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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 December 2021
The article discusses a little-known lost Persian tale, The Story of Sharwin of Dastabay, and traces references to it in Arabic, Persian, and Byzantine sources. The earliest references to the story come from the mid- to late eighth century, and it seems to have remained well known in Arabic and Persian literature until the early twelfth and possibly the early fourteenth century, while Byzantine literature shows that at least some of its elements circulated already in the mid-sixth century. The article also discusses how the story may have been transmitted both in Iran and, crossing the linguistic boundary, in an Arabic context. Though much of the story remains unknown, it is clear that it relates to later epics and reveals something of the literary context of Firdawsi and his Shahname.
1 To pick but two examples, The Book of Mazdak has nothing to do with Mazdak, see Tafazzoli, A., “Observations sur le soi-disant Mazdak-nāmag,” in Orientalia J. Duchesne-Guillemin emerito oblata (Leiden, 1984), pp. 507–510Google Scholar, and Hämeen-Anttila, J., Khwadāynāmag. The Middle Persian Book of Kings (Leiden–Boston, 2018), pp. 35–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the famous Nāme-ye Tansar (ed.) M. Mīnuwī, Ṭehran 1311 AHSh) is generally considered a pseudepigraph. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ's translation of Kalīla wa-Dimna may be taken as an example of a work almost certainly translated from Middle Persian, although with some modifications, see Blois, F. de, Burzōy's Voyage to India and the Origin of the Book of Kalīlah wa Dimnah (London, 1990)Google Scholar. The situation is somewhat different in scientific and philosophical literature, for which see D. Gutas, (1998), Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ʿAbbāsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th centuries) (London–New York, 1998).
2 Al-Jāḥiẓ, Faṣl mā bayn l-ʿadāwa wa'l-ḥasad, in al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasā'il, (ed.) ʿA. M. Hārūn, 2 vols., (Cairo, n.d.), i, pp. 333–373, here pp. 350–351.
3 Mīnuwī's brief note in M. Mīnuwī, “Yakī az fārisiyyāt-e Abū Nuwās,” Majalle-ye Dānishkade-ye Adabiyyāt, I/3 (1333 AHSh), pp. 14–15 [offprint], is the basis on which all later scholars have built. E.g., Dh. Ṣafā, Ḥamāse-sārāyī dar Īrān az qadīmtarīn ʿahd-e tārīkhī tā qarn-e chahārdahum-e hijrī (Tehran, 1374 AHSh), p. 108, merely repeats some of the information Mīnuwī gives, and A. Tafaḍḍulī, Tārīkh-e adabiyyāt-e Īrān pīsh az Islām, 3rd edition (Tehran, 1376 AHSh), pp. 274–276, has only minor additions.
4 For the name and the character, see Justi, F., Iranisches Namenbuch (Marburg, 1895), p. 290Google Scholar.
5 Abū Nuwās, Dīwān, (eds.) E. Wagner and G. Schoeler, 5 vols. (Wiesbaden/Stuttgart/Berlin, 1958–2003), v, pp. 143–146 (no. 148, verses 18–19). The verses come from a list of oaths by various Persian and/or Zoroastrian terms by which Abū Nuwās swears his love for a Persian boy.
6 For metrical reasons, the geographical name has to be read Dastbay in the poem.
7 From Middle Persian fragard, see Nyberg, H. S., A Manual of Pahlavi. II: Glossary (Wiesbaden, 1974), p. 75Google Scholar, s.v. frakart.
8 Mīnuwī,”Yakī,” pp. 14–15, Wagner, E., Abū Nuwās. Eine Studie zur arabischen Literatur der frühen ʿAbbāsidenzeit (Wiesbaden, 1965), pp. 190–195Google Scholar, and Harb, L., “Persian in Arabic poetry,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 139 (2019), pp. 7–11Google Scholar, contain useful translations and commentaries to the poem, but none goes particularly deep in discussing Sharwīn and his story.
