3 - The Many Faces of Qahramān: A Medieval Persianate Romance as a Window on Mongol and Muslim Masculinities in the Volga-Ural Region (1400s–1700s)

Summary

Upon succeeding his brother as king of Iran, Hirasıp gives his son, Qahtarān, the following advice:

Never stop being a champion. Never take an interest in kingship. Be a friend to your friends and an enemy to your enemies. Do not oppose a necessary and just king. Serve him and never go against his wishes. Being a champion is a greater thing than being a king, because a king becomes a king only through the deeds of his champions.

Hirasıp's advice neatly encapsulates the overarching message of the Qahramān-nāma / Qahramān-i Qātil, a medieval Persian romance that, in Turkish translation, circulated in Russia's Volga-Ural Muslim communities from the time of the Golden Horde until the early twentieth century. Central to Qahramān's enduring popularity were its portrayals of masculine conduct in times of conflict and heroic submission to a higher authority. These models were clearly defined but also proved flexible enough to be adapted and reinterpreted as the political, social, and cultural landscape of the Volga-Ural region changed from the fourteenth century to the eighteenth century. In the political world of the Golden Horde and its successor states, Qahramān offered a template for warrior-aristocratic masculinity that reinforced views on cooperation, submission, and service expressed in Chinggisid literature and histories. After the mid-sixteenth century, as the Volga-Ural region's Chinggisid-Muslim political culture was gradually replaced by a Russian Christian one, the titular hero of the Qahramān romance was embraced as an ideal for Muslim masculine self-discipline in a society in which Islam was no longer the politically dominant faith.

Qahramān offers a glimpse of the complexities of masculinity in a medieval and early modern Inner Asian society. In examining these complexities, this essay approaches masculinity as something that individuals were expected to achieve and demonstrate rather than as an inborn trait. The character arcs of Qahramān's male characters and, especially, of the titular hero, center around the achievement of full membership in a warrior-aristocratic elite and the continuing display of the characteristics valued by that elite. At the same time, both the specific masculinity to which Qahramān's men aspire and the aspects of that masculinity that readers of Qahramān emphasized at different historical moments were determined in relation to social class, the political order, and other co-existing masculinities.