to the non-Western European and non-Iranian scholarship on the poet. The voice and point of view of both eminent and young scholars coming from such diverse countries as Brazil, Finland, Italy, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Iran, India complement articles written by Italian, French, German, Swiss, British, Canadian and Iranian researchers. At the same time, this is also a collection gathering scholars from diverse specializations, such as semioticians, medievalists, philosophers, historians, regional studies, post-colonial studies, specialists in literary studies and specialists on Nizami Ganjavi himself.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE

CONTENTS

Part I:Nizami and Theories of Identity for the Literary-Cultural Heritage in a Discourse of Collapsing Identities

Rahilya Geybullayeva

Modern Interpretations of Nizami or Moulds without Moulds: National Literature Criteria, Shared Past and Irredenta

Introduction

Part 1. An excursion into the criteria of national literature: Ill-fitting moulds or changing dominant elements

Part 2. Historical semantics related to medieval literature: Literature/ədəbiyyat – between rules for writing and moral rules

Historical semantics: Literature/ ədəbiyyat –rules for writing or morality?

Historical semantics: Ədəbiyyat/Folklore – Literature/Folklore?

Language of the text: between classical literature and local tradition

Part 3. Nizami in the concept of “National Literature Criteria”

Part 4. National identity through the prism of empire/periphery: The example of Soviet literature

Part 5. Shared past and literature in transition: Ethnos and territory, national literature and irredenta

National literature and culture through the prism of irredenta or metropolis/periphery

The “Start Date Criterion” of national history in irredentist claims- the supposed ancestors of modern peoples

Eero Tarasti

Theories of Irredentism in the/Eastern and Western Cultures through Their History: a Postcolonial and Existential Semiotic Approach

Introduction

Azerbaijani mugham for the transmission of a classical poetry

Postcolonial ideas

Persian and Arabic philosophy: Mysticism within Sufism

Oriental philosophy

The philosophy of Ibn-Arabi

Avicenna (Ibn-Sina)

Anuar Galiyev

The Construction of Nations from Nizami to Mahmood Kashqari

Introduction: Map, museum and “The Imagined Community”

“War of Memory” as the right to territory

Mahmood Kashqari and Yousif Balasaqunlu between Turkic people

Parallels between Balasaqun and Kahsqari with Navoi in the context of national identity struggles

Struggle for cultural heritage in the Caucasus: Nizami and Shota Rustaveli

Christine van Ruymbeke

Nezami’s Eskandar Nama as Historical Fiction and Condemning Irredentism

Historically referenced actions and facts as background for his literary agenda

Sources by Nizami: Integrating data found in “all” available Alexander cycles, in all kinds of languages?

Stressing the Greek-Macedonian heredity of Eskander by Nizami vs. Ferdowsi’s attribution to Eskander of an Iranian lineage

Shah-Nama in Sasanian elite context: Sasanian historiographer: A promoter of the social and political value instead of an investigator of facts

Between philosophical necessity for truth, historical fiction and historical accuracy

Eva-Maria Auch

Nizami and Goethe’s “Orientalism”

Nizami in the context of early German Oriental studies

So how did Nizami’s work make it into the German scholarly world and archives?

Nizami and Goethe as representatives of an “idea of world literature”

Can Goethe’s works be seen as a form of Orientalism?

Jonathan Locke Hart

The Cultural Heritage and Irredenta of Poetry: How the Persian Poetry of Omar Khayyam, Nizami Ganjavi, Rumi and Hafez Enriched and Redeemed the Unacknowledged Space of English Poetry

Introduction

Defending poetry in English

Part II:Concepts, Characters and Values of Nizami

Ismail Serageldin

Wise Words from Nizami, the Sage of Ganja

Part 1. Global ethics today

Five fundamental goals: Peace, freedom, justice, equality, stainability Peace

Freedom

Justice

Equality

Sustainability

Part 2. On governance and values

Governance

Values

Part 3. What Nizami said

Power and intrigue

Peace

On pluralism

Nizami’s depiction of women

On behavior and reforming society

The path to wisdom

Kamran Talattof

The Wordsmith: Further Reflection on the Source of Nezami Ganjavi’s Creativity

Tahire Mammed

Turkic Literary Image in Nizami Ganjavi’s Works

Introduction

Turkic beauty, or Turki-Parizad, in Nizami’soeuvre

Wise Turkic women who guide royalty

Nasib Goyushov

Khamsa: The Source of Wisdom and Civilization

Introduction

Explanation of the topic

Mail Yaqub

Justice in Nizami Ganjavi’s Philosophical Heritage

Introduction

Nizami Ganjavi and philosophy

Human being and his position in Nizami Ganjavi’s philosophy

King and the concept of justice

Nizami and Utopia

Zohra Aliyeva

Khamsa Quintet as a Collection of Shared Values of the Oriental Renaissance: A Contemporary Take on the Nizami and Nava’i Question

