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Women in Praise of Women: Female Poets and Female Patrons in Qajar Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Dominic Parviz Brookshaw
Dominic Parviz Brookshaw*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Abstract

This study examines the poetry of two women of nineteenth-century Iran—one royal, one non-royal—and the women patrons for whom they composed praise poetry. Through the reconstruction of female-centered patronage networks and associated female-only performance venues, and via an examination of the active roles played by female patrons both in affairs of state and in the management of the immense royal harem, this study highlights the various ways in which members of several generations of women in Qajar Iran were involved in the production, dissemination and appreciation of poetry. It is argued here that these patronage and poetry production networks should be read as evidence of a female-centered literary tradition, one that was in dialogue with (and often intersected) the dominant male tradition; one that empowered the women actors within it to create a sisterhood of poets through which their art could be passed on from mother to daughter, and from daughter to granddaughter (and occasionally from mother to son).

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 17 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2013

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Footnotes

The research presented in this study was supported by an Early Career Scheme Fellowship awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK. I would like to thank Vincent Barletta, Homa Katouzian, Farzaneh Milani, and Nasrin Rahimieh for their detailed and constructive comments on an earlier draft of this article.

References

1 A substantial number of the women of Fath-‘Alī Shāh's harem (daughters, granddaughters, wives and daughters-in-law) composed poetry. Milani, Farzaneh, Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers (London, 1992), 55Google Scholar, notes: “Perhaps he [Fath-‘Alī Shāh] should be considered one of the earliest husbands in recorded Persian history to have encouraged his wives in their literary endeavors.”

2 On this phenomenon in the Ottoman context, see Peirce, Leslie, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford, 1993), 217Google Scholar: “Royal women's patronage of scholars as well as of calligraphers, artists, architects and other craftsmen had the function of enhancing the image of the court as a discriminating consumer and promoter of culture.”

3 Anna Vanzan, in “Harem ii. In the Qajar Period,” Encyclopaedia Iranica XII, 3, notes: “The court epistolary art was also cultivated in the Qajar harems, and its high level is testified by the letters left by Nāsir al-Dīn Shāh's mother and by three of his daughters.”

4 Sheil, Lady Mary, who spent three years in Iran at the beginning of the 1850s, writes, in Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia (London, 1856), 146Google Scholar: “Women of the higher classes frequently acquire a knowledge of reading and writing, and of the choice poetical works in their native language; as well as of the art of reading, though, perhaps, not of understanding the Koran. In the royal family, in particular, and among the ladies of the tribe of Kajjar, these accomplishments are so common that they themselves conduct their correspondence without the customary aid of a meerza, or secretary.”

5 Mīrzā, Mahmūd, Tadhkira-yi Nuql-i majlis, ed. Nasīrī, M. and Jalālī, N. (Tehran, 2006)Google Scholar.

6 Shamsat al-Shuᶜarāʾ Gawhar, Kitāb-i mustatāb-i Gawhariyya (Isfahan, 1902). The dīvān of Gawhar is available in a scanned, online version via Harvard University Library, http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/14361345 , and the Women's Worlds in Qajar Iran web archive, http://www.qajarwomen.org/en/items/901A1.html.

7 E.g. Khān, Mīrzā Ahmad, ‘Azud al-Dawla, Tārīkh-i ‘Azudī, ed. ‘Navā’ī, A. (Tehran, 1997)Google Scholar; Fazlullāh Khāvarī Shīrāzī, Tārīkh-i Dhū l-qarnayn, ed. N. Afshār-far (Tehran, 2001); and Sipihr, Muhammad-Taqī Lisān al-Mulk, Nāsikh al-tavārīkh, ed. Kiyānfar, J. (Tehran, 1998)Google Scholar.

8 E.g. Muhammad-Hasan Khān I‘timād al-Saltana, Khayrāt-i hisān (Tehran, 1886–89), 3 vols., and Sayyid Ahmad Dīvān-baygī Shīrāzī, Ḥadīqat al-shuᶜarā, ed. ‘A. Navā’ī (Tehran, 1987), 3 vols.

9 Sultān Baygum is believed to have had a dīvān of 1,000 bayts, which would appear to have been lost.

10 Milani, Veils and Words, 6.

11 On the difficulties faced by Iranian women in this period who sought to translate the oral into written, Milani (Veils and Words, 179) writes: “through the oral spinning of tales, a woman could attract an audience and achieve merit as a storyteller; but it was difficult for her to write them down or to gain recognition beyond the confines of her family and circle of friends. She was scarcely recognized in her own time, let alone later on, beyond the walls of her house; and her stories seldom directly reached an outside audience.”

12 Muhammad-Rizā Shafī‘ī-Kadkanī's dismissive negativity towards Qajar era poetry is typical of the academy. See Shafī‘ī-Kadkanī, Advār-i shi‘r-i Fārsī: az mashrūtiyyat tā suqūt-i saltanat (Tehran, 2001), 147–8: he describes the best of Qajar era poets (such as Qā’ānī) as no more than “uni-dimensional” (yik-bu‘dī).

