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The “Iranization” of Biblical Heroes in Judeo‐Persian Epics: Shahin's Ardashīr-nāmah and ᶜEzrā-nāmah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Vera B. Moreen
Vera B. Moreen*
Affiliation:
Department of Religion, Swarthmore College
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Extract

Judeo-Persian literature is one of the most neglected areas of both Jewish and Iranian studies. Although Judeo-Persian texts—New Persian documents in the Hebrew alphabet—date as far back as the second half of the eighth century and constitute, in fact, the first recorded texts in New Persian, they are still largely unexplored for two major reasons. First, most Judeo- Persian texts are available only in manuscript form, and these manuscripts are located in largely uncatalogued library collections. Second, the study of Judeo- Persian manuscripts requires a thorough knowledge not only of several languages (Persian, Hebrew, and Arabic) but also of Judaism and Islam in their respective religious and secular literatures.

Strides have been made in the study of Judeo-Persian texts since the latenineteenth century. Nevertheless, much remains to be done, especially in the realm of editing texts, the first and most important step toward their comprehensive study.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 3-4 , Summer Fall 1996 , pp. 321 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1996

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Footnotes

*

This study is a revised version of a presentation made at the annual meeting of MESA, Washington, D.C., December 1995.

References

1. For early Judeo-Persian texts see Utas, Bo, “The Jewish Persian Fragment from Dandan-Uiliq,” Orientalia Suecana 17 (1968): 123–36Google Scholar; G. Lazard, “Remarques sur le fragment judéo-persan de Dandan-Uiliq,” in W. Sundermann, J. Duchesne-Guillemin and F. Vahman, eds., A Green Leaf: Papers in Honor of Professor Jes P. Asmussen, Acta Iranica, hommages et opera minora, vol. 12 (Leiden, 1988), 205–209; Shaked, Shaul, “Judeo-Persian Notes,” Israel Oriental Studies 1 (1971): 178–82Google Scholar. See also Lazard, Gilbert, La Langue de plus anciens monuments de la prose persane (Paris, 1963), 31Google Scholar; Rypka, Jan, History of Iranian Literature (Dordrecht, 1968), 148–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. The following are the extant catalogues of Judeo-Persian MSS: Spicehandler, E., “A Descriptive List of Judeo-Persian Manuscripts at the Klau Library of the Hebrew Union College,” Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 8 (1968): 114–36Google Scholar; J. Rosenwasser, Judeo-Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum, offprinted (with additional indices of persons and titles) from Meredith-Owens, G. M., Handlist of Persian Manuscripts, 1865–1966 (London, 1968), 38–44Google Scholar. Rosenwasser's list has now been updated by Moreen, Vera B., “A Supplementary List of Judeo-Persian Manuscripts,” The British Library Journal 21 (1995): 71–80Google Scholar; Netzer, A., ᶜOtsar kitve ha-yad shel yehude paras be-makhon Ben Zvi ['Manuscripts of the Jews of Persia in the Ben Zvi Institute’] (Jerusalem, 1985)Google Scholar. Dr. E. Wust is currently preparing a catalogue of the Judeo-Persian MSS held in the Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, and Vera B. Moreen will catalogue the Judeo-Persian manuscripts of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York. The core of this collection, to which other manuscripts have been added over the years, consists of the manuscripts purchased by E. N. Adler. See his Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts in the Collection ofElkan Nathan Adler (Cambridge, 1921).

