Nezami Ganjavi
Jamāl Al-Din Abu Mohammad Ilyās Ben Yusuf Ben Zaki Ben Mu'ayyd, with the nickname of Nezami and known as Hakim Nezami, was born in the 1141 in Ganje. Iranian and a native of Tafresh, he is the most famous writer of epic-fictional stories in Persian language who introduced the style of the colloquial story into the epic.
He as an inventor of the composition of stories in Persian literature, is among the pillars of poetry and undoubtedly among the masters of this language. Nezami not only succeeded as Ferdowsi and Sa'di to create and complete a particular style and method, but the influence of his approach is clearly present in Persian poetry even in poets after him.
He possessed a wide knowledge of the various sciences diffused in his time (literature, astronomy, Islamic sciences, jurisprudence, theosophy and the Arabic language) and this peculiarity of his poetry is openly acknowledged.
In the choice of suitable words, in the creation of particular and new combinations, in the invention of meanings and contents never used and refined, in the use of details with the force of imagination, in the attention to landscapes and the description of nature and of the characters and in the use of pleasant and new similarities and metaphors, it is unparalleled among those who have followed it.
The famous opera and the unparalleled masterpiece of Nezāmi is the Quintet or the Five Treasures which is highly esteemed in the lyric tales and he is rightly to be considered the forefather of this kind of poetry in Persian literature. The poet spent a total of thirty years of his life devoting himself to the composition and editing of this work. The Quintet or The Five Treasures of Nezāmi consists of five masnavi:
-Makhzan-e al-asrār (Emporio dei Secrets, among the notable examples of educational literature in Persian language)
- Khosrow and Shirin (love story of Khosrow Parviz the great king Sassanid and the Armenian princess Shirin)
-Leili and Majnun (the most famous classical love story of Persian literature)
-Haft Peykar (The Seven Effigies, which was also called Bahrām nāme and Haft Gonbad) which is made up of seven stories:
1-Tale of the Black Dome (story of a city whose inhabitants were all dressed in black)
2-Tale of the yellow dome (story of a king who did not trust women and a yellow-faced slave girl)
3-Tale of the green dome (history of good and evil)
4-Tale of the red dome (story of a lady of the castle)
5-Tale of the turquoise dome (history of the good and the bad)
6-Tale of the sandal-colored dome (history of benevolence and meanness)
7-Tale of the White Dome (story of a girl and a boy who wanted to join but it was not possible)
- "Eskandar nāme" (Book of Alexander), consisting of Eqbāl name (Book of fortune) and the Sharaf nāme (Book of glory).
-Divān-e qasāyed va ghazalyāt (collection of qaside, roba'yyat (quatrains) and do-beyti (double verses), short poems, fragments and lyrics on various moral, mystical and social themes)
-The seventh chapter of Ganjavi's Quintet or Ganjine (composed of qaside, ghazal, qet'e and robā'yyat).
So far, many international conferences and congresses have been organized to commemorate Nezāmi Ganjavi in Iran and around the world and also the 12 of March (the 21 of the month of Esfand in the official Iranian calendar) is the day of commemoration of this great poet.
The statue that portrays him as well as in Iran is also found in China, in Azerbaijān and in the city of Rome. The poet died in the year 1209 in Ganje and his mausoleum is located in this same place.
Reference works on medieval Persian literature:
A. Pagliaro - A. Bausani, Persian literature, Sansoni-Accademia, Florence-Milan 1968
EG Browne, A Literary History of Persia, 4 Vol., Cambridge 1951-53 (reprinted several times)
Jan Rypka, A History of Iranian Literature, Reidel Publishing Company, London 1968
AJ Arberry, Classical Persian Literature, London 1958
A. Pagliaro-A. Bausani, Persian literature, Sansoni-Accademia, Florence-Milan 1968
AM Piemontese, History of Persian Literature, 2 Vol., Fabbri Brothers, Milan 1970
C. Saccone, Thematic history of classical Persian literature vol. I: Travels and visions of king Sufi prophets, Luni, Milan-Trento 1999; vol. II: The Sufi teacher and the beautiful Christian. Poetics of perversion in medieval Persia, Carocci, Rome 2005; vol. III: The king of the beautiful, the king of the world. Theology of power and beauty in medieval Persian poetry, Aracne, Rome 2014
Studies and articles in Italian on Nizami are readable in:
AA.VV., Colloquium on the Persian poet Nizami and the Iranian legend of Alexander the Great, Ed. Of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome 1977
C. Saccone, Travels and visions of king Sufi prophets, Luni, Milan-Trento 1999
A. Bausani, The sacred madman in Islam, Luni. Milan-Trento 2000
JC Buergel, Speech is a ship, meaning a sea. Essays on love and the journey in medieval Persian poetry, Carocci, Rome 2006
C. Saccone (edited), Alessandro / Dhu 'l-Qarnayn traveling between the two seas, monographic issue of Quaderni di Studi Indo-Mediterranei, I (2008)
Italian translations:
Nezami, The Seven Princesses, edited by A. Bausani, Rizzoli-BUR, Milan 1996 (first ed. 1982)
Nezami, Leylà and Majnun, edited by G. Calasso, Adelphi, Milan 1985
Nezami, Alessandro's book of fortune, edited by C. Saccone, Rizzoli-BUR 2002 (first ed. 1997)
SEE ALSO