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Truths and Lies: Irony and Intrigue in the Tārīkh‐i Bayhaqī

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Soheila Amirsoleimani
Soheila Amirsoleimani*
Affiliation:
University of Utah
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Extract

To the memory of my ustad, K. Allin Luther, in appreciation of his teaching and example.

Abu'l-Fazl Muhammad B. Al-Husayn Bayhaqi (385-470/995-1077), A Khurasanian scribe of the Ghaznavids, wrote a history of this Perso-Islamic dynasty (388-582/994-1186) in his work referred to as the Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī (composed in 450/1058). The Ghaznavids ruled in an area now comprising eastern Iran, Afghanistan, and northern India. With the loss of greater Khurasan to the nomadic Saljuqs at the battle of Dandanqan on 9 Ramadan 431/24 May 1040, the empire was reduced to parts of Afghanistan and northern India, chiefly the Punjab. The downfall of the Ghaznavids in Khurasan also divides the period of the first three kings from those of the later ones. Bayhaqi himself organized the history of the Ghaznavids in terms of “principal” (aṣl), versus “minor” (far˓) territories. For Bayhaqi the principal territories are Khurasan and Jibal, but especially Khurasan, as opposed to the minor territories in India. He wrote his history when he was an old man and after 29 years had passed from the loss of Khurasan. The only surviving volumes of Bayhaqi's history of the Ghaznavids cover the reign of the third Ghaznavid ruler Mas˓ud (421—31/1030-1040), who lost Khurasan to the Saljuqs.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 2: The Uses of Guile: Literary and Historical Moments , Spring 1999 , pp. 243 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1999

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Footnotes

I owe many people thanks—Dick Davis for his unrelenting support of my work, Afsaneh Najmabadi for graciously suggesting that I submit this paper for this special issue, and Margaret Mills for organizing a workshop in April 1999 in which we exchanged helpful ideas.

References

1. There are six published Persian editions of the Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī: ed. Sa˓id Nafisi (Tehran, 1307 H.Q./1889-1890)Google Scholar a lithograph; ed. Sa˓id Nafisi, 3 vols. (Tehran, 1319-1332/1940-1953); ed. ˓Ali Akbar Fayyaz and Qasim Ghani (Mashhad: Intisharat-i Khvaju, 1324/1945); ed. ˓Ali Akbar Fayyaz (Mashhad: Mashhad University Press, 1350/1971); ed. Muhammad Khatib-Rahbar (Tehran: Intisharat-i Sa˓di, 1368/1989), ed. Ja˓far Mudarris Sadiqi (Tehran: Nashr-i Markaz, 1376/1997). The 1971 edition by ˓Ali Akbar Fayyaz remains the edition most used by scholars to date. I will use this edition throughout the study.

2. One may consider this “principal” versus “minor” dichotomy between Khurasan and other territories to be both a literary and a historical trope, especially considering the numismatic evidence that three of the four main mints during the tenyear rule of Mas˓ud were, indeed, in Khurasan (Nishapur, Herat, and Balkh). See Soheila Amirsoleimani, “Paper and Metal: the Irony that Ensues,” unpublished paper, American Numismatic Society, summer 1992. The most important historian of the Ghaznavids, Clifford Bosworth, has also studied this dynasty with attention to this literary/historical trope. See Bosworth's monographs on the early and later Ghaznavids: The Ghaznavids, Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran: 994—1040 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963)Google Scholar and The Later Ghaznavids: Splendour and Decay, The Dynasty in Afghanistan and Northern India, 1040-1186 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

3. Malik al-Shu˓ara Bahar Sabkshināsī yā tārīkh-i taṭavvur-i nar-i Fārsī, vol. 2 (Tehran: Kitabha-i Parastu, 1337/1958), 66-87.Google Scholar

4. Yadnamah-i Bayhaqī (Mashhad: Mashhad University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

5. Muhammad ˓Ali Islami Nadushan, “Jahānbīnī-i Abū'l-Fażl Bayhaqī,” 1-38 and Husayn Bahr al-˓Ulumi, “Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī yā ā˒īnah-i ˓ibrat,” 53-67, in ibid.

6. Jamal Riza'i, “Bū Sahl Zawzanī dar Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī,” Yādnāmah, 220-32.

7. Ghulam Riza Salim, “Tawjīh-i tamīl-hā-yi Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī,” Ibid., 333-353.

8. K. Allin Luther, “Bayhaqi and the later Saljuq historians: some comparative remarks,” Ibid., 14-33.

9. Waldman, Marilyn R. Towards a Theory of Historical Narrative: A Case Study in Perso-Islamicate Historiography (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

10. Ibid., 53, 73.

11. Meisami, Julia S. “The past in service of the present: two views of history in medieval Persia,” Poetics Today 14, 2 (1993): 247-75.Google Scholar

12. Waldman, Towards a Theory, 53, 73Google Scholar and Meisami, “The past in service of the present,” 268-69.

13. Roy Mottahedeh speaks of self-describing means in the preface to his Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

14. I read this quotation ascribed to Octavio Paz in an article from The New York Times Book Review in the Spring of 1992. I have since looked for that quotation in works by Paz but have been unable to find it.