3. A recent, albeit incomplete, bibliography can be found in Netzer, ᶜOtsar kitve ha-yad, 59–69.

4. For studies of Shahin's epics see Asmussen, Jes. P., “Judeo-Persica I. Šāhīn-i Šīrāzī's Ardašīr-nāma,” Acta Orientalia 28 (1964): 243–61Google Scholar; Spicehandler, Ezra, “Shāhīn's Influence on Bābāī ben Loṭf: The Abraham-Nimrod Legend,” in Shaked, S. and Netzer, A., eds., Irano-Judaica, vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1990), 158–65Google Scholar; Moreen, Vera B., “Moses, God's Shepherd: An Episode from A Judeo-Persian Epic,” Prooftexts 11 (1991): 107–130Google Scholar; idem, “The Legend of Adam in the Judeo-Persian Epic Bereshit [Namah] (14th Century),” PAAJR 57 (1991): 155–78; idem, “A Dialogue between God and Satan in Shahin's Bereshit [Namah],” in Shaked and Netzer, eds., Irano-Judaica, vol. 3 (Jerusalem, 1994), \Tl-\\; idem, “Ishmaᶜiliyat: A Fourteenth Century Judeo-Persian Account of the Building of the Kaᶜba,” forthcoming in a festschrift in honor of W. Brinner. See also Blieske, Dorothea, “Šāhīn-i Šīrāzīs Ardašīr-Buch” (Ph.D. diss., Eberhard-Karls Universität, Tübingen, 1966), 49–50Google Scholar. Other than Blieske's, there are no complete studies of Shahin's individual epics. The only comprehensive, yet much too sketchy, study of Shahin's entire oeuvre remains Wilhelm Bacher's Zwei Judisch-persische Dichter Schahin und Imrani (Strasburg, 1907). See also Netzer, Amnon, Montakhab-i ashᶜār-i Fārsī az āṣār-i Yahūdiyān-i Īrān (Tehran, 1352 Sh./1973)Google Scholar, Introduction (pp. 37–40), and texts (pp. 9–178); idem, ᶜOtsar kitve ha-yad, 27–29. Shimcon Hakham published the Judeo-Persian texts of Mūsā-nāmah and Bereshit-nāmah under the Hebrew title Sefer sharh-i Shahin cal ha-Torah (The Book of Shahin's Commentaries of the Torah) (Jerusalem, 1902–1905), and in 1910 he published the Judeo-Persian text of Ardashīr-nāmah under the Hebrew title Sefer sharh-i Shahin ᶜal magillat Esther (The Book of Shahin's Commentaries on the Scroll of Esther). These are not critical editions in the modern sense of the term. Blieske 's study contains 22 edited chapters of the Ardashīr-nāmah (pp. 45–84), her translation into German of these chapters (pp. 85–144), and a synopsis of the remainder (pp. 145–86). Netzer does not specify the manuscript background of the texts he includes in his anthology (Montakhab). Therefore, the most urgent desideratum for the study of Shahin's epic remains establishing critically sound editions.

5. “ … a long narrative poem that treats a single heroic figure or a group of such figures and concerns an historical event, such as a war and a conquest, or a heroic quest or some other significant mythic or legendary achievement that is central to the tradition and beliefs of its culture” (A. Preminger et al, eds., The New Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics [Princeton, 1993], s.v. “epic“).

6. See the works of Alter, Robert, especially The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York, 1985), and The World of Biblical Literature (New York, 1992).

7. Erich Auerbach, “Odysseus’ Scar,” in idem, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, 1953), 14; Fisch, Harold, Poetry with A Purpose: Biblical Poetics and Interpretation (Bloomington, Ind., 1988)Google Scholar.

8. Israel Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, 12 vols., trans, and ed. Bernard Martin (New York, 1975), 6:175–77; 8:201 ff.

9. Most of these examples come from Yiddish literature, from works such as Shmuelbuch and its imitators. See Shmeruk, Chone, Sifrut Yiddish: perakim le-toldoteha (Tel Aviv, 1978)Google Scholar, ch. 4, esp. 117–36. Jewish epics on non-biblical themes are even less frequent. An unusual example is the retelling of the Arthurian cycle. See King Artus: A Hebrew Arthurian Romance of 1279, trans, and ed. Curt Leviant (New York, 1969).

10. Netzer, ᶜOtsar kitve ha-yad, 28, n. 32. The panegyrics are found in Chapter 5 of Ardashīr-nāmah and Chapter 3 of Mūsā-nāmah.

11. Because “Shahin” is a common Persian name, Bacher inclines to the former view. While some Persian poets are known to us by other names than their given ones (e.g., Saᶜdi), most Persian poets are known to posterity either by their takhalloṣ, which often refers to their occupation (e.g., ᶜAttar, Hafez), or, even more frequently, by their place of origin (nisbah), such as Nezami Ganjavi (Bacher, Zwei Judisch-persische Dichter, 7–8).