13 Gruendler, Beatrice, Medieval Arabic Praise Poetry: Ibn al-Rūmī and the Patron's Redemption (London, 2003), 27Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., 29.

15 Meisami, Julie Scott, Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton, NJ, 1987), 42–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Gruendler, Medieval Arabic Praise Poetry, 30.

17 Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry, 46.

18 Ibid., 44.

19 Stetkevych, Suzanne Pinckney, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode (Bloomington, 2002), ixGoogle Scholar.

20 Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry, 43.

21 Noorani, Yaseen, “Normative Notions of Public and Private in Early Islamic Culture,” in Harem Histories: Envisioning Places and Living Spaces, ed. Booth, M. (Durham, 2010), 54Google Scholar.

22 Gruendler, Medieval Arabic Praise Poetry, 30.

23 For more on the role of the “ratified bystander” in verbal interaction, see Goffman, Erving, Forms of Talk (Philadelphia, 1974)Google Scholar. For a broader discussion of audience in performative settings, see Bauman, Richard and Briggs, Charles, “Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life,” Annual Review of Anthropology 19 (1990): 59–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Apter's revisionist feminist reading of the harem as a gendered space in which women could be empowered speaks to the Qajar harem as experienced by politically and economically powerful women such as Mahd-i ‘Ulyā and Ziyā’ al-Saltana. See Apter, Emily, “Female Trouble in the Colonial Harem,” Differences 4, no. 1 (1992): 206Google Scholar: “A harem, strictly speaking, is a gynaeceum, a place where women gather and speak to each other, and not necessarily a site of feminine aphasia. Harems can protect and nurture women, as well as imprison them.”

25 Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, ix. On anthropological aspects of this link, see Briggs, Charles L. and Bauman, Richard, “Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power,” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2, no. 2 (1992): 131–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Barletta, Vincent, “‘Os Amores Ei’: Performativity and Implicature in a Galician-Portuguese Cantiga De Amigo,” eHumanista 14 (2010): 24–39Google Scholar.

26 On the relationship between spatiality and gender in the harem, see Schick, Irvin Cemil, “The Harem as Gendered Space and the Spatial Reproduction of Gender,” in Harem Histories: Envisioning Places and Living Spaces, ed. Booth, M. (Durham, 2010), 69–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Sa‘dī, Shaykh Muslih al-Dīn, Kulliyāt, ed. Furūghī, M.-‘A. (Tehran, 2007), 713Google Scholar and 747 respectively.

28 See Brookshaw, Dominic Parviz, “Odes of a Poet-Princess: The Ghazals of Jahan-Malik Khatun,” Iran 43 (2005): 176CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 See Brookshaw, “Odes of a Poet-Princess.” See also Sharma, Sunil, “From ‘A'esha to Nur Jahan: The Shaping of a Classical Persian Poetic Canon of Women,” Journal of Persianate Studies 2 (2009): 150CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sharma notes that Jahān was an accomplished woman who, “wrote and reflected on her place in the Persian literary tradition.”

30 E.g. Jahān's qasīdas in praise of Shāh Shujā‘ (Jahān-Malik Khātūn, Dīvān, ed. P. Kāshānī-Rād and K. Ahmadnizhād (Tehran, 1995), 7–8) and Ahmad Bahādur b. Shaykh Uvays (ibid., 6–7).

31 Jahān has a moving eulogy for a royal woman. See Jahān, Dīvān, 509–11.

32 E.g. for Fath-‘Alī Shāh's third daughter, Sayyida Baygum (Khāvarī, Tārīkh-i Dhū l-qarnayn, 1007–8), for his eighth daughter, Sulṭān Baygum (ibid., 1014–15), and for his nineteenth daughter, Gawhar Khānum (ibid., 1020–21).

33 For the eighteenth wife of the shah, Āghā Bājī (ibid., 1045), for his twenty-ninth wife, Nabāt Khānum (ibid., 1053), and for one of the female entertainers in the royal harem, Tūtī Khānum (ibid., 1056–7).

34 Ibid., 1010–11.

35 E.g. for the shah's thirty-second daughter, Āqā Baygum (ibid., 1028-29), and for his forty-fifth daughter, Kurram-bahār Khānum (ibid., 1034–5).

36 E.g. Shāh-pasand Khānum (ibid., 1057) and Parī Shāh Khānum (ibid., 1058).

37 See ‘Azud al-Dawla, Tārīkh-i ‘Azudī, 34.

38 Mahmūd Mīrzā, Nuql-i majlis, 15–17.

39 Malik al-Shu‘arā’ Sabā, Dīvān, ed. M. Nijātī (Tehran, 1962), 153–6.

40 Sabā, Dīvān, 196–8.

41 Ibid., 199–200.

42 Ibid., 235: Talī Baygum (d. 1804); ibid., 645–6: Gawhar Sultān Khānum; and ibid., 630: Bānū Maryam (d. 1798).

43 Ibid., 447–50.

44 Ibid., 464–6: only one who is like a brother to Jesus in piety (taqvā) can enter the sanctified presence of that Mary-like lady. She was the Bilqīs of the Solomon of the age.