15. Bayhaqi, Tarikh, ḥīlah, ḥīlat, or laṭā˒if al-ḥiyal (39, 69, 102, 113, 121, 411, 414, 422^123, 444, 504, 513, 523, 533, 536, 539, 546, 582, 696, 727-728, 746, 822, 839, 841, 921, 934).

ḥīlat kardan, (121, 165, 213, 241, 298, 332, 411, 414, 533, 727, 934); ḥīlat sākhtan, (39, 102, 113, 173, 222, 241, 276, 299, 378, 523, 536, 546, 746); laṭā˒if al-ḥiyal bi-kār āvardan, (69, 102, 422, 921), dar ḥīlat uftādan, (304); dast dar ḥīlat zadan, (423); dar ḥīlat īstādan, (283). tażrīb, (174, 222, 276, 277, 286, 288, 298, 378, 405, 416, 500, 521, 754, 912); talbīs, (129, 174, 277, 405, 517, 561, 718); fasād, (322, 406, 416, 500, 808, 921); zarq, (165, 504, 612, 679, 710, 758); afsūn, (182, 297, 607, 743); makr, (234, 504, 582, 778); chārbak, (182, 326); taṭmī˓, (378, 402); ifti˓āl, (165, 539); ˓ishvah, (612, 679); shu˓badah, (539), ghurūr, (679); ghadr, (778); nayrang, (416); tadbīr, (410, 414); fitnah, (322); tamvīḥ, (129); ighrā˒, (298); ta˓rīż, (276); farāb, (58).

Other verbs meaning “to intrigue” are maḥzar sākhtan (27-28); farīftan (71, 283, 284, 325, 622, 756, 934); tadbīr sākhtan (107, 285, 299, 499, 544); ṣūrat inghashtan (173); ta˓biyah kardan (325); tadbīr kardan (424, 444, 921); farībānīdan, (559, 934); afsūn sākhtan (607); afsūn ravān kardan (743); talbis kardan (718); ṣūrat zisht kardan (440); tadbīr khaṭā˒ pīsh giriftan, (514); ˓ishvah dādan, (759, 819); ṣūrat bastan,(875); ghadr kardan (875); tażrīb kardan (222, 298, 378); tażrīb nigāshtan, (276). For the importance of ḥīlah in the Islamic legal tradition, see the article on ḥiyal by Schacht, J. in The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, vol. 3, 510-513.Google Scholar

16. I have studied the Persian manual of rhetoric, Tarjumān al-balāghah, ed. Ates, Ahmad (Istanbul: I Horoz Basimevi, n.d.)Google Scholar and consulted the Arabic manual, Asrār albalāghah, ed. Ritter, Hellmut (Istanbul: Government Press, 1954).Google Scholar The later Tarjumān al-balāghah (507/1113-1114) is also addressed to both poets and scribes (7, 14, 20, 27, 31, 36, 38, 75, 88, 89, 91, 108, 111, and 112).

17. In the Western tradition, I have found the ideas of Kenneth Burke especially compatible with the goals of this study. He speaks of irony in his four master tropes in A Grammar of Motives and a Rhetoric of Motives (New York: Meridian Books [The World Publishing Company], 1962), 511-17.Google Scholar Burke has inspired several generations of historians and literary critics alike, among them Hayden White, Wayne Boothe, and Denis Donoghue. Indeed, Hayden White has based the very framework of his study, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973)Google Scholar on the four tropes discussed by Burke (metaphor, synecdoche, metonomy, and irony). Wayne Boothe has done a study of his own on irony, A Rhetoric of Irony (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974).Google Scholar And in Ferocious Alphabets (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981)Google Scholar, Donoghue has contrasted Burke's approach to language and literature with the approach of the post-structuralist critic Derrida.

The literature on irony, in the fields of linguistics, psychology, Western analytical philosophy, and literary criticism, is vast. My study of irony in language and its uses in Western literature have deepened my understanding of irony in general. But it is how irony is created in the Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī that interests me here. And for that, it is Burke's ideas about irony in history and the overarching humble irony that best express my understanding of Bayhaqi's ironic stance. In this study, I have confined myself to making relatively few remarks about the theoretical issues raised, regarding history and historical writing, the nature of ironic discourse, the phenomenon of irony, and its relationship with intrigue. My reason for doing this is the fact that my ideas about irony, its relationship with notions of time such as history, and its manifestations in forms like “tragedy” and “comedy,” cannot be adequately discussed in an essay. I will explore ideas about irony in the Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī much more fully in a forthcoming book.

