The Typological Study of Atayi’s Khamse

Document Type : Research article

Authors

• Abbas Vaezzadeh ¹
• Elnaz Ayuob ghazani ²

¹ Assistant Professor, Department of Persian language and literature, University of Birjand, Birjand, Iran.

² MA in Persian language and literature, University of Birjand, Birjand, , Iran.

Abstract

Highlights

The Typological Study of Atayi’s Khamse

Abstract

Khamse-sarayi (Quintet Composing) is one of the long-standing traditions of Persian literature that began in the twelfth century until the twentieth century in Iran and the lands under the influence of Iranian culture. Hakim Nizami Gajavi gained such fame by composing "Panj Ganj" that after him, many poets in Iran, subcontinent, Central Asia and Asia Minor wrote khamse in Persian and Turkish languages. One of the famous khamse composers of Asia Minor, who wrote a khamse in Ottoman Turkish language, is Nev'i-zade Atayi. The purpose of this article is the typological and comparative study of Atayi’s Khamse and Nizami’s Khamse. The obtained results indicate that Atayi adheres to formal conventions of Khamse, such as the number and naming of verses, their meter and seasonality, preservation of prominent topos such as Besmellah verses, Saqiname, opening verses, etc. But he abandoned one of the main conventions of Khamse, which is the narrative nature of its poems, and composed only one narrative poem in imitation of Haft Peykar. In composing his masnavis, Atayi was generally influenced by the social situation of his era, and the seven stories of the Haft-Khan also tell about the social situation of his era.

Key words: Khamse-sarayi (Quintet Composing), Nizami’s Khamse, Atayi’s Khamse, classical Persian and Ottoman Turkish poetry.

Introduction

The Khamse-sarayi became popular in the Ottoman Empire in imitation of the Khamse of Hakim Nizami (530-614 AH) and under the influence of the great fame of Abd al-Rahman Jami and his Haft Owrang, as well as the Khamse of Alishir Navayi, and through two channels: Turkish translations of the Khamse of Nizami by Turkish poets such as Fakhri, Sheikhi, and Jalili, and by Iranian immigrant poets who sometimes held the position of Shahname-Ji in the court of Ottoman sultans, such as Arif Chalabi and Aflatun Sharvani.

Naji Toqmaq has estimated the number of Khamse writers in the Ottoman Empire at twenty. Radfer and Mehmet Arslan have also identified 24 Turkish imitators of Nizami. Nev'i-zade Atayi (991-1045 AH) is one of the famous Ottoman Khamse writers whose name appears in all lists of Turkish Khamse writers, and his khamse are considered among the most famous Ottoman Turkish khamses. The aim of this article is to introduce and examine the typology of Atayi's khamse, as one of the prominent and famous examples of Ottoman Turkish khamses, and to compare it with the Nizami's khamse as the first example of the literary type of khamse. Therefore, in this article, we seek to answer the following question: In composing his khamse, which of the conventions of the literary type of khamse, which are the same characteristics of the Nizami's khamse, did Atayi adhere to and which conventions did he change? In other words, what were his innovations in khamse writers?

Literature Review & Discussion

Literary genre has been defined as “a set of highly structured and conventional rules” that “apply to the creation and interpretation of meaning” (Frow, 2014: 7). These rules are conventional and shared by writers and readers; that is, writers consider themselves obligated to observe those rules when creating works in that genre, and readers also expect that these rules will be observed in that text when they read a text in that genre; however, it should be noted that these rules are not intrinsic rules, but rather conventional, and these conventions, like language, change from culture to culture and undergo changes over time. That is, the conventions of a literary genre, while having some commonalities, vary from century to century, from land to land, and from language to language, according to historical, geographical, and cultural requirements, as well as the horizon of audience expectations. This point highlights the necessity of studying literary genres in time, space, and in a comparative manner.

Khamse, as one of the Persian literary genres that has become popular in the cultural territory of Iran, from India to Asia Minor, has rules that the Khamse writers in different regions of this literary genre have adopted, and throughout its eight hundred-year history of popularity, these rules, which were the characteristics of Nizami’s Khamse, have become their own. However, the factors mentioned earlier have caused some Khamse writers to make changes to some of these rules. In this article, we will examine the typology of Atayi’s Khamse as one of the Turkish Khamses of the Ottoman Empire, in order to see to what extent Atayi, one of the most famous Ottoman Khamse writers, adhered to the rules of the Khamse and what changes it has made to these conventions.

Conclusion

From this typology and comparative study, the following results were obtained:

- Atayi mainly adhered to the formal conventions of Khamse, such as: the number and naming of the verses, their meter and chapter arrangement, and the preservation of prominent topos, such as the verse of Basmellah, Mi'rajiye, and Saqiname, and made slight changes in some of these conventions, such as the naming rules, thematic arrangement, and meter of the verses.

- In composing his Khamsa, Atayi did not only consider Nizami's Khamse and was also influenced by other Khamse writers, such as Amir Khosrow, Jami, Navayi, and Vahshi Bafqi.

- One of the most important conventions of Khamse is its narrative nature; so that four of the poems in Nizami's Khamse are narrative poems, but only one of Atayi's Khamse (Haft Khan) is narrative.

- In composing his narrative poem, which has a love theme and some of the anecdotes in his two moral Masnavis, unlike Nizami who used ancient tales, Atayi used popular tales in his era that reflect the tendencies of his society towards male love and the corruptions that result from it.

- One of Atayi’s innovations in composing Khamse, especially in his two jurisprudential-educational Masnavis, is to address current issues, problems and corruptions affecting the society of his time and to bring stories that correspond to the realities of Ottoman society in the tenth century AH or are basically true. These topics and stories are the result of Atayi’s years of experience in the position of judge of various cities in the Ottoman territory.

- In composing his Khamse, Nizami used a language other than his native language, namely Dari Persian, which was the common language of poetry and literature at that time, and in some verses he used Arabic in the form of using Quran, Hadith and Arabic proverbs. However, Atayi used his native language, Ottoman Turkish, to compose Khamse, but he did not neglect to use Persian as the main language of the literary type of Khamse and Arabic as the language of religion.

Keywords

• Khamse-sarayi (Quintet Composing)
• Nizami’s Khamse
• Atayi’s Khamse
• classical Persian and Ottoman Turkish poetry

Main Subjects

• Lyrical and Didactic Literature