"Ai samandar" in the Noon Meem Rashed Archive

At the Noon Meem Rashed Archive we have recently put up a couple of versions of Rashed's poem "Ai samandar," one from Shamsur Rahman Faruqi's journal Shabkhoon, and a handwritten draft of the poem that exists in the Archive. The different versions that we have can tell us about the history of changes to the text that this poem has undergone. There is also another early typewritten draft in the Archive, which will be revealed in due course.

The Lament for Delhi

One of my earliest publications was in a volume edited by Shobna Nijhawan, entitled Nationalism in the Vernacular: Hindi, Urdu, and the Literature of Indian Freedom. For this compendium I translated and wrote a brief introduction to two poems by Shahāb al-Dīn Ahmad Sāqib and Hakīm Muhammad Ahsan from the 1863 anthology Fughān-i Dihlī. These poems, in the musaddas form, came to be seen as exemplars of the shahr-āshob genre, which at some point in the twentieth century, or perhaps the nineteenth, was defined as a genre of poetry describing the despoliation of a city. Delhi, ravaged multiple times in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was very often the subject of poems in this genre.

As Munibur Rahman has pointed out, however, this definition of the shahr-āshob genre was not the only one. In an earlier sense, the shahr-āshob was a catalogue of the beautiful "city-disturbing" boys of a locale, often listed by their occupation. Later on when I developed my ideas about genres and the flux that they can undergo, this example became very useful to me.

Recently I uploaded a longer version of the introduction to the poems to my academia.edu page. This is the uncut version that I initially submitted to the editors. Hopefully it gives a better sense my main contentions, one of which is that although these poems were made out to be mirrors of the historical situation (and preludes to the Indian independence movement), they are more intertextual than world-reflecting.

Calligraphy Workshop with Sussan Sheikh at the Islamic Studies Library

The Islamic Studies Library at McGill will be holding a calligraphy workshop with Iranian calligrapher Sussan Sheikh on July 29th, from 2-4pm in the Octagon Room. Sussan Sheikh studied with Abdollah Foradi and Yadollah Kaboli in Iran in the 1980s, and received the rank of "excellent" from the Anjuman-i Khushnawīsān-i Īrān in 1988. (Reposted from the Islamic Studies Library: http://is.gd/v0Gas3.)

Frances Pritchett's Visit to Montreal

Beginning last week, Columbia Professor Emerita of Modern Indic Languages Fran Pritchett visited my gharīb-khānah in Montreal. Fran is a dear friend, my former PhD adviser, and the creator of the online dīwān of Ghālib, A Desertful of Roses. I took her around the city, and introduced her to her grand-students David Wong, Geneviève Mercier-Dalphond, Zain Mian, and Jessica Stilwell. Fran enjoyed it very much, for, as she said,

"I can give them whatever advice I like and then go away, and it's up to you to feed them and change their diapers." 

Below are some photos from her trip.

Digital Exhibition from the Islamic Studies Library: The Persianate Literary Heritage

Thanks to Islamic Studies Liaison Librarian Sean Swanick, much of the marvellous Persian Literary Heritage exhibition that graced McLennan Library in 2014 during the 10th biennial Iranian Studies Conference is now available online. The beginnings of our collection of Persian materials pre-dates the creation of the Institute of Islamic Studies and the Islamic Studies Library in 1952. The materials in the Blacker-Wood collection were chosen by the Russian Orientalist Wladimir Ivanow, who also catalogued materials at the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal.

The digital exhibit includes 6 items from South Asia, including a portrait of the 18th-century Mughal ruler Farrukhsiyar. Then there is MS 53, depicting a young woman in profile with a strikingly curved and thick eyebrow. 

This painting is described in Glen Lowry’s unpublished 1977 catalogue as a "Miniature of a Princess" from c. 1650. (See Swanick’s page on McGill's Islamic manuscripts, including catalogues by Adam Gacek, Ivanow, and Lowry). It bears an inscription in the upper right indicating the name of the woman. If we take the third element of the name as a lām-alif in which the alif has absconded, this lady may have been called "Almās Bā’ī"—"Miss Diamond." One imagines that this could as easily be the name of a courtesan or other professional as of a princess, but perhaps Lowry had some reason for so designating her.

Noon Meem Rashed Archive - Expression and Reach, a translation by Safdar Mir and N. M. Rashed

Work on the Noon Meem Rashed Archive goes on apace. The second substantial post is on Safdar Mir’s translation of Rashed’s poem "Izhār aur rasā’ī," which was corrected by Rashed and sent by him to the American poet Carolyn Kizer, who later published her own rendering in her anthology Carrying Over. 

You can read the post here: Expression and Reach — Translation by Safdar Mir & N. M. Rashed.

Sufism 2015

This Fall term I will be teaching one of my favourite classes, ISLA 330 Islamic Mysticism: Sufism. At present this introductory Sufism class is full, but there is always the possibility that students will drop out or that the cap will be raised if there are students on the waitlist who want in.

'This class will introduce students to the theory, practice, and history of Sufism, often referred to as "mystical" Islam. We will consider the emergence and efflorescence of Sufi orders throughout the world, from the Middle East and Iran to South Asia, China, and South-East Asia, and from Africa to Europe, Britain, and Canada. Sufi poetry will be read as well as experienced in the form of qawwali and other musical genres. The underpinnings of metaphysics and ontology will be represented by theoretical works by Ibn 'Arabi, known as the "Greatest Master" (Shaikh al-Akbar). We will look at distinctive ways of reading the Quran, at divine love, infidelity, and the social deviancy of dervish orders. The perceived danger of Sufi beliefs and practices and the consequences of such antipathies will be discussed and debated, from the martyrdom of Hallaj for his scandalous announcement, "I am the Real," to the bombings of Sufi shrines by Islamist groups in the present.'