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Urfi Shirazi wa Sabk-e-Hindi

عرفی شیرازی# سبک ھندی#مکتب و قوع#غزلیات عرفی

Abstract

"Mohammad ibn Badr-al-Din (963-999 AH), known by his pen name Urfi, Persian poet of the latter half of the 16th century. The young ʿUrfi soon established himself as a leading figure in the literary life of Shiraz. In Arafat al-aseqin, the biographer Awḥadi of Balyan provides an eye-witness account of the poetic circle of Mir Maḥmud Ṭarḥi, where Urfı and poets such as Qeydi of Shiraz and Gheyrati of Shiraz competed with each other in composing responses to the lyrics (ghazals) of Amir Ḵhosrow and Baba Faghani among others. In spite of the flourishing and highly competitive literary world of sixteenth-century Persia, ʿOrfi made his mark quickly. His talents were recognized by Moḥtasam of Kashan, and he corresponded with Waḥsi of Bafq. Like many of his contemporaries, ʿUrfi was lured to India by the lavish patronage of the Mughal courts and sailed from the port of Jarun in 1584. After arriving in the Deccan, Urfi proved his talent in the literary salons of Aḥmadnagar, but his arrogance soon made him unwelcome, and he moved on to the imperial capital of Fatḥpur Sikri. There he was well received by Faizi, the leading poet at the court of Akbar, whom ʿUrfi accompanied on the campaign to the Punjab in 1585. Through Faizi, Urfi became acquainted with Masiḥ-al-Din Ḥakim Abu’l Fatḥ of Gilan who, until his death in 1589, was the poet’s principal supporter and patron. Urfi then joined the associates of the Mughal statesman, general, and patron of letters, Mirza ʿAbd-al-Raḥim Ḵhan-e Ḵhanan. He held Urfi in great esteem and introduced him into the service of Akbar, and his son Salim. Urfi accompanied Akbar on his seasonal retreat to Kashmir in 1588, but did not enjoy his new status for long: he died of dysentery in Lahore in August 1591. Some three decades later, his remains were disinterred and reburied in Najaf. These last two features in particular are also evident in Urfi’s work in other genres. His mastery of the qaṣida has perhaps unjustly overshadowed his Ghazals, which at their best demonstrate a powerful command of language and subtlety of thought and imagery. As might be expected of a poet who grew up with the maktab-e woquʿ, his amatory lyrics are characterized by a discriminating insight into the psychology and negotiations of the love relationship (Shibli Nomani, III, pp. 95-101). Urfi’s real strength, however, is in his handling of philosophical and gnostic themes, and Ḏakawati Qaragozlu has noted the attitude of critical doubt and antinomianism that often informs Urfi’s ghazals. Here, he shows his debt to his compatriot from Shiraz, Ḥafeẓ, one of the few earlier poets whom Urfi praised without reservation and whose ghazals, along with those of another fellow poet from Shiraz, Baba Faghani, were among his favorite models for response poems. ʿUrfi’s divan also contains a few tarkib- and tarji-bands and several dozen qaṭʿas, mostly on courtly themes, as well as a couple of hundred robaʿis. He is one of the most prominent Persian poets of India style. The phrase sabk-i hindi (Indian Style) has long had a faint air of rakish insubordination and unrepeatability about it and it is only recently that it has started to evoke comparatively positive feelings. However, this change is clearly symptomatic of a process of gentrification and seems to be powered as much by political considerations as by literary ones. “Wheeler Thackston even believes that “there is nothing particularly Indian about the ‘Indian-style’….The more accurate description is ‘High-Period’ style.” The term sabk-i hindi was coined perhaps by the Iranian poet, critic, and politician Maliku’sh Shu’ara Muhammad Taqi Bahar (1886-1951) in the first quarter of twentieth century. It signposted a poetry in the Persian language, especially ghazal, written mostly from the sixteenth century onward by Indian and Iranian poets, the latter term to include poets of Iranian origin who spent long periods of their creative life in India. “Iranian” here means a native of “greater” Iran, a cultural entity that was generally meant to comprise all of present day Iran and Azerbaijan in the North and West, Afghanistan in the South and East, and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the East. Similarly, “India” stands not for just Hindustan (the part of the country that lies north of the river Narbada) but for the entire sub-continent. "

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