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Husayn Vaᶜiz-i Kashifi: Polymath, Popularizer, and Preserver

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Maria E. Subtelny
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Extract

This issue of Iranian Studies is Devoted to the Late Medieval Persian Preacher and polymath, Kamal al-Din Husayn b. ᶜAli Vaᶜiz-i Kashifi, and it coincides roughly with the quincentenary of his death in 910/1504–05. It is based on a panel of papers delivered at the Fourth Biennial Conference on Iranian Studies, which was held in Bethesda, Maryland, May 24–26, 2002, under the sponsorship of the Society for Iranian Studies, and co-sponsorship of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies. It brings together papers on a number of Husayn Kashifi's works with the aim of demonstrating the breadth of his oeuvre, and in particular his contribution to the codification, primarily in Persian, of knowledge in fields covering the entire spectrum of learning in medieval Iran at the turn of the sixteenth century. As such, the volume seeks to “rehabilitate” Kashifi, who has usually been regarded merely as a compiler or popularizer, and to present him as a figure who was instrumental in the preservation and transmission of the state of the art of knowledge in a wide variety of fields in late medieval Iran.

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Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 4: Husayn Vaᶜiz-i Kashifi , December 2003 , pp. 463 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Iranian Studies 2003

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References

1. See Geoffroy, E., “al-Suyūtī,” EI 2, 9: 914–15Google Scholar.

2. See Reuchlin, Johann, On the Art of the Kabbalah: De Arte Cabalistica, trans. Martin, and Goodman, Sarah (Lincoln-London, 1993), viiGoogle Scholar.

3. For the number forty, which denoted both preparation and completion in Islamic culture, see Schimmel, Annemarie, The Mystery of Numbers (New York-Oxford, 1993), 245–53Google Scholar.

4. These are not listed in chronological order. See also the list in Gholam Hosein Yousofi, “Kāshifī,” EI 2, 4: 704–705. In the biographical notice on him, the historian Khvandamir lists only seven of his works, which he says are the best known: Javāhir al-tafsīr, Mavāhib-i ᶜAliyya, Rawżzat al-shuhadā, Anvār-i Suhaylī, Makhzan al-inshā, Akhlāq al-Muḥsinīn (sic), and Ikhti-yārāt; he also cites one of his verses. See al-Din Khvandamir, Ghiyas, Ḥabīb al-siyar, ed. Humaᵓi, Jalal al-Din, 4 vols. (Tehran, 1362/1984), 4: 345Google Scholar.

5. For this dating, see my article in this volume.

6. Arley Loewen, “The Concept of Jawānmardī (Manliness) in Persian Literature and Society,” Ph.D. dissert., University of Toronto, 2001; and Colin Paul Mitchell, “The Sword and the Pen: Diplomacy in Early Safavid Iran, 1501–1555,” Ph.D. dissert., University of Toronto, 2002.

7. See the article by Lisa Golombek in this volume.

8. See Sabzawari, Husayn Waᶜiz Kashifi, The Royal Book of Spiritual Chivalry, trans. Crook, Jay R. (Chicago, 2000)Google Scholar; Kashifi, Kamal al-Din Husayn Vaᶜiz, Javāhir al-tafsīr, ed. ᶜAbbasi, Javad (Tehran, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. For the profession of preacher in Islam, see Pedersen, Johannes, “The Islamic Preacher: wāᶜiẓ, mudhakkir, qāṣṣ,” in Ignace Goldziher Memorial Volume, ed. Löwinger, Samuel and Somogyi, Joseph (Budapest, 1948), 226–51Google Scholar.

10. See Khvandamir, Ḥabīb al-siyar, 4: 345–46; Ghiyas al-Din Khvandamir, Maᵓāir al-mulūk, ed. Mir Hashim Muhaddis (Tehran 1372/1994), 174; [Mir ᶜAli-Shir Navaᵓi], The Majalis- un-Nafa’is “Galaxy of Poets”: Two 16th. Century Persian Translations, ed. Ali Asghar Hekmat (Tehran, 1945), 93 and 268. Gottfried Herrmann has extracted the details of Husayn's biography from these sources, and added to them two documents relevant to his professional life that have been preserved in chancellery manuals—see his “Biographisches zu Ḥusayn Wāfiiẓ Kā，sifī,” in Corolla Iranica: Papers in Honor of Prof. David Neil MacKenzie on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday on April 8th, 1991, ed. Emmerick, Ronald E. and Weber, Dieter (Frankfurt-Bern, 1991), 90–100Google Scholar.

11. For example, the Javāhir al-tafsīr was written for ᶜAli-Shir Navaᵓi, as were his Mavāhib-i ᶜAliyya and Makhzan al-inshā (which was also dedicated to Sultan-Husayn). The Risāla-i Hātimiyya was written for Sultan-Husayn, as was the Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī (which was also dedicated to his son, Abu al-Muhsin Mirza). The Anvār-i Suhaylī was dedicated to the Timurid amīr, Shaykh Ahmad Suhayli. His Risāla-i ᶜalaviyya was written for the Naqshbandi shaykh, ᶜUbayd Allah Ahrar.

12. On this thorny question, see Adam Jacobs, “Sunnī and Shīᶜī Perceptions, Boundaries and Affiliations in Late Tīmūrid and Early Ṣafawid Persia: An Examination of Historical and Quasi-historical Narratives,” Ph.D. dissert., University of London, 1999. For the biographical notice on him in an early seventeenth-century Shiᶜite biographical work, see Shushtari, Nur Allah, Majālis al-muᵓminīn, ed. al-Munafi, Sayyid Ahmad ᶜAbd, 2 vols. (Tehran 1354/1975), 1: 113–14Google Scholar, 547–48. I am grateful to Robert McChesney for the latter reference.

13. See ᶜAli-Shir Navaᵓi, Majālis-un-Nafāᵓis, 268 (this statement should not be taken at face value, since the translation was done for the Ottoman sultan, Selim I).

14. For example, Kashifi gives his Sufi lineage (silsila) in the Futuvvat-nāmah-i Sulṭānī, ed. Muhammad Jaᶜfar Mahjub (Tehran, 1350/1971), 123; this should be compared with the lineages recorded by his son, Fakhr al-Din ᶜAli Safi, in his Rashaḥāt-i ᶜayn al-ḥayāt, ed. ᶜAli Asghar Muᶜiniyan, 2 vols. (Tehran, 2536/1977).