Speakers on “Panel 4: Poetic License” will be presenting their work from 1:00–2:15pm in Allard 122.
Kenneth Lao (BA, UBC) Reclaiming the World of Jahan Malek Khatun: The Forgotten Legacy of a Poetess, Princess, and Pioneer in Classical Persian Literature
As with most female poets in Iran, the forgotten legacy of Jahan Malek Khatun was the fruit of a masculine literary establishment that had perennially stripped women writers of dignity, respect, and mass readership. Indited on small, concealable parchment scrolls, Jahan’s poems were not at all widely disseminated. Reaching no one, not via word of mouth or ceremonial performances, these rare records of feminine introspection, or at times, sublime exercises of poetic bravados dissipated into outright oblivion. This paper therefore pursues the overarching goal to bring Jahan Malek Khatun and her seminal pieces to the fore. The first section chronicles her life history and explores how this biography has come to inform and intersect with her literary aesthetic which I deem “pioneering” in my thesis. The second section attempts to honor Jahan’s intersected identities as a woman, poet, and princess, spotlighting her most prominent work and her intention to diverge from convention and propriety. Upon reading her work in close conjunction with her biography, it is then I hope you can see for yourself, no longer shrouded in secrecy, an unprecedented portrait of a woman pioneer fearlessly reclaiming her pen and her voice.
Minsoo Jeon (MA, U Washington), Rewriting Anatolia as the Land of Turks: Yazıcızâde Ali’s Translation Strategies for Tevârîḫ-i l-i Selçuk
In his history of Anatolian Seljuks, Tevârîḫ-i Âl-i Selçuk (1424), Yazıcızâde Ali adopted disparate approaches to translating the poetry versus the prose texts in his Persian source texts—Râvendî’s Râḥatü’ṣ-ṣudûr ve âyetü’s-sürûr (c.1204) and Ibn Bibi’s el-Evâmirü’l-ʿAlâʾiyye fi’l-umûri’l-ʿAlâʾiyye (1282). While closely translating the prose texts into Turkish, Ali made significant alterations to the original poetry and added his own poems. According to Procházka-Eisl, the verse in an Ottoman prosimetrum reflects the author’s views more transparently than the prose does. Based on her idea, this study examines various types of poems—those translated, quoted, or newly composed—in Tevârîḫ-i Âl-i Selçuk and determines Ali’s authorial intent in his historical work.
An analysis of Tevârîḫ-i Âl-i Selçuk in comparison with its original texts reveals that Ali deployed his source texts to make a comprehensive history of Anatolian Turks, which starts from the arrival of Oğuz Turks in the region, continues with the rise of Seljuk Turks, and ends with the appearance of the Ottoman Turks. To this end, Ali did not include Ibn Bibi’s poems that portray the Turks and the land of Rum in a derogatory tone while omitting Râvendî’s poetry that positions Seljuk history in the greater Islamic and Persianate context. He also inserted his lyrical compositions that eulogize Turkic rulers in Anatolia, ranging from Oğuz Han to Murad II. Drawing on these points, this paper argues that Tevârîḫ-i Âl-i Selçuk was part of a political project that aimed at establishing Turkish supremacy in Anatolia.
Hamad Abdullah Nazar (MA, UBC) Ideas of Muslimness outside colonial religious-linguistic divisions: A reading of Hir Ranjha
When the British colonized Punjab in 1848, their understanding of languages and religions of the area were already informed by the prevalent works of orientalist scholarships. In particular, they associated Urdu and Perso-Arabic script with Muslims and Punjabi and Gurmukhi script with Sikhs. The formation of Anjuman-i-Punjab in 1865 by well known orientalist scholar Wilhelm Leitner for the development of Vernacular literatures and subsequent formation of Punjab University College in 1870s further produced such religio-linguistic divisions in the cultural, literary and educational milieus of Punjab. Consequently, all such pre colonial forms of religiosities which did not confirm to this division were marginalized or wrought under this new colonial order. My paper is situated within these broader contexts. I am interested in thinking about forms of embodying, expressing Islam and Muslimness in some of the pre-colonial, Punjabi literary/oral traditions, which can help us critically analyze the ideas of Islam entailed in this colonial religio-linguistic division. In particular, I want to focus on one of the most well known Punjabi texts of the nineteenth century, Hir Ranjha, a love story, qisa. At one point in this text when its heroine Hir is to be married off against her will, she engages in a dialogue with the learned figure of qazi about teachings of Quran and Islam. It is this long dialogue I want to closely read to think about the ideas of Islam and Muslimness it entailed and how it can challenge colonial, Urdu-ized ideas of Islam.