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A Late Medieval Persian Summa on Ethics: Kashifi's Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Maria E. Subtelny
Maria E. Subtelny*
Affiliation:
Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto
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Extract

The Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī of Husayn Vaᶜiz-i Kashifi in Many Respects Represents a late medieval summa, or codification, of the Persian genre of ethical and advice literature. Designated variously as andarz, pand, naṣīḥat, siyar and akhlāq, the genre of political advice literature is an ancient one in Persian culture, going back to Late Antiquity and exhibiting concordance with Greek and Indian sources. Most works of Sasanian political wisdom literature, such as the Advices of Anushirvan, Buzurjmihr, and Ardashir, as well as those attributed to the ancient Greek sages Aristotle, Plato, and others, are of indeterminate authorship. Many have been preserved only in late manuscript copies dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and some, like the famous Letter of Tansar, may even have been composed in later periods.

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Articles
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Iranian Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 4: Husayn Vaᶜiz-i Kashifi , December 2003 , pp. 601 - 614
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Iranian Studies 2003

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References

1. For the Sasanian models and their incorporation into the Islamic tradition, see Charles-Henri de Fouchécour, Moralia: Les notions morales dans la litterature persane du 3e/9e au 7e/13e siecle (Paris, 1986), 19ff.

2. For a survey of works from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, see de Fouchécour, Moralia; and the following works by Lambton, Ann K. S.: “Quis custodiet custodes? Some Reflections on the Persian Theory of Government,” Studia Islamica 5 (1956): 125–48Google Scholar; “Justice in the Medieval Persian Theory of Kingship,” Studia Islamica 17 (1962): 94–95 and 115–19; and “Islamic Mirrors for Princes,” in Atti del convegno internazionale sul tema, La Persia nel medioevo (Roma, 1970), Accademia nazionale dei Lincei (Rome, 1971), 419–42. On al-Ghazali's work, see Crone, Patricia, “Did al-Ghazālī write a Mirror for Princes? On the Authorship of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10 (1987): 167–91Google Scholar.

3. See Al-Azmeh, Aziz, Muslim Kingship: Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian, and Pagan Politics (London-New York, 1997), 89Google Scholar.

4. There are numerous lithograph editions of the work, but to date no critical edition has ever been published. A Tajik transcription of the work appeared in Dushanbe in 1991—see Khusain Voizi Koshifi, Futuvvatnomai Sultoni—Akhloki Mukhsini—Risolai Khotamiia. The edition utilized in this study is the 22nd lithographed edition, Lucknow: Nawal Kishor, 1377/1957 (hereafter AM). I have also consulted several of the earliest manuscript copies of the work, in particular: the copy (dated 907/1501-02) in the Institute of Oriental Studies (IOS), Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan, in Tashkent, no. 2116/I—for a description, see Semenov, A. A. et al., Sobranie vostochnykh rukopisei Akademii nauk Uzbekskoi SSR, 11 vols. (Tashkent, 1952–87), 3: 107Google Scholar; the copy (dated 945/1539) in the Bibliothèque Nationale (BN) in Paris, ancien fonds persan 124—for a description see Richard, Francis, Catalogue des manuscrits persans, vol. 1: Ancien fonds (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1989), 1: 140–41Google Scholar; and the recently acquired copy in the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, 997.47.1 (dated 900/1494–95)—for which see Sotheby's Catalogue, Sale LN7255: Oriental Manuscripts and Miniatures (London, 23 April 1977), no. 86.

5. His full name was Muᶜin al-Din Abu al-Muhsin Bahadur. The title, which contains a play on the word muḥsin, meaning beneficent, may also be read as “Beneficent morals”—see AM, 2, where the author uses the Arabic phrase, “Morals of the beneficent” (akhlāq al-muḥsinīn). This is sometimes mistaken for the title of the work.

6. The date of completion is contained in a chronogam (tārīkh) which occurs at the very end of the verses with which the work concludes, and which reads:

I said to the pen: O you who have made your head your feet,* By whose arrival the eyes of speech became illuminated, The writing of the Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī has been completed, Write the date [of its completion] also from Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī.