12. Kitāb-i anūsī (The Book of a Forced Convert), an important Judeo-Persian chronicle from the middle of the seventeenth century; see the introductory chapters. No edition of this chronicle has yet appeared. For a comprehensive study of the Kitāb-i anūsī see Moreen, Vera B., Iranian Jewry's Hour of Peril and Heroism: A Study of BābāiīIbn Luff's Chronicle [1617–1662] (New York, 1986)Google Scholar.

13. Bacher, Zwei Judisch-persische Dichter, 9–10; Netzer, Montakhab, 37. Hakham records that in the view of some people, Shahin lived in Kashan (see his Hebrew Introduction to Bereshit-namah, p. 6).

14. Hanaway, William L., “Epic Poetry,” in Yarshater, E., ed., Persian Literature (Albany, N.Y., 1988), 96–108Google Scholar.

15. Bacher, Zwei Judisch-persische Dichter, 9 gives the date 1332. See also Netzer, Montakhab, 38–39; idem, ᶜOtsar, 28–29.

16. Bacher, Zwei Judisch-persische Dichter, 8; Netzer, ᶜOtsar, 28; idem, Montakhab, 37, gives the erroneous date of 1317.

17. Bacher, Zwei Judisch-persische Dichter, 9; Netzer, Montakhab, 39; idem, ᶜOtsar, 29 (which gives the date as 1359).

18. For Rostam as king-maker see Davidson, Olga M., “The Crown-Bestower in the Iranian Book of Kings,” Acta Iranica 10 (1985): 61–148Google Scholar; idem, Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994), Index, s.v. “Rostam.”

19. On the complex and strained relations between Goshtasp and his son Esfandiyar see Davis, Dick, Epic and Sedition (Fayetteville, 1992)Google Scholar, ch. 3, esp. 128–60.

20. Heb., Pirsume nisa'; see Babylonian Talmud, tractate Megillah, 3b and 18a. I am indebted to Dr. Sam Gellens for reminding me of this reference.

21. I know of no study devoted to this aspect of Persian epics. On the role of nature in Persian lyrical and mystical poetry see Fouchecour, C.-H. de, La Description de la nature dans la poésie lyrique persane du Xle siècle (Paris, 1969)Google Scholar; Schimmel, A., A Two-Colored Brocade (Chapel Hill, 1992)Google Scholar, Part 3.

22. This study is based on two manuscripts, #980 of the Ben Zvi Institute, Jerusalem, and the fragment Ace. #40919 of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York. The English translations that follow are my own and will be published in my In Queen Esther's Garden: An Anthology of Judeo-Persian Literature (New Haven, forthcoming).

23. Ginzberg, Louis, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1928 [1968 rep.]), 4Google Scholar: 386, and the sources cited in 6:460, n. 76.

24. Ginzberg, Legends 2:146.

25. “Above all she was the hidden light that suddenly shone upon Israel in his rayless darkness” (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah, 13a; Ginzberg, Legends 4:384).

26. One such example is Shahin's recounting in the Bereshit-nāmah of the Ishmael saga, including Abraham aiding his son in the building of the Kaᶜba. See Moreen, “Ishmaᶜiliyat.”

27. Ginzberg, Legends 4:316–18.

28. The invocation of God by his ineffable name for theurgic purposes was a common feature of Jewish life in many places in the Middle Ages. See Trachtenberg, Joshua, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (New York, 1977 [repr.]), 83Google Scholar. Its sophisticated use among kabbalists is well described in Idel, Moshe, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, 1988)Google Scholar, ch. 8; idem, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia (Albany, N.Y., 1988), Index, s.v. “Name of God.”

