Classical Persian Poetry and Poets

Jami’s Ghazals and Quatrains: Matching Persian Mystical Poetry and Akbarian Doctrine Dr Eve Feuillibois Sufi, scholar, poet, often presented as the last great classical Persian writer, Nur al-Din ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami (1414-1492) wrote a prolific amount of poetry and prose in both Persian and Arabic. He turned his hand to every genre of Persian poetry and authored numerous treatises on a wide range of topics, mainly in religious sciences and literature. In my presentation, I will focus on the two following matters: Jami’s mystical love poetry, especially in his ghazals and quatrains; and the role he played in the matching of wahdat al-wojud with Persian Sufism.

Jami’s Diwan, collected in 1491, is divided into three sections: Fatihat al-shabab (“Opening of Youth”), Wasitat al-‘iqd (“Middle of the Necklace”), and Khatimat al-hayat (“The End of Life”). The bulk of the volume consists of about a thousand ghazals, but it also includes poems in all the shorter forms (qasida, tarji‘- and tarkib-band, qet‘a, and roba‘i, short mathnawi). I will focus on mystical and religious themes, and especially Jami’s use of classical Persian erotic and bacchanalian imagery. One of the most characteristic features of Jami’s work is his constant reference to the literary past. In his ghazals, for example, Jami responded to poems by Sa‘di, Amir Khosrow, Kamal Khojandi, and Hafiz in the same rhyme and meter, sticking close to the theme and images of the models. He cared about the formal qualities of poetry, fluency and elegance of diction, and immediate comprehensibility, but he rarely went beyond the standard images and metaphors of the tradition. On the other hand, Jami’s work represents the fullest summation of the long history of