*The image is that of a reed pen whose split nib, which is its “head,” resembles two feet.

The chronogram is contained in the title of the work, Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī, which is numerically equivalent to 900. However, it is also possible to read the chronogram as za Akhlāqi Muḥsinī (“from Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī”), which yields the date 907. The ambiguity regarding the date of completion is noted in some of the catalogue descriptions of the work—see, for example, Pertsch, Wilhelm, Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, vol. 4: Verzeichniss der persischen Handschriften (Berlin, 1888), 308Google Scholar; and more recently, Richard, Catalogue, 140; and Petrosyan, Yuri et al., Pages of Perfection: Islamic Paintings and Calligraphy from the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg (Milan, 1995), 253Google Scholar.

7. For these manuscripts see note 4. Unlike the Tashkent manuscript, the ROM manuscript has no colophon, although the date 900 appears in numerals after the chronogram, as well as in a separate dedicatory roundel—see the comments on this by Soudavar, A., “The Concepts of ‘Al-Aqdamo Aṣaḥḥ’ and ‘Yaqin-e Sābeq’, and the Problem of Semi-Fakes,” Studia Iranica 28 (1999): 264–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. For a beautiful album containing calligraphic specimens by Mir-ᶜAli, see Petrosyan, Pages of Perfection, 226–29, no. 40. The ROM manuscript also contains miniatures—for a discussion of the paintings in both manuscripts, see the article by Lisa Golombek in this volume.

9. See AM, 3–4. Besides the Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī, Kashifi also completed his Makhzan alinsh āᵓ and Asrār-i Qāsimī in 907—for which see my introduction, p. 464 above. However, this date referred not to the year of composition, which probably occurred over a period of time, but rather to the year when the works were actually completed and/or dedicated to a patron.

10. See Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī, Ms., Tashkent, IOS, no. 2116/I, fol. 61b; thus also AM, 67, although here the approximate number of years is given as 945 rather than 940. This same phrase in the Bibliothèque Nationale manuscript contains the date of 908 rather than 907, clearly a copyist's error—see Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī, Ms., Paris, BN, ancien fonds persan 124, fol. 44a. Curiously, in the Royal Ontario Museum manuscript, the date is missing altogether, and just as in AM, 67, the approximate number of years after the death of Hatim al-Tayy is given as 945 rather than 940—see Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī, Ms., Toronto, ROM, 997.47.1, fol. 48b. Hatim al-Tayy lived in the second half of the sixth century, but his exact dates are unknown.

11. See Khvandamir, Ghiyas al-Din, Tārīkh-i Ḥabīb al-siyar fī akhbār-i afrād-i bashar, ed. Humaᵓi, Jalal al-Din, 4 vols. (Tehran, 1362/1984), 4: 239Google Scholar and 245 (for the rebellions), and 4: 257 (for the pardon, which took place “around the time of the death of ᶜAli-Shir Navaᵓi,” i.e., 906/1500).

12. AM, 4.

13. For references to his repentance, see AM, 4 and 133 (in chapter 33, which is devoted in part to the pernicious effects of wine-drinking).

14. Khvandamir, Ḥabīb al-siyar, 4: 384–86 and 393.

15. See the solution proposed by Lisa Golombek in her article in this volume.

16. For the significance of the Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, see Marlow, Louise, Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 1997), 176Google Scholar; and Lambton, “Islamic Mirrors,” 439.

17. See Jambet, Christian, “Idéal du politique et politique idéale selon Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭusī,” in Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭusī: Philosophe et savant du XIIIe siècle, ed. Pourjavady, N. and Ž. Vesel (Tehran, 2000), 32Google Scholar.

18. Tusi, Nasir al-Din, Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, ed. Minuvi, Mujtaba and Haydari, ᶜAliriza (Tehran, 1360/1982), 247–58Google Scholar, esp. 252–53 and 284; Wickens, G. M., trans., The Nasirean Ethics by Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭusī (London, 1964), 187–95Google Scholar, esp. 190.

19. Tusi, Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, esp. 288; Wickens, Nasirean Ethics, esp. 230. On this point see Lambton, “Justice,” 92ff.