29. This argument is expressed already by al-Tabari (d. 920) in his Ta ‘rlkh, ed. de Goeje (Leiden, 1881–1882), 2:692. Its lasting formulation can be found in the polemical works of Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) and Samauᵓal al-Maghribi (d. ca. 1175). They maintain that the various invasions of the Land of Israel resulted not only in the physical destruction of the realm but also in the ruination of the Jews’ archives, including their copies of the Torah. See Hazm, Ibn, al-Faṣl fi'l milal wa'l ahwāᵓ wa'l nihal (Cairo, 1928), 1:147Google Scholar and 2:149. According to Ibn Hazm, Ezra the priest “concocted the Hebrew scriptures from remnants of the revelation as it was remembered by other priests and from his own additions” (Moshe Perlmann, Encyclopedia of Religion, s.v. “Polemics: Muslim-Jewish Polemics“). In Ifhām al-Yahūd Samauᵓal al-Maghribi, a Jewish apostate, claims that Ezra's motive for introducing “reprehensible tales” into the Torah was to discredit the Davidic dynasty and prevent it from returning to power after the restoration of the Temple. See Samauᵓal al-Maghribi, Ifhām al-Yahūd (New York, 1964), 62–63. See also Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton, 1992), 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. This idea comes from Qurᵓan 9:30, and is elaborated upon by collections of qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāᵓ. See al-Kisaᵓi, The Tales of the Prophets of al-Kisaᵓi, trans. Thackston, W. M. (Boston, 1978), 691Google Scholar; Muhammad al-Thaᶜlabi Ahmad b., ᶜArā'is al-majālis: qiṣaṣ a-lanbiyāᵓ (Beirut, 1958), 346–47Google Scholar; al-Nisaburi, Dāstānhā-yi payghambarān (Tehran, 1340 Sh./1961), 353Google Scholar. Interestingly, the last two qiṣaṣ sources maintain that Ezra did transmit the correct version of the Torah and that it was this extraordinary feat that moved the Jews to acclaim him as the “son of God” and the only one to whom God would vouchsafe such a favor. Jewish tradition, although it regards Ezra very highly (“If Moses had not anticipated him, Ezra would have received the Torah” [Tosefta, Sanh. 4:7]), stops well short of such veneration (see Ginzberg, Legends 6:432, n. 5, and 446, n. 50). On Ezra's role in the Qurᵓan see Ayoub, Mahmoud, “ᶜUzayr in the Qurᵓan and Muslim Tradition,” in Brinner, W. M. and Ricks, S. D., eds., Studies in Islamic and Judaic Traditions (Atlanta, 1986), 1:9Google Scholar ff. For a thorough analysis of Ezra's role in Muslim-Jewish polemics see Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava, “Ezra-ᶜUzayr: Metamorphosis of a Polemical Motif [Heb.] Tarbiz 55 (1986): 359–79Google Scholar, and a different version in idem, Intertwined Worlds, ch. 5.

31. In fact midrashic sources go out of their way to maintain that this marriage was never consummated. They do so by claiming that Mordecai married his niece when she became of age (Ginzberg, Legends 4:387), and because of this some also claim that the unfortunate shah made love merely to a “female spirit in the guise of Esther” (ibid., 4:387 and 6:460, n. 80).

32. Since Esther had to keep her religious identity hidden, she could not possibly have objected to a Zoroastrian wedding ceremony.

33. Some midrashim claim that Esther took contraceptive measures to ensure she would not become pregnant, or that she miscarried upon hearing of Mordecai's arrival at the palace “clothed in sackcloth and ashes” (Ginzberg, Legends 4:419 and 6:469, n. 27). According to other midrashic sources, Esther and Ahasuerus were the parents of Darius (ibid., 4:366 and 6:452–53, n.5). In ᶜEzrā-nāmah, Shahin conflates the roles of Cyrus and Darius in the rebuilding of the Temple and attributes the entire activity to the age of Cyrus. Shahin's claim that Esther and Ahasuerus were the parents of Cyrus may well be based on an independent Jewish tradition preserved, possibly, only in Iran for we find this claim explicitly stated in the fourteenth-century Hebrew midrashic collection from Iran, Seferpitron Torah, ed. E. E. Urbach (Jerusalem, 1978), 33.

