Introducing Azhari Shirazi’s Treatise of Kamal and its Structural and Content Analysis

The present study introduces the Treatise of Kamal by Budagh Azhari Shirazi (died 991 AH.). He was one of the unknown poets of the Safavid era. No research has been done on him and his poetry collection, which he calls the Treatise of Kamal (perfection). He began to write it from 1030 to 1059. There is only one manuscript in the poet’s own handwriting in the library of the Sepahsalar School, which is currently being corrected. The authors of the present study aimed to introduce the version by analyzing the content and structure of the poet’s poems as much as possible to help to know him and his poetry with a descriptive-analytical approach based on the text of the poet's poems and referring to the historical sources of the Safavid era. The question posed in this study was: What is the structure of his poetries and what topics did he deal with? According to the results of the study, it is clear that the poet's divan has two proses prefaces and 1034 verses in the form of odes, sonnets, fragments, rhymed couplets, and quatrains. The poet’s poems were mostly dedicated to the Prophet’s household (PBUH), especially Imam Ali (AS) and the praise of the Safavid sultans. Finally, his fragments and rhymed couplets portrayed the thoughts and life events and contained redundancies, smuts, and chronograms. Most of his quatrains were about love, and boasting was one of the main motifs of his poetry. Paying attention to archaic diction, and imitating his predecessors’ style, especially Khaqani, Anvari, and Hafez, were evident in the formal and semantic structure of his poetry. The use of his predecessors’ handwriting style was another important feature of this manuscript.

Boudagh Azhari Shirazi (died 991 AH.) is an anonymous Poet who lived in the Safavid era. Among diverse treaties written in that era, his name was just mentioned in al-Zaria’h by Aghabozorgh Tehrani. His collection of poems, entitled Kamalnameh by the poet himself, is the only work by him left behind. Azhari has written about different issues of his time in his poems by using rhythm, rhyme, and literary figures.

There is only one manuscript from Azhari’s collection of poems written in his handwriting which is preserved in the library of Sepahsalar School (number 377) in Teheran. The scan of this very manuscript is available in the library of Tehran University (code F-6078). There is a CD of thescan in the National Library. This manuscript has about 343 pages of fifteen lines. In total, the collection has 10385 lines including odes, sonnets, and quatrains which are written in the margins of the book. This manuscript has been written in a nice Nastaliq handwriting on