20. Tusi, Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, 249–50; Wickens, Nasirean Ethics, 189 (where it is also rendered as “co-operation”).

21. Al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship, 115.

22. Tusi, Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, 252–53 and 256; see also A. K. S. Lambton, “Early Timurid Theories of State: Ḥāfiẓ Abru and Niẓām al-Dīn Šāmī,” Bulletin d’études orientales 30 (1978), 5, n. 19. It sometimes also had the even more specific connotation of “capital punishment.”

23. See Lambton, , “Justice,” 103; for the transmission of this idea into Islam, see Shaul Shaked, “From Iran to Islam: Notes on Some Themes in Transmission,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 4 (1984): 37–40Google Scholar.

24. See Lambton, “Islamic Mirrors,” 419–22; also Lambton, “Justice,” 104ff.

25. For this concept, see Maria E.|Subtelny, Le monde est un jardin: Aspects de l’histoire culturelle de l’Iran médiéval, Cahiers de Studia Iranica 28 (Paris, 2002), chap. 2, esp. 58–65Google Scholar, and 63 for a graphic representation. For a discussion of the circle of justice, which unfortunately appeared too late for me to take into account in the aforementioned study, see Linda T. Darling, “‘Do Justice, Do Justice, For That is Paradise’: Middle Eastern Advice for Indian Muslim Rulers,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 22.1–2 (2002): 3–19.

26. Thus for example, Kay Kaᵓus b. Iskandar b. Qabus b. Vashmgir, Qābus-nāmah, ed. Reuben Levy (London, 1951), 125; Muhammad Ghazali, Nasīḥat al-muluk, ed. Jalal al-Din Humaᵓi (Tehran, 1351/1972), 100; Lambton, “Islamic Mirrors,” 425, 431, and 435; and Lambton, “Justice,” 100.

27. Thus, for example, Fakhr al-Din Razi, Jāmiᶜ al-ᶜulum, litho. ed. (Bombay, 1323/1905), 207.

28. See Subtelny, Le monde est un jardin, 62–63.

29. AM, 6. The same formula is repeated in Kashifi's Makhzan al-inshā and Futuvvatnāmah-i Sulṭānī—for which see the articles by Colin Mitchell and Arley Loewen, respectively, in this volume, 501 and 563.

30. AM, 6 and 34.

31. AM, 35.

32. This is one of several instances where Kashifi cites verses from the Manavī of Rumi to illustrate his point—see AM, 35: “The just ruler (shāh-i ᶜādil) is the shadow of the grace of God (sāyah-i luṭf-i ḥaqq)”; for others, see n. 50 below.

33. AM, 34.

34. AM, 121 (an idea that he states is based on a prophetic Tradition).

35. AM, 35–36.

36. AM, 36; see also Lambton, “Justice,” 117.

37. AM, 6 and 121.

38. AM, 121.

39. AM, 121.

40. AM, 6; see also Lambton, “Justice,” 116–17.

41. AM, 120.

42. AM, 123. See also n. 65 below.

43. AM, 124.

44. AM, 187.

45. For the Irshād al-zirāᶜa as a unique variant of Persian advice literature, see Subtelny, Le monde est un jardin, 65–68.

46. AM, 59; Qasim b. Yusuf Abu Nasri, Irshād al-zirāᶜa, ed. Muhammad Mushiri (Tehran, 1346/1968), 25.

47. AM, 6.

48. For the list, see AM, 7–8. Some of the titles appear in a shortened version in the list in the Tashkent manuscript, but they follow the same order—see AM, Ms., Tashkent, IOS, no. 2116/I, fols. 7b–8a.

49. For some of these tales, see the article in this issue by Lisa Golombek, who discusses them in connection with the illustrations in the Tashkent and Toronto manuscripts.

50. See for example, AM, 10, 23, 37, 52, and 97. Kashifi was also the author of an anthology of the Manavī entitled Lubb-i lubāb-i Manavī (Qum, 1344/1966).

51. AM, 34–35.

52. AM, 36.

53. AM, 121–22.

54. AM, 186.

55. AM, 186.

56. AM, 187–88.

57. Thus perhaps instead of īlchiyān (“ambassadors”); the enumeration of offices is not found in the Tashkent manuscript, fol. 161a.