9 Abū Nuwās, Dīwān, V, p. 146.
10 For this and other fārisiyyāt of Abū Nuwās, see Mīnuwī, “Yakī”; Wagner, Abū Nuwās, pp. 190–195, 213–215; G. Schoeler, “Abū Nuwās’ poem to the Zoroastrian boy Bihrūz: an Arabic ‘sawgand-nāma’ with a Persian ‘kharja’,” in The Rude, the Bad and the Bawdy. Essays in Honour of Professor Geert Jan van Gelder, (eds.) A. Talib, M. Hammond, and A. Schippers (Gibb Memorial Trust, 2014), pp. 66–79; Harb, “Persian”.
11 See C. L. Cross, The Poetics of Romantic Love in Vis & Rāmin, PhD thesis (Chicago, 2015), p. 32.
12 See D. Davis, “Vis o Rāmin,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica; F. de Blois, Persian Literature. A Bio-Biographical Survey Begun by the Late C.A. Storey, V/1–3 (London, 1992–1997), pp. 161–167.
13 Gurgānī, Wīs o-Rāmīn, (ed.) M. Rawshan (Tehran, 1377 AHSh) pp. 37–38 (vv. 29–55). The details of this passage are not reliable, but the reference to an existing earlier story is clear.
14 Abū Nuwās, Dīwān,ii, p. 104, with Ḥamza's commentary in ii, 106. On this poem, see Harb, “Persian,” pp. 11–14.
15 Note, however, that this is not supported by the list in al-Bīrūnī, al-Āthār al-bāqiya ʿan al-qurūn al-khāliya, (ed.) P. Adhkā'ī (Tehran, 1380 AHSh/2001), pp. 116–117, nor elsewhere in literature, though Sharwīn is attested as a royal personal name and a geographical name.
16 Abū Nuwās, Dīwān, v, pp. 278–279. In Abū Nuwās, Dīwān, v, p. 467, this verse is discussed from a grammatical viewpoint.
17 Al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-Aghānī, 25 vols. (Beirut, 1374/1955), xv, pp. 285–286.
18 J. Hämeen-Anttila (ed.), Al-Maqrīzī's al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar (Vol. V, section 4) Persia and Its Kings, Part II. (Leiden–Boston, forthcoming), here §7.
19 I.e., practice anal intercourse.
20 Abū Nuwās, Dīwān, v, p. 57 (no. 76).
21 I do not think that there is an allusion here to Zoroastrianism as beh-dīn “good religion”.
22 See al-Walīd ibn Yazīd, Dīwān, (ed.) Ḥ. ʿAṭwān (Beirut, 1418/1998), no. 46, with further references, including al-Ṭabarī, Ta'rīkh al-rusul wa'l-mulūk, (eds.) M. J. de Goeje et al., 3 vols. (Leiden, 1879–1901), i, p. 1742, translated in C. Hillenbrand, The History of al-Ṭabarī XXVI: The Waning of the Umayyad Caliphate (Albany, 1989), p. 89, and al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, vii, p. 5 (and cf. vii, p. 6 for a sequel to the poem) and most recently discussed in Judd, S., “Reinterpreting al-Walīd b. Yazīd,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 128 (2008), pp. 439–458, here p. 453Google Scholar. Cf. also the single line in Abū Nuwās, Dīwān, v, p. 293 (no. 292).
23 Ibn al-Faqīh, Mukhtaṣar Kitāb al-Buldān, (ed.) M. J. de Goeje (Lugduni Batavorum, 1885, reprinted Beirut, 1967), p. 159.
24 The final -hā vaguely refers to the castle. Note the sudden change from the masculine to the feminine two lines earlier.
25 Ibn al-Faqīh, Mukhtaṣar, p. 216.
26 Identified in a marginal note to the manuscript as “a village”.
27 Miqwal, as a matter of fact, is a Yemenite word (Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿarab, (ed.) ʿA. Shīrī, 18 vols. (Beirut, 1408/1988), xi, p. 353a, s.v.), here misused in a Persian context.
28 Al-Dīnawarī, al-Akhbār al-ṭiwāl, (ed.) V Guirgass (Leiden, 1888), p. 71. Al-Ṭabarī does not mention Sharwīn of Dastabay.