Introduction

The Khamsa tradition in classical Islamic poetry and Ali Shir Nava’i

Common moral values in Nizami and Nava’i’s works: Dignity and honor

Common moral values in Nizami and Nava’i’s works: Poetic word and its power

Common moral values in Nizami and Nava’i’s works: Motif and plot

Bella Sirajgizi Musayeva

Nizami Ganjavi’s Works as the Inspiration for Azerbaijan’s Present-Day Promotion of Multiculturalism

Introduction

Tolerance in Nizami’s creativity and year of multiculturalism in Azerbaijan

Love and “otherness”

Coexistence of different cultures in the mirror of Nizami’s texts

Part III:Nizami’s Heritage in the Discourse of Medieval Symbols and Regional Concepts

Hamlet Isakhanli

Nizami on Alchemy

Introduction

Immortality. The legend of Alexander of Macedonia (by Nizami Ganjavi)

Nizami’s character of the Alchemist Mary the Copt

Hermes, Balinus … and Nizami

Alchemical metaphor in Nizami

Nizami, alchemical mercury and colours

Nizami’s Ferdowsi and alchemy

Parvana Isayeva Bekir

The Motif of Journeyto the Underworld in Nizami Ganjavi’s Iskandar-Nama

Introduction: Journey to the underworld

The motif of journey to the underworld to find the water of life in Nizami Ganjavi’s Iskandar-Namahand its parallel with Sumerian and Oghuz epics

Symbols of the underworld motif in Iskandar-Nama: Old man, Khizr, Ilyas, and Zoomorphic creatures

Nasrin Faghih, Malek Marzban

An Analysis of the Conflict between Iranian and Greek Discourses, Considering Alexander’s Character in Nizami’s Iskandar-Nama

Introduction

Sharaf-Nama and Igbal-Nama

Iranian civilization discourse and Greek civilization discourse

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory

Alexander in western and Iranian sources

Alexander in Nizami’s Isgəndər-nama

The conflict between Iranian and non-Iranian discourses in Nizami’s Iskandar-Nama

Teymur Kerimli

The Fight Against Evil in Nizami and Shakespeare: A Typology of the Development of Literary Characters (Majnun, Bahram, and Hamlet)

Introduction

“Geniuses are the orphans of their epoch…”

“That which is new and also old is speech, and on this speech some speech is to be used…” (Nizami) “Words, words, words…” (Shakespeare)

The less speaking beauty

The fight against words and evil: Majnun, Bahram, and Hamlet

Evil, Majnun, and “Majnunism” as the philosophy of insanity

Sudabe Aghabalayeva

Nizami Ganjavi: Dialogue as a Mode of Thinking

Details

Pages
506
Year
2020
ISBN (PDF)
9783631827635
ISBN (ePUB)
9783631827642
ISBN (MOBI)
9783631827659
ISBN (Softcover)
9783631817148
DOI
10.3726/b17196
Language
English
Publication date
2020 (October)
Published
Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2020. 506 pp., 4 fig. b/w

Biographical notes

Rahilya Geybullayeva (Volume editor) Christine van Ruymbeke (Volume editor)

Rahilya Geybullayeva holds a PhD (1989) from Lomonosov Moscow State University and is the founder of the Azerbaijan Comparative Literature Association. She is a recipient of UNESCO, Carnegie, and Fulbright Fellowships; served as a visiting scholar at SOAS University of London (Intercultural Dialogue Regular Programme), at the Comparative Literature Department, University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA (project "Conception of National Literature"), at the Berkeley University of California (Berkeley Program in Eurasian and East European Studies), and at the Anthropology Department of Harvard University. Her ongoing project is identity through the prism of Past in the future: rules to follow at the Anthropology Department, Harvard University. Christine van Ruymbeke holds a PhD (1997) in Persian studies from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and taught for several years at her home university before moving to Cambridge in 2002. She is Ali Reza and Muhamed Soudavar Reader in Persian literature and culture at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in Cambridge (UK). She is a fellow, tutor and the college praelector at Darwin College, University of Cambridge (UK). She is a long-standing member of the councils of multiple learned societies, including the Royal Asiatic and Ancient India and Iran Trust. She works on classical (medieval and pre-modern) Persian literature, with a special focus on the masnavis of Nezami of Ganja (12th c. AD) and on the Persian versions of the Kalila and Dimna fables (12th–16th c. AD).

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Title: The Interpretation of Nizami’s Cultural Heritage in the Contemporary Period
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508 pages