58. AM, 188.

59. AM, 196.

60. AM, 201.

61. AM, 202.

62. For the prominence Kashifi accorded storytelling and entertainment in his didactic philosophy, see the article by Kristin Sands in this volume, 475ff.

63. I cannot possibly do justice here to a complete description of these. Suffice it to say that some of the oldest and most beautiful copies, besides the abovementioned Tashkent, Paris, and Toronto Mss., are those in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Diez A. 4°.77 (dated 908/1503)—for a description see Pertsch, Verzeichniss, 309, no. 276; in St. Petersburg, Russian National Library, Dorn 262 (sixteenth-century, a luxury copy, possibly copied in Bukhara)—for a description see [B. Dorn], Catalogue des manuscrits et xylographes orientaux de la Bibliothèque Impériale Publique de St. Pétersbourg (St. Petersburg, 1852), 257, and [G. I. Kostygova], Persidskie i tadzhikskie rukopisi Gosudarstvennoi Publichnoi Biblioteki imeni M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina: Alfavitnyi katalog (Leningrad, 1988), 1: 11, no. 26; in Bankipore, Oriental Public Library, no. 944 (sixteenth-century, described as an “exceedingly valuable copy”)—see Maulavi Abdul Muqtadir, Catalogue of the Arabic and Persian Manuscripts in the Oriental Public Library at Bankipore, vol. 9 (Persian Mss.) (Calcutta-Patna, 1925), 196; and in Mashhad, Kitabkhanah-i Astan-i Quds-i Razavi, Naᵓini 3502 (dated 946/1539)—see Fihrist-i Kitābkhānah-i Āstān-i Quds-i Rażavī (Mashhad, 1344/1966), 6: 381, no. 80; also copies in Tehran, Istanbul, London, Oxford, Cambridge, and even Harvard University (Houghton Library) and McGill University (Blacker Wood Library).

64. See my “Art and Politics in Early 16th Century Central Asia,” Central Asiatic Journal 27 (1983): 121–48.

65. A fact that seems to have been ignored by recent scholarship on the topic—see Darling, “‘Do Justice,’” who does not even mention the Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī in her survey; also the comments of Sajida Sultana Alvi, ed. and trans., Advice on the Art of Governance: Mauᶜiẓah-i Jahāngīrī of Muḥammad Bāqir Najm-i ānī: An Indo-Islamic Mirror for Princes (Albany, 1989), 28. But see, for example, Muhammad Baqir's comparison of political power (salṭanat) to a sapling, and siyāsat to irrigation water (46, and Per. text, 148), which is taken directly from the Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī—see p. 608 above.

66. Noteworthy is the copy made for the royal library of Shah ᶜAbbas II (between 1642–66)—Ms., Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Suppl. persan 1959. For a description, see Francis Richard, Splendeurs persanes: Manuscrits du XIIe au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1997), 222; and the copy made around the same time by the calligrapher, ᶜAbd al-ᶜAziz—see Petrosyan, Pages of Perfection, 252–53, no. 46. Both copies were illustrated with miniature paintings.

67. Many lithograph editions of the work were published by the well-known Nawal Kishor press in Lucknow (also Cawnpore), the earliest being Lucknow 1876; as stated in n. 4 above, I have utilized the twenty-second edition published by this press. I am grateful to Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi for making available to me his extensive collection of lithographs of the work, and for sharing with me his knowledge about this press.

68. AM, 232. For the many English translations of the work done in India during the nineteenth century for use in the East India Company's colleges, see Edward Edwards, A Catalogue of the Persian Printed Books in the British Museum (London, 1922), 273–74; in particular the translation done by two translators of the chief court of Punjab, George, Thomas and Kapur, Lala Thakar Das, A Complete and Literal Translation of Akhlak-i-Mohsani with Glossary (Lahore: Caxton Printing Works, 1896)Google Scholar, which was intended for “students preparing for the Intermediate Examination of the Punjab University.” For the use of Kashifi's Anvār-i Suhaylī in the same capacity, see the article by Christine van Ruymbeke in this volume, 574.