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Citations of ᶜAttār and the Kanz al-Haqāyeq in ᶜAli Akbar Khatāyi’s Book of China: A Sufi Path of Bureaucracy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
Abstract
ᶜAli Akbar Khatāyi’s Khatāynāmeh (Book of China), a detailed description of state and society in Ming China written in 922/1516, includes citations from the Kanz al-Haqāyeq (attributed to Mahmud Shabestari) and ᶜAttār’s Elāhināmeh. By citing these two texts at key points in his description of the Chinese government, Khatāyi articulates a radical political vision in which the civil officials, rather than the emperor, are the true rulers. Furthermore, by using the Kanz al-Haqāyeq as a portal text, and through frequent citations of other gnostic poetry, he crafts his own authorial presence by identifying his own text with fotovvat and gnosticism, and invokes a conceptual framework based on the thought of Ibn ᶜArabi epitomized in his intertexts.
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- Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2018
Footnotes
Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers, Carol Fan, and Özge Koçak Hemmat for feedback on this article, as well as to Marlis Saleh and other staff of the Regenstein Library, at the University of Chicago, where I first chanced upon the Khatāynāmeh, and the Süleymaniyye Library. This article is dedicated to the dear memory of Heshmat Moayyad.
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