45 Qā’ānī Shīrāzī, Dīvān, ed. M. Maḥjūb (Tehran, 1957), 219–22. ‘Azīz al-Saltana (Āsiya Khānum) was the daughter of Khadīja Khānum, and the granddaughter of Fath-‘Alī Shāh's twelfth son, Imām-vardī Mīrzā.

46 Ibid., 231–4. This is a very touching eulogy in which the poet first likens the dead girl to a rose that has withered (starting three of the first four bayts with the phrase, gulī bi-raft, “a rose has died”). The poet laments that instead of a silk dress, she is wrapped in a death shroud.

47 Ibid., 250–53. In the header, the mother of the shah is also referred to as Kāfilat al-Mulk and ‘Āqilat al-Dawla, presumably in reference to her maintenance of order after her husband's death, and her pivotal role in the relatively smooth transfer of the throne to her son, Nāsir al-Dīn Shāh.

48 Ibid., 510–11.

49 Ibid., 809–12.

50 Mahmūd Mīrzā, Nuql-i majlis, 42.

51 Hātif-i Isfahānī was an important student of Mushtāq, one of the founders of what came to known as the Bāzgasht. On the Bāzgasht movement, see W.L. Hanaway, “Bāzgasht-e Adabī,” Encyclopaedia Iranica IV, 58–60.

52 Sahāb was an important panegyrist of the early Qajar period. He compiled an anthology of contemporary poets entitled Rashahāt-i Sahāb (lit. “sprinklings of the clouds”), a pun on both his sister's penname, and his own.

53 Mahmūd Mīrzā, Nuql-i majlis, 42.

54 Ibid., 42.

55 Ibid., 42. See also Dīvān-baygī, Hadīqat al-shu‘arā’, 2154–5: Rashha has 3,000 verses of “various genres of poetry” (aqsām-i ash‘ār) which she has ordered and compiled into a divan (murattab u mudavvan namūda).

56 I‘timād al-Saltana, Khayrat-i hisān, 1:144–5. Muhammad-Hasan Khān I‘timād al-Saltana was Minister of Publications (Vazīr-i inṭibā‘āt) and court chronicler under Nāsir al-Dīn Shāh.

57 Kishāvarz-Sadr, Az Rābiᶜa tā Parvīn (Tehran, 1958), 129–30. See Mīrzā, Nuql-i majlis, 43, for a poem in which Rashha refers to the shah's favorite wife, Tāj al-Dawla.

58 For details on the princess's dowry, see Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, “Zia’-al-Saltana,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zia-al-saltana; on property owned by Ziyā' al-Saltana in Tehran and the surrounding area, see Fātima Qazī-hā, “Shāh Baygum Ziyā' al-Saltana, dukhtar-i shā‘ir u hunarmand-i Fath-‘Alī Shāh,” Ganjīna-yi asnād 56 (2005): 8–28. On the connection between female property ownership and women's influence in the Ottoman context, see Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 7–8: “A further source of women's influence beyond the family was their ownership and exploitation of property … As property owners and litigants in property, inheritance, divorce, and other kinds of legal suits women—or at least women of means—had access to economic and social power.”

59 Mahmūd Mīrzā, Nuql-i majlis, 42.

60 Ibid., 43.

61 Ibid., 45. This same fragment opens with a line in which Rashha alludes to composing poetry in praise of Fath-‘Alī Shāh himself:

When I lose myself in the cup of love, what need have I for wine?

When I become dizzy through praising the king, in what way am I restrained?

62 Ibid., 42. Rashha refers in her poetry to the compiler of Nuql-i majlis in exalted terms: Mahmūd pādishāh (“Mahmud the king”; ibid., 45) and shahanshāh-i jahān shahzāda Mahmūd (“king of kings of the world, prince Mahmūd”; ibid., 46).

63 Ibid., 43.

64 Ibid., 46.

65 Ziyā' al-Saltana married the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mīrzā Mas‘ūd Ansārī Garmrūdī, under pressure from her nephew, Muhammad Shāh, in late 1835. See Stuart, Charles, Journal of a Residence in Northern Persia and the Adjacent Provinces of Turkey (London, 1854), 180Google Scholar: “Meerza Massoud is now about to marry the Zea Sultana, a daughter of the deceased Majesty, whose name is made very free with in the bazaars. It is rumoured that Her Royal Highness has fixed her affections (for the moment) upon a poor Syud, and will have none of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, unless compelled by the Shah to take him.” See also ibid., 199: “It is said that he [Mīrzā Mas‘ūd] is unhappy in his recent marriage. The Zea Sultana tells him that she only married him, because if she had refused, the Shah might have given her to a Surbâz.” For a comprehensive biographical sketch of Ziyā’ al-Saltana, see Brookshaw, “Zia'-al-Saltana.”