29 Referring either to Sharwīn or to Khurrīn.
30 Nihāyat al-arab fī ta'rīkh al-Furs wa'l-ʿArab, (ed.) M.T. Dānishpizhūh (Tehran, 1374 AHSh), p. 325. The correspondences between the two works are well known, see Hämeen-Anttila, Khwadāynāmag, pp. 92–99, and the literature mentioned there, but the exact relations between the two and the dating of (various parts of) the Nihāya are still uncertain. Parts of the Nihāya may well be earlier than al-Dīnawarī's work. Bonner, M. R. Jackson, Three neglected sources of Sasanian history in the reign of Khusraw Anushirwan (Paris, 2011), p. 54Google Scholar, briefly discusses the passage, but as he appears to be unaware of any other occurrences of Sharwīn in Arabic and Persian literature he is not able to go beyond speculation. For the yearly taxes collected from Byzantium, see al-Ṭabarī, Ta'rīkh, i, pp. 959–960, and al-Maqrīzī, Khabar/Persia II, §148.
31 Ḥamza, Ta'rīkh sinī mulūk al-arḍ wa'l-anbiyā' (Beirut, n.d.). Also translated by R. G. Hoyland, The ‘History of the Kings of the Persians’ in Three Arabic Chronicles. The Transmission of the Iranian Past from Late Antiquity to Early Islam (Liverpool, 2018), pp. 36–37. The anonymous Mujmal al-tawārīkh wa'l-qiṣaṣ, (eds.) S. Najmabadi—S. Weber (Edingen–Neckarhausen, 2000), p. 68 (ed. Malik al-Shuʿarā' Bahār, 2nd edition. n.d. & n.p.), p. 86, quotes this passage, translated into Persian. Further quoted in al-Maqrīzī, Khabar/Persia II, §103, and cf. §6.
32 For Mūsā, see Hämeen-Anttila Khwadāynāmag, pp. 76–89.
33 Several Arab and Persian historians make a distinction between Yazdajird the Soft and Yazdajird the Sinner, thus actually dividing into two the character of Yazdajird I (r. 399–420), perhaps inspired by the change in his policy towards Christians, for which see McDonough, S., “A second Constantine? The Sasanian king Yazdgard in Christian history and historiography,” Journal of Late Antiquity, 1 (2008), pp. 127–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this paper, I will call Yazdajird the Soft “Yazdajird Ia”.
34 Written al-Dastanī in the edition. It would seem that when combined with the article al-, DSTBY should be read as a nisba. In al-Dīnawarī's al-Dastabāy, we probably have the geographical name with the article.
35 Mohl's partial edition (J. Mohl “Extraits du Modjmel al-Tewarikh relatifs à l'histoire de la Perse,” Journal Asiatique, 4e série, I (1843), p. 410), reads Yarīnān, which Justi, Namenbuch, p. 290, suggests emending to Narīmān. Both complete editions of the Mujmal read Parniyān.
36 Mujmal, p. 74 (ed.) Bahār, p. 95. I wish to give special thanks to Dr Azin Haghighi (Edinburgh) for discussing this passage with me. Its language is somewhat distorted, and there is reason to believe that the passage suffers from some corruption.
37 Or thief called Tāh? The passage may be corrupt.
38 In Ḥulwān, cf. Lughatnāme, (www.vajehyab.com), s.v.
39 I use this term to refer to semi-popular romantic and heroic epics, mostly featuring various Sistanians and usually bearing a title hero's name + nāme.
40 Elsewhere (Mujmal, p. 2), the author identifies this as Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ's (d. circa 139/756) book of this title, but the same title was used for many other books, too.
41 Ḥamdallāh Mustawfī, Tārīkh-e guzīde, (ed.) ʿA. Nawā'ī (Tehran, 1387), p. 110.
42 Procopius, History of the Wars, I: Books 1–2, (ed.) H. B. Dewing (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1914) 1.2.1–10.
43 In Encyclopaedia Iranica, www.iranicaonline.org, s.v. “Byzantine-Iranian relations”, Shapur Shahbazi erroneously claims that Procopius mentions a tutor sent by Yazdajird to bring Theodosius up.
