Persianate Storytelling and Storytellers in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries

Abstract

This study explores how Persianate storytellers (qīṣṣah-khwān, afsānah-gūyān) worked in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries. Relying mainly on Persian and Ottoman collections of biographies of poets (taẕkirah), some of which pertain to storytellers, the study seeks to identify as many Persianate storytellers of the 16^th and 17^th as possible. Storytellers recited the Ḥamzah-nāmah (the story of Ḥamzah, uncle of the Prophet Muḥammad), the Shāh-nāmah, and other works before kings and notables as well as in public squares or coffee shops for ordinary people. One manual for storytellers, Ṭirāz al-akhbār, written by ʿAbd al-Nabī Qazvīnī in Mughal India, outlines four styles of Persianate storytelling: Iranian, Central Asian (Tūrān), Indian, and Ottoman (Rūm). Thus, the manual’s author makes clear that he understood these four regions to share a common culture of Persianate storytelling. The migration of storytellers supported this shared culture. Most storytellers in India were migrants from Iran and Central Asia, and even in the Ottoman Empire, some storytellers originated in the Safavid Empire.

Furthermore, the reaction of the various legal and religious authorities to storytelling had some similarities. Iran’s Shiʿite ulama criticized not only Abū-Muslim-nāmah, which was related to Qizilbashism, but also the Ḥamzah-nāmah and storytelling in general, which included “false” stories. In his fatwa, the Ottoman legal authority Ebüssuûd stated that storytellers who spoke lies and caused quarrels among the audience should be punished as criminals.

Although the legal and religious authorities criticized storytelling, it never dissipated because it enjoyed widespread popularity. This fact may be suggestive of a gap between elite and popular culture in early modern Islamicate societies.