66 See ‘Azud al-Dawla, Tārīkh-i ‘Azudī, 35 for the princess's spontaneous poetic interactions with her father. Ziyā’ al-Saltana's most intriguing poem is a 24-bayt mathnavī (see Mahmūd Mīrzā, Nuql-i majlis, 32–3). The poem's bold, didactic tone is indicative of the princess's confident self-perception, erudition, and her political and economic power. Offering advice, she stresses her privileged status as one of the wealthiest daughters of the shah who enjoys the trappings of material comfort. After listing the items that comprise her fortune, she claims detachment from worldly possessions, and challenges the listener to emulate her ascetic example:

67 All of the shah's private letters were written in her hand and she held the more official position of Munshī al-mamālik-i andarūn for many years (see Khāvarī, Tārīkh-i Dhū l-qarnayn, 932 and 1012). Her elder half-sister, Fakhr al-Dawla, had held this position before her. This administrative position held successively by Fakhr al-Dawla and Ziyā' al-Saltana was analogous to that of chief secretary to the shah and his court (Munshī al-mamālik), albeit within the context of the harem. On the mirroring of male hierarchies in the hierarchical structures of the harem in the Ottoman Empire, see Peirce, The Imperial Harem, ix: “the segregation of the sexes permitted the articulation of a hierarchy of status and authority among women, parallel to that which existed among men.”

68 When Fath-ᶜAlī Shāh's mother died, all of her jewelry was gifted by the shah to the teenage Ziyā' al-Saltana. See Khāvarī, Tārīkh-i Dhū l-qarnayn, 1012 and ‘Azud al-Dawla, Tārīkh-i ‘Azudī, 34. Ziyā’ al-Saltana was intimately involved in the financial running of the harem and the distribution of monies to the younger princes and princesses and she worked closely with a small group of women to monitor withdrawals of gold and jewelry from the royal treasury. See ‘Azud al-Dawla, Tārīkh-i ‘Azudī, 31-32.

69 See Khāvarī, Tārīkh-i Dhū l-qarnayn, 1012 and ‘Azud al-Dawla, Tārīkh-i ‘Azudī, 34.

70 ‘Azud al-Dawla, Tārīkh-i ‘Azudī, 34.

71 There was somewhat of a vogue for bio-bibliographical poetry anthologies in the Fath-‘Alī Shāh period. Some of the most significant ones focused on male poets are: Fāzil Khān Garrūsī's Tadhkira-yi Anjuman-i Khāqān (1819), Navvāb Shīrāzī's Tadhkira-yi dilgushā (1821), and Mahmūd Mīrzā's own Safīnat al-Mahmūd (1824). See Roxane Haag-Higuchi, “Religion in Public and Private Life: The Case of Yaghmā-yi Jandaqī (1781–1859),” in Religion and Society in Qajar Iran, ed. R. Gleave (London, 2005), 195–6.

72 Mahmūd Mīrzā, Nuql-i majlis, 16. In the poem that prefaces the main text of his work, Mahmūd Mīrzā calls his sister “the light of the shah's eyes” (nūr-i chashm-i shah). By referring to her as “the daughter of the king” (dukht-i shāh), Mahmūd Mīrzā hints that Shāh Baygum is the daughter of the shah par excellence.

73 Ibid., 13. The editors reject the phrasing in the Kitābkhāna-yi Millī manuscript in which Mahmūd Mīrzā appears to use the third person plural out of deference to his sister and writes, “and she divided it into three sections” (va si majlis qarār-i ān rā dādand). Instead, the editors prefer the version found in the Kitābkhāna-yi Malik copy which presents Mahmūd Mīrzā as the sole complier of the work. The same sentence in this version reads, “and I divided it into three sections” (va si majlis qarār-i ān rā dādam).

74 Fasl-i Bahār Khānum, Īrān al-Dawla was the daughter of Nayyir al-Dawla (son of Parvīz Mīrzā, 50th son of Fath-‘Alī Shāh). Her mother was the daughter of Farhād Mīrzā, Mu‘tamid al-Dawla (15th son of ‘Abbās Mīrzā, the Crown Prince).

75 It was Nāsir al-Dīn Shāh who bestowed this title on Gawhar. There were at least two male poets who held the masculine version of this title (i.e. Shams al-Shu‘arā): 1) Sām Mīrzā, a cousin of Gawhar and son of Fath-‘Alī Shāh's fourth son, Muhammad-Qulī Mīrzā Mulk-ārā; and 2) Mīrzā Muhammad-‘Alī Khān Isfahānī Sidihī, who is better known by his penname Surūsh. Surūsh was the boon companion of Gawhar's cousin, Hasan Mīrzā (penname: Sultānī), son of her full maternal uncle, ‘Abdullāh Mīrzā.

