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Khargāh and Other Terms for Tents in Firdawsī’s Shāh-nāmah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

David Durand-Guédy
David Durand-Guédy*
Affiliation:
Based in Tehran Tehran with research interest in the medieval history of Iran
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Abstract

This article aims to contribute to the wider debate on the historicity of the Shāh-nāmah by focusing on the way Firdawsī uses the word khargāh. The word, which is first attested in Rūdakī poetry, has not been dealt with adequately in previous scholarship dedicated to the Shāh-nāmah. An analysis of all the occurrences in the text provides results consistent with those obtained from contemporary sources: the khargāh appeared in Central Asia (here, Tūrān); it was the standard dwelling of Turkic-speaking pastoral nomads (here, Tūrānians), whatever their social rank; and it was adopted later as a status symbol by non-Turkish elites (here, during Kay-Khusraw’s reign). In Firdawsī’s Shāh-nāmah khargāh should therefore also be understood as the type of framed tent known as “trellis tent” (the so-called yurt).

Keywords

Shāh-nāmahFirdawsīTrellis tentYurtTūrānTurksCultural loan
Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 6 , November 2018 , pp. 819 - 849
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2018

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Footnotes

He is grateful to Peter Andrews and also to the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on an earlier version of this text. However, the author is solely responsible for the errors that remain. Transliteration throughout is in accordance with the style of the International Journal of Middle East Studies.

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