34. Auerbach, “Odysseus’ Scar,” 11–13.

35. Ginzberg, Legends 4:379–81.

36. See the amusing miniatures of this scene in the illuminated copies of Ardashīrnāmah in Preussischer Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, MS SPQ or. qu. 1680, fol. 173v, and the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, MS 40919, fol. 121r; cf. a Mughal miniature on this theme (ca. 1585) in Welch, Stuart Cary, Imperial Mughal Painting (New York, 1978), 5Google Scholar. On the tradition of illuminated Judeo-Persian manuscripts, which imitate the popular style of Persian miniature paintings, see Moreen, Vera B., Miniature Paintings in Judeo-Persian Manuscripts (Cincinnati, 1985)Google Scholar.

37. Davidson, Poet and Hero, ch. 9.

38. On Islamic cosmology see Nasr, S. H., An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 76–79Google Scholar; idem, Islamic Science: An Illustrated Study (London, 1976), 91–134.

39. The Hebrew month of Adar usually falls in the rainy season of spring. It is also the month (14th of Adar in February or March) in which Purim, the Feast of Esther, is celebrated.

40. Ginzberg, Legends 4:286 and 291, where he is identified with king Zedekiah, and ibid., 6:382, n. 1. Mattatiah's role in Shahin's account appears to be a conflation of the roles of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Jehoiachim, the last captive king of the Davidic line (Ezra 3:2), and possibly Sheshbazzar, “the prince of Judah” (Ezra 1:8). See Ackroyd, Peter R., Israel under Babylon and Persia (New York, 1970), 204Google Scholar.

41. For biblical precedents see Genesis 43:32 and, especially, Daniel 1:8. The law is clearly formulated in the Babylonian Talmud, ᶜAvodah Zarah, 29b, 34b, 38a.

42. An essentially neoplatonic motif (body and soul), it is especially loved by Rumi who uses it to demonstrate the “organic” link between lover and Divine Beloved. See, for example, Chittick, William C., The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (Albany, 1983), 213Google Scholar, 264, and 303.

43. “R[abbi] Eleazar further said in the name of R. Hanina: When a righteous man dies, he dies only for his own generation [Epstein, n. 9, ‘and his name, or his soul survives’]. It is with him as with a man who loses a pearl. Wherever it is, it remains a pearl, and it is lost only to its owner” (Megillah, 15a in The Babylonian Talmud, trans. Seder Moᶜed and I Epstein [London 1938], 89–90).

44. According to the Zurvanite conception of Time ”… [it] is cyclical and not linear. It is a cycle viewed from the center and not from the periphery, a cycle revolving vertically and not horizontally. Our special experience of it is in ascent and descent rather than round and round. And it is at this inner level of the operation of Time that we are faced with the element of paradox. Time, as fate, brings ups and downs, which is to say that it generates both good and evil” (William L. Hanaway, “Ferdowsi and the Art of Tragic Epic,” in Yarshater, Persian Literature, 110–113, based on Zaehner, R. C., The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism [London, 1961], 240–41Google Scholar).

45. A notable exception is, of course, the Book of Ecclesiastes, to which, however, we cannot trace Shahin's words directly.

46. A Sufi epithet for God.

47. The concept is deeply embedded in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, from which it was easily absorbed into Persian poetry given its similarity with the Sasanian Zurvanite conceptions mentioned above (see EI2, s.v. “dahr“).

48. Another Sufi epithet for God.

49. I am indebted to Professor Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi for his helpful comments in this regard and especially for drawing my attention to the fact that the mythical and religious heroes of Iran underwent a similar process of “Islamization” during the first centuries of Islamic influence in Iran. See Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad, “Contested Memories: Narrative Structures and Allegorical Meanings of Iran's Pre-Islamic History,” Iranian Studies 29, nos. 1–2 (Winter/Spring 1996): 149–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50. For a thorough analysis of how Ferdawsi relates to his Iranian narratives of history and to early Islamic models of historiography, see Meisami, Julie S., “The Past in the Service of the Present: Two Views of History in Medieval Persia,” Poetics Today 14 (1993): 247–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.