76 Fazlullāh Khāvarī Shīrāzī, Tadhkira-yi Khāvarī, ed. M. Muḥaddith (Zanjan, 2000), 49 and Khāvarī, Tārīkh-i Dhū l-qarnayn, 1016–17 and 1139–40. Tīqūn Khānum's mother, Kulthūm Khānum, was the 37th wife of the shah, and the sister of Muhammad-Mihdī Khān Pāzvārī of Bārfurūsh in Māzandarān (whose penname was Shahna). Tīqūn Khānum, like many of Fath-‘Alī Shāh's daughters, performed the Hajj and made the pilgrimage to the shrines of the Imāms in Iraq after her husband died.

77 Khāvarī, Tadhkira-yi Khāvarī, 24, and Tārīkh-i Dhū l-qarnayn, 984–5. See also Fāzil Khān Garrūsī, Tadhkira-yi Anjuman-i Khāqān (Tehran, 1997), 69–72.

78 See Sheil, Glimpses of Life, 115 who notes the near destitution of some of the daughters of Fath-‘Alī Shāh in the early 1850s.

79 Jean Calmard notes that Muharram ceremonies, “underwent a great development” in the period of Muhammad Shāh, during which numerous takyas and husayniyyas were constructed by grandees who hosted large audiences for rawza-khvānī and ta‘ziya performances. See Jean Calmard, “Moḥammad Shah Qājār,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/mohammad-shah.

80 In 1901 Gawhar came to Isfahan. When resident in Tehran, she was in close contact with relatives of Fātih al-Mulk. In Isfahan, some of her poems came to his attention and he asked to see her dīvān. He appears to have been impressed by her poetry and considered it a shame that it be kept on a shelf in manuscript form, and so he saw to it that her dīvān was printed.

81 I‘timād al-Saltana, Khayrāt-i hisān, 3:47.

82 Gawhar, Dīvān, 5–7.

83 Milani (Veils and Words, 61) incorrectly states that Parvin I‘tisāmī was the first Iranian woman to publish a poetry collection (in 1935). Gawhar's dīvān had been printed in Isfahan more than three decades before that of Parvīn.

84 See Amanat, Abbas, “The Changing World of Taj al-Saltana,” in al-Saltana, Taj, Crowning Anguish. Memoirs of a Persian Princess from the Harem to Modernity, 1884–1914, ed. Amanat, A., trans. Vanzan, A. and Neshati, A. (Washington, DC, 1993), 36Google Scholar, for a passing reference to the “woman poet laureate” maintained in Mahd-i ‘Ulyā's entourage. Here Gawhar is intended.

85 Kishāvarz-Sadr, Az Rābi‘a tā Parvīn, 191 and 200.

86 See Hanaway, “Bāzgasht-i adabī.” This imitation of Qāʾānī's style would not only have brought Gawhar into line with the Bāzgasht, it would also have aligned her with the elite of the Qajar court, many of whom, as Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak has noted, were key figures in this literary movement. See Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad, Recasting Persian Poetry: Scenarios of Poetic Modernity in Iran (Salt Lake City, 1995), 31Google Scholar.

87 It is noteworthy that Gawhar's dīvān does not contain any poems in praise of Nāsir al-Dīn Shāh's wives.

88 I‘timād al-Saltana, Khayrāt-i hisān, 1:92–3.

89 The shah's mother embodied the institution of the queen mother in much the same way as did the valide sultan of the Ottoman realm. On the institution of the valide sultan, see Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 23–4, 91–112. Peirce states (ibid., 91) that the valide sultan sat at the top of “a hierarchy of female royal power,” and that (ibid., 126) she was the “keystone of the harem institution.”

90 At one low point in their relationship, the shah sent his mother to Qum on temporary exile. See Amanat, Abbas, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831–1896 (London, 1997), 135Google Scholar.

91 Amanat (ibid., 135) writes of the complexity and depth of Mahd-i ᶜUlyā's distrust and dislike for Amīr Kabīr in the following manner: “She regarded him as the chief cause of Nasir al-Din Shah's growing repulsion for her. Having no intent of retiring to the seclusion of the harem, she believed the shah's favour toward her could not be restored as long as Amir Kabir mastered his temper. The tension between the shah and his mother was in part due to the rumors about her promiscuous lifestyle, rumors that had already resulted in her divorce from Muhammad Shah.” As was the case in the Ottoman context, the mother of the ruler was officially only permitted to act in the interests of her son. See Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 285: “But while the valide sultan might share in the inherited nobility, there were limits to her sovereign role. Her extraordinary power was tolerated only so long as it was employed in the interest of her son; otherwise, it was an infringement of sultanic autonomy.”

92 Mahd-i ‘Ulyā's maternal uncles were the powerful Husayn-‘Alī Mīrzā Farmānfarmā, and Hasan-‘Alī Mīrzā Shujā‘ al-Saltana, who both opposed the accession of Muhammad Shāh.

