Understanding Iran: Importance of Poetry (Part II)

By: Muhammad Ali Mojaradi*

After the early Muslims broke out of Arabia and conquered two vast empires, most of the newly converted peoples were Arabized. Their cultures and languages were blended with that of the conquerors, producing the syncretic “Arab world” we are familiar with today. The only major exception to this rule were the Iranic peoples, who retained their languages and sizable parts of their pre-Islamic identities. With the collapse of the Umayyad caliphate and emergence of the Abbasids, small dynasties in Khorasan (the northeastern end of the Persianate world) began to enjoy relative independence from the central authority in Baghdad. The dynasties were mostly of Turkic ethnic origin, which would remain the case until the end of dynastic rule in Iran, but the language of the royal court and bureaucracy continued to be Arabic, following the example of Baghdad. It was in these royal courts far from the seat of power where Persian slowly reemerged as a language of recorded literature.

After the Islamic conquest of Persia, the New Persian language adopted a modified Arabic script (four letters were added to represent sounds not found in Arabic) with many Arabic loanwords. The new Persian poetry was written according to Arabic conventions, using the meters and forms originating in that language. The Turkic sultans were happy to patronize this new genre, as it served a dual function: It helped legitimize their rule over Persian speakers and immortalized their legacy in favorable terms (many minor sultans would be largely forgotten today or remembered negatively if not for the numerous panegyric odes written in their courts). The emergence of Persian poetry is a metaphor for Iran itself: part Islamic, part Persian, and totally unique.
The very first poems of the Persian canon remain mostly comprehensible to the modern reader. In a Tehran zūrkhāneh, a traditional gymnasium where ancient warrior-sports are practiced and the sports are set to the tune of a drummer called a morshid (guide) who sings classical poems, a nearly 1,000-year-old poem is recited by him:
If your debased desires are confined, you’re a man,
if you do not mock the deaf and blind, you’re a man.
A man does not kick the fallen — he gives a hand,
if you help one who’s fallen down stand, you’re a man!

gar bar sar-e nafs-e khwad amīrī, mardī
bar kūr o kar ar nokta nagīrī, mardī
mardī nabovad fotāda rā pāy zadan
gar dast-e fotāda-ī begīrī, mardī

The same poem is remixed for the coronavirus pandemic, alongside a portrait of the poet Rudaki (circa 859-940) wearing a mask:

If at your home you do bide, you’re a man,
if you let no one inside, you’re a man.
A man doesn’t travel in this troubled state,
if you seal corona’s fate, you’re a man.

gar dākhel-e khāna-at neshastī, mardī
dar bar degarān agar bebastī, mardī
mardī nabovad, safar dar īn vaz‘-e kharāb
shākh-e koronā agar shekastī, mardī

The original poem is not quoted in the poster as it is assumed a literate passerby would already have heard it; both the language and the Persian understanding of manhood have weathered the test of time. This marks an important difference between Iran and the Western, and particularly the Anglophone, world. While English speakers add a myriad of foreign and newly coined words to their lexicon every year, Persian speakers are more reluctant and opt to craft local equivalents (as the French do with lesser success). Many Iranians even consider the excessive use of (particularly English) loanwords distasteful and conceited. Preserving the existing soundness and continuity of the language is far more important than carelessly acquiring foreign words. The default position of Persian linguistics is prescriptive, rather than descriptive. 
These sensibilities also apply to the Iranian understanding of the past. As Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare are removed from Western curricula in favor of modern authors who address topics relevant to the contemporary reader (such as race or gender issues), Persian speakers continue to learn and recite poems of a bygone era. Their morality is found in the parables of Sa‘di Shirazi, Rumi, and Firdawsi, which are still part of school curricula and daily speech: “Don’t pain an ant who drags a grain of rice / for he’s alive and living life is nice” (mayāzār mūrī keh dāna kash ast / keh jān dārad o jān-e shīrīn khwash ast). Like other Muslim societies, Persianate peoples generally consider morality divinely revealed and static. This contrasts with the dominant understanding in the West in which morality is perceived as constantly evolving.

* Muhammad Ali Mojaradi is a University of Michigan graduate, translator and founder of persianpoetics.com