18. Waldman, Towards a Theory, 72.Google Scholar

19. Behler, Ernst Irony and the Discourse of Modernity (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990), 79.Google Scholar

20. Nietzsche, Friedrich Untimely Meditations, tr. Hollingdale, R. J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 101.Google Scholar

21. Burke, Kenneth A Grammar of Motives, 25.Google Scholar

22. Bayhaqi, Tārīkh, 1-69

23. Ibid., 145-49.

24. Ibid., 197-212.

25. For the importance of the themes of wine and hunt, see articles by Yarshater, Ehsan “The theme of wine-drinking and the concept of the beloved in early Persian poetry,” Studia Islamica XIII (1961): 43-53Google Scholar; and Hanaway, William L. “The concept of the hunt in Persian literature,” Bulletin of the Boston Museum of Fine Art LXIX, nos. 355 and 356 (1971): 21-34.Google Scholar For letters, see Roemer, “Inshā',” Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, v. 3, 1242Google Scholar and Sellheim, and Sourdel, “Kātib,” Encyclopedia of Islam, v. 4, 755.Google Scholar

26. Bayhaqi, Tārīkh, 203.

27. Ibid., 205.

28. Ibid., 208.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid., 212.

31. Ibid., 58.

32. Ibid., 204-205.

33. Ibid., 203.

34. Allin Luther spoke of this framing effect often with colleagues and students. Indeed, this was one of the patterns of thought/form in the works of Nizami Ganjavi, among other poets and scribes in the Perso-Islamic tradition, which Luther masterfully detected and studied.

35. For the Kakuyids, see Bosworth, C. E. “Kakuyids,” Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, v. 4, 465—67Google Scholar and idem, The Islamic Dynasties: a Chronological and Genealogical Handbook (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967), 97—98.Google Scholar

36. Bayhaqi, Tārīikh, 8.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., 28-29.

38. Ibid., 30.

39. I would like to thank Michael Cooperson who, with his extensive knowledge of Abbasid sources, has informed me that this narrative about Ma˒mun and his brother has no historical validity. Even so, the story works very well as an analogy with the main narrative of Bayhaqi's story about Mas˓ud and Muhammad.

40. Bayhaqi, Tārīkh, 38.Google Scholar

41. See Barthold's, W. article on Altuntash the Khvarazmshah, “Altuntash,” EI, First Edition, vol. 1, 322-323.Google Scholar

42. Bayhaqi, Tārīkh 63.Google Scholar

43. Ibid., 64.

44. Ibid., 68.

45. Ibid., 69.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid., 147.

48. Ibid., 210.

49. Bayhaqi considers the loss of great military leaders like ˓Ali Qarib to have been one of the reasons for the diminished power of the Ghaznavid forces in the struggle against the Saljuqs. See Bayhaqi, Tārīkh, 755-56.

50. Ibid., 149.

51. Ibid., 197.

52. For the importance of chancery practices, see the articles in the EI New Edition, by Roemer and Sellheim and Sourdel mentioned in note 25. Also see, Bosworth, “Abu ˓Abdallah al-Khwarazmi on the technical terms of the secretary's art,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 12, part 2 (1969): 158.Google Scholar

53. The question that arises in considering the history of the History against the age-old traditions of the Iranian scribal class is why, from a thirty volume manuscript on the Ghaznavids, only the sections on the loss of Khurasan have survived? Allin Luther ingeniously raised this question in the course of a private conversation in the late 1980's. The issues that are brought forth as one attempts to answer this question relate to ideas about history and historical writing. History, it seems, can thus be defined, not necessarily as that which happened, but as what should or should not have happened, according to those preserving its written records.

54. Stephen Fairbanks refers to the concept of rūzgār in his dissertation on the Saljuq bureacracy, “The Tarikh al-vuzara': A History of the Saljuq Bureacracy” (Ann Arbor: Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1977).Google Scholar

55. The word irony comes from Greek eironeia, meaning “dissembling, feigned ignorance, from eiron, dissembler,' one who says less than he thinks,’ from eirein, to say,” American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1970. The association between irony and lies runs through the history of irony. For psychological studies of this association, see the series of articles on the pretense and mention theories of ironic discourse. Clark, Herbert H. and Gerrig, Richard J. “On the pretense theory of irony,” Journal of Experimental Psychology, 113:1 (1984): 121-26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jergensen, Julia and Miller, George A. “Test of the mention theory of irony,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 113, no. 1, (1984): 112-20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sperber, Dan “Verbal irony: pretense or echoic mention?” Journal of Experimental Psychology 113, no. 1 (1984) 130-36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, Joanna P. “Does mention (or pretense) exhaust the concept of irony?,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 113, no. 1 (1984) 127-29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a linguistic study of this association, see Barbe, Katharina Irony in Context (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56. See the sermons in the Tārīkh, 66-68, 234-6, 308-10, 448, 480-97, 795-802.

57. One of the most celebrated ironists in modern literature, Samuel Beckett, speaks of lies in his works. See especially The Unnamable from the collection, Three Novels by Samuel Beckett: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958), 408, 410-11, 414.Google Scholar

58. Kierkegaard, Soren The Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference to Socrates, tr. Capel, Lee M. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971), 271.Google Scholar