93 See I‘timād al-Saltana, Khayrāt-i hisān, 1:81: Mahd-i ‘Ulyā's maternal grandmother was Badr-i Jahān Khānum Bastāmī. Fath-‘Alī Shāh was very fond of Mahd-i ‘Ulyā's mother, Baygum Jān Khānum, and would have her accompany him on his travels and be his companion when in Tehran. Baygum Jān Khānum was known for her generosity, and was strongly inclined towards mysticism, and she donated a large amount of money every year to her shaykh. Fath-‘Alī Shāh was particularly fond of Baygum Jān Khānum's husband and he was often invited to dine at the shah's table. See also I‘timād al-Saltana, Khayrāt-i hisān, 2:150.

94 I‘timād al-Saltana (Khayrāt-i hisān, 1:94) says Mahd-i ‘Ulyā had a gift for poetry (tab‘ī mawzūn), and she enjoyed conversing with the learned men of her age.

95 See Mahmūd Mīrzā, Nuql-i majlis, 18–19, and Garrūsī, Tadhkira-yi Anjuman-i Khāqān, 80–81 respectively.

96 I‘timād al-Saltana, Khayrāt-i hisān, 1:94.

97 Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 26.

98 Ibid., 26–7.

99 I‘timād al-Saltana, Khayrāt-i hisān, 1:92.

100 Ibid., 1:92: malikaʾī būd ka mamālik-rā bi-husn-i tadbīr bī mushāvir u mushīr u mu‘īn u zahīr siyānat mī-namūd. See also ibid., 93: she was “the great queen of Iran” (malika-yi mu‘azzama-yi Īrān).

101 Ibid., 1:92. Mahd-i ‘Ulyā's relationship to power in many aspects appears to have been analogous with that of key royal women in the Ottoman realms. See Peirce, The Imperial Harem, viii: “The roles played by women in the distribution and management of power within the dynastic family, as well as their roles as public exemplars of the dynasty's legitimacy, munificence, and piety, tell us a good deal about the nature of sovereignty and Ottoman claims to legitimacy.”

102 On the actions taken by Mahd-i ‘Ulyā to maintain order in this critical period, see Sipihr, Nāsikh al-tavārīkh, 931–4 and 939–41. See ibid., 918–21 for the instructions given by Muhammad Shāh to Mahd-i ‘Ulyā on his deathbed. Calmard (“Moḥammad Shah Qājār”) says during this period between the death of her husband and the accession of her son, Mahd-i ‘Ulyā together with her own faction at Tehran headed a sort of “republican regime” (tarīqa-yi jumhūriyya) .

103 Amanat, “The Changing World of Taj al-Saltana,” 24. On the active role played by royal women in dynasties such as the Timurids, Ottomans and Safavids who, like the Qajars, drew on Central Asian conceptions of power, see Babayan, Kathryn, “The ‘Aqā’id al-Nisā': A Glimpse at Safavid Women in Local Isfahani Culture,” in Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, and Piety, ed. Hambly, Gavin (London, 1998), 352Google Scholar: “All of these early modern empires initially observed a Turko-Mongol conception of political practice in that they shared power, which was distributed … among the entire dynastic house, male and female. Thus, women played a formative role at court and in the imperial life of these dynasties.” On the political activities of royal Safavid women, see Szuppe, Maria, “La participation des femmes de la famille royale à l'exercise du pouvoir en Iran Safavide au XVIe siècle: L'entourage des princesses et leurs activités politiques,” Studia Iranica 24 (1995) : 61–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104 Further conflict between mother and son came when the shah sought to divorce one of his permanent wives (Sitārā Khānum) in order to make his favorite, Jayrān, an ‘aqdī wife. Amanat tells us (Pivot of the Universe, 324) that the shah's mother represented the Qajar princes and nobility in voicing their disgust at this divorce and marriage. Mahd-i ‘Ulyā refused to sign the wedding invitations, as was customary for the head of the harem.

105 Amanat, “The Changing World of Taj al-Saltana,” 24.

106 Sheil, Glimpses of Life, 127. Sheil (ibid., 130) refers to Mahd-i ‘Ulyā as “Serkar e Mader e Shah”, and notes that the shah only ever refers to his mother as “Khanum.” See Najmī, Nāsir, Tihrān-i ‘ahd-i Nāsirī (Tehran, 1985), 543–4Google Scholar: two of Mahd-i ‘Ulyā's seals with which she stamped her (royal) decrees (farāmīn; a practice Amīr Kabīr put an end to) read: mahīn mādar-i Nāsir al-Dīn shah-am (“I am the great mother of Nāsir al-Dīn Shāh”) and shah-i Jam-nigīn-rā mahīn mādaram (“I am the great mother of the king who wears Jamshīd's signet ring”).

107 See Sheil, Glimpses of Life, 131: “She is very clever, and is supposed to take a large share in the affairs of government. She has also the whole management of the Shah's anderoon.” One of the main functions of the shah's mother was to safeguard the harem wealth.

108 Abbas Amanat, “Courts and Courtiers vii. In the Qajar period,” Encyclopaedia Iranica IV, 379. Mahd-i ‘Ulyā's position in Nāsir al-Dīn Shāh's harem would have resembled that of the sultan's mother in the Ottoman lands; see Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 258: “The sultan was the ultimate repository of political authority, but as head of the harem the valide sultan wielded authority over the dynastic family.”