44 Agathias, Historiarum Libri Quinque, (ed.) R. Keydell (Berlin, 1967) 4.26.3–7; translated in Frendo, J. D., Agathias: The Histories (Berlin–New York, 1975), p. 129Google Scholar.
45 Cf. G. Greatrex, “Deux notes sur Théodose II et les Perses”, Antiquité tardive, 16 (2008), pp. 85–91, here p. 86.
46 The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, (eds.) C. Mango – R. Scott (Oxford, 1997), pp. 123–124.
47 The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, p. 127.
48 The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, p. 151.
49 See, e.g., al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), Ta'rīkh, i, p. 898; Miskawayhi (d. 421/1030), Tajārib al-umam wa-taʿāqub al-himam, (ed.) S. K. Ḥasan, 7 vols. (Beirut, 1424/2003), i, p. 129; al-Maqrīzī, Khabar/Persia II, §147.
50 Burzūnāme mansūb be-(…) ʿAṭā‘ī Rāzī wa-Dāstān-e Kuk-e Kūhzād, (ed.) S. M. Dabīrsiyāqī (Tehran, 1383 AHSh).
51 Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Ayāz” (J. Matīnī).
52 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, (ed.) R. Tajaddud (Tehran, 1381 AHSh). One might expect to find it on p. 364, which lists Persian story books under two headings, or on pp. 365–366, which list love stories, though mostly Arab ones. None of the stories, moreover, would match whatever corrupt form we can imagine of Sharwīn, Dastabay, and Khwarrīn to appear in.
53 Cf. how poorly Rustam was known in Arabic sources, see Hämeen-Anttila, Khwadāynāmag, pp. 174–199.
54 For the Khwadāynāmag, see Hämeen-Anttila, Khwadāynāmag, and Hoyland, History. For specifically the Alexander Romance, see Hämeen-Anttila, Khwadāynāmag, pp. 45–51, and Ciancaglieri's studies referred to there.
55 See F. de Blois, Burzōy's Voyage.
56 Kitāb al-Sakīsarān (Murūj al-dhahab, (ed.) Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille, Revised by C. Pellat, 8 vols. (Beyrouth, 1966–1979), §§541, 543) and Kitāb al-Baykār (Murūj §§479–480) narrated epic stories involving Sistanian heroes, while Kitāb al-Ṣuwar (Kitāb al-Tanbīh, (ed.) M. J. de Goeje (Lugduni-Batavorum, 1894, reprinted Beirut, n.d.), p. 106) and Kāhnāmāh and Āyīnnāmāh (Tanbīh, p. 104) related to Sasanian times. For these and other lost Middle Persian books, see Hämeen-Anttila, Khwadāynāmag, pp. 30–45.
57 Shahmardān ibn abī l-Khayr, Nuz'hatnāme-ye ʿAlā'ī (Tehran, 1362 AHSh), here p. 342.
58 Mujmal, p. 2.
59 For all these, see also Hämeen-Anttila, Khwadāynāmag, pp. 167–173. In addition, of course, there are occasional references to romantic stories and love pairs, such as Kisrā Abarwīz and Shīrīn, or the less well-known story of the Indian marriage of the Parthian Balāsh, see Hämeen-Anttila, Khwadāynāmag, pp. 80–81.
60 With “fixed” I refer to a story that is recognised as a separate entity, even though there may be fluidity in its performance.
61 M. Boyce, “The Parthian gōsān and Iranian minstrel tradition,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, N.S. 89 (1957), pp. 10–45.
62 It should be evident that while Firdawsī's Shāhnāme can be used as a valuable source for the main events of Persian history, reading books and singing tales to the kings are literary topoi that cannot be considered factual reports of Sasanian times. For the heated discussion concerning singing of tales in the early Islamic period, see, e.g., Davidson, O., Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings (Ithaca, 1994)Google Scholar and Omidsalar, M. “Unburdening Ferdowsi,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 116 (1996), pp. 235–242CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 See Hämeen-Anttila, Khwadāynāmag, pp. 23–25.
64 See also Hämeen-Anttila, Khwadāynāmag, pp. 141–146, 158–167.