109 Sheil, Glimpses of Life, 130–34: this sketch includes a description of Mahd-i ‘Ulyā's bejeweled attire.

110 Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 59–60: “A close companion of Malik Jahan … Madame Gulsaz's full-time supervision of the royal princes in Tehran continued for an unknown duration, but she was intimate enough with the royal offspring to call Nasir al-Din Shah and his sister her ‘children’ and act as a go-between for the crown prince's first marriage.”

111 Sheil, Glimpses of Life, 133. Mahd-i ‘Ulyā and Lady Sheil were surrounded by several of Muhammad Shāh's widows and wives of the late Fath-ᶜAlī Shāh seated on the floor.

112 Sheil, Glimpses of Life, 202–3. Lady Sheil (ibid., 204) also met on this occasion a half-sister of the shah whom she describes in some detail, saying, “She was most anxious to hear about European customs.”

113 See also ‘Azud al-Dawla, Tārīkh-i ‘Azudī, 46, on women-only ‘Āshūrā commemorations in the Gulistān Palace during the reign of Fath-‘Alī Shāh, including rawza-khvānī and sīna-zanī.

114 Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 135.

115 See Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 136, for translated passages from her correspondence.

116 See Sheil, Glimpses of Life, 127: the wives of Nāsir al-Dīn Shāh and the wife of the prime minister also had their own boxes next to that of the shah.

117 Dūst-‘Alī Khān Mu‘ayyir al-Mamālik, Rijāl-i ‘asr-i Nāsirī (Tehran, 1982), 233.

118 See Ittihādiyya, Mansūra, Īnjā Tihrān ast: majmū‘a-yi maqālātī dar-bāra-yi Tihrān (Tehran, 1998), 34Google Scholar and 264. The construction of public buildings was a key feature of royal women's contribution to what Peirce has termed (in the Ottoman context) “the public culture of sovereignty”. See Peirce, The Imperial Harem, vii.

119 See Yahyā Dhukā’, Tārīkhcha-yi sākhtimān-hā-yi Arg-i Saltanatī-yi Tihrān va rāhnamā-yi Kākh-i Gulistān (Tehran, 1970), 337 for a map from 1858 on which these are clearly marked.

120 Mu‘ayyir al-Mamālik, Rijāl-i ‘asr-i Nāsirī, 233.

121 Gawhar, Dīvān, 28–31. Henceforth, all page references to Gawhar's Dīvān will be given in the text unless otherwise indicated. Since the pages in the Dīvān are unnumbered, these numbers correspond to the sequence of scans in the online version available via Harvard University Library.

122 See also Gawhar, Dīvān, 188–90.

123 Compare this to Gawhar, Dīvān, 128–30: at Fātima's service stand Jesus, Moses, Mary and Hagar. See also Spellberg, Denise A., “The Politics of Praise: Depictions of Khadîja, Fâtima, and ‘Â’isha in Ninth-Century Muslim Sources,” Literature East and West 26 (1990): 130–48Google Scholar.

124 Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry, 45.

125 Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 107. Sipihr (Nāsikh al-tavārīkh, 1005) notes that the shah arranged this marriage to strengthen his prime minister in the eyes of the military and the courtiers.

126 Sheil, Glimpses of Life, 248–53.

127 Sheil, Glimpses of Life, 250–51. Sheil describes how the princess sought to protect her husband: “The Ameer all this time had not once ventured to quit the safety afforded by the apartment of the Princess, and of her presence.” On the princess's fidelity to her husband, see also Siphir, Nāsikh al-tavārīkh, 1154–5.

128 Sheil, Glimpses of Life, 252–3. Sheil does not mention any machinations of the shah's mother in the killing of Amīr Kabīr. Sheil notes (ibid., 253) that ‘Izzat al-Dawla, “was compelled by the Shah to marry the son of the Prime Minister. This afforded an opportunity to the joke-loving Iranees to say that the Shah's sister was transferable like the Grand Vezeer's signet-ring of office, and whoever took the one must take the other.”

129 Amanat notes (Pivot of the Universe, 373) that ‘Izzat al-Dawla became known in elite circles as the “furniture of the premiership” (athāthīya-i sidārat) for her forced marriages to candidates of high offices.

130 The son of ‘Ayn al-Dawla, and grandson of Sultān Ahmad Mīrzā, ‘Azud al-Dawla author of the Tārīkh-i ‘Azudī.

131 Mīrzā Yahyā Khān, Mu‘tamid al-Mulk was the son of Mīrzā Nabī Khān Amīr-Dīvān and the brother of Mīrzā Husayn Khān, Mushīr al-Dawla, see Sipihr, Nāsikh al-tavārīkh, 1141. See also Dhukā’, Tārīkhcha-yi sākhtimān-hā, 219, and Ittihādiyya, Īnjā Tihrān ast, 84. This fourth marriage made ‘Izzat al-Dawla and Qamar al-Saltana sisters-in-law.

132 See Aghaie, Kamran, “Religious Rituals, Social Identities and Political Relationships in Tehran under Qajar Rule, 1850s–1920s,” in Religion and Society in Qajar Iran, ed. Gleave, R. (London, 2005), 382–3Google Scholar.

133 Sheil, Glimpses of Life, 144. See ibid., 146: “and Thursday afternoon is devoted to a mock pilgrimage to some shrine outside the town, or else to the grave of some relation.”

134 Ittihādiyya, Īnjā Tihrān ast, 30 and 264.

135 Ibid., 263.

136 Ibid., 282.

137 Siphir, Nāsikh al-tavārīkh, 1520.

138 Tāj al-Saltana was the first Qajar woman to leave an account of her life, which contains many fascinating details about the harem of Nāsir al-Dīn Shāh. See Tāj al-Saltana, Crowning Anguish. For analysis of this memoir, see Amanat, “The Changing World of Taj al-Saltana,” and Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Tāj-al-Saṭana,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/taj-al-saltana.

139 W.L. Hanaway, “Amīr Arsalān,” Encyclopaedia Iranica I:958. See also Amanat, “The Changing World of Taj al-Saltana,” 37: “These stories, narrated by the court storyteller … at the shah's bedside and written down by Fakhr, must have been popular pastime reading for the women of the harem and perhaps exercised some influence on Taj's simple prose.”

140 Ittihādiyya (Īnjā Tihrān ast, 257) notes that both Fakhr al-Dawla and her sister Tāj al-Saltana received a better education than the shah's other daughters. Even this education appears to have been somewhat limited, though. See Tāj al-Saltana, Crowning Anguish, 134–8.

141 I‘timād al-Saltana, Khayrāt-i hisān, 3:22–3.

142 Ibid., 3:22–3.

143 On the shahr-āshūb in classical Persian poetry, see Sharma, Sunil, Persian Poetry at the Indian Frontier: Mas‘ud Sa‘d Salman of Lahore (Delhi, 2000), 107–16Google Scholar.

144 See also Gawhar, Dīvān, 62–4.

145 See also ibid., 39–41 and 145–7.

146 Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, 83.

147 Mahmūd Mīrzā, Nuql-i majlis, 37. In this quatrain by Nūsh, there is an erotic, more this-worldly tone:

If one night I were to embrace you,
Or drink two or three cups [of wine] from your hand,
I would begin merriment, joy, and life afresh;
I would forget all the sorrows of the past!

148 Khāvarī, Tadhkira-yi Khāvarī, 68. See also ‘Azud al-Dawla, Tārīkh-i ‘Azudī, 44, and also ibid., 191: Nūsh-āfarīn Khānum was one of only ten widows of Fath-‘Alī Shāh who were allowed to sit in the presence of Muhammad Shāh. See also I‘timād al-Saltana, Khayrāt-i hisān, 3:69: the Nūsh Tower was named after Nūsh-āfarīn Khānum.

149 I‘timād al-Saltana, Khayrāt-i hisān, 3:69.

150 Ibid., 3:71.

151 Ibid., Khayrāt-i hisān, 3:70.

152 See Khāvarī, Tadhkira-yi Khāvarī, 68, and ibid., 62: Khāvarī calls her an “un-pierced royal pearl” (lu'lu’-i shāhvār-i nā-sufta) and says no man has yet asked for her hand in marriage.

153 In 1868 he was appointed ambassador to the Ottoman court. Following his return to Tehran, he was appointed prime minister in 1872. In 1875 he accompanied Nāsir al-Dīn Shāh to Europe. Near the end of his life he was made governor of Khurasan and keeper of the holy shrine of Imām Rizā. He built the famous Sipahsālār mosque in Tehran in 1878.

154 Khāvarī, Tārīkh-i Dhū l-qarnayn, 1040.

155 On the philanthropy of women in the Ottoman period, see Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 198–9 and 205–10. On the motivation behind public displays of piety by royal Ottoman women, Peirce (ibid., 217) argues: “The establishment of charitable foundations and the performance of deeds of personal charity by women of the dynastic family served to broadcast not only their own piety and generosity but that of the whole dynasty as well.”

156 Ittihādiyya, Īnjā Tihrān ast, 264.

157 See Aghaie, “Religious Rituals, Social Identities,” 383.

158 Interestingly, Gawhar's dīvān contains no eulogies for her female patrons.

159 Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, 82.

160 Karimi-Hakkak, Recasting Persian Poetry, 29.

161 For a detailed examination of shifts in the male perspective on women poets in the Persianate world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Sharma, “From ‘A'esha to Nur Jahan.”

162 This somewhat mitigates this statement by Sharma (“From ‘A'esha to Nur Jahan,” 163): “As far as we know, women did not compile their own anthologies of poetry and this it remained, and to some extent still remains, a history and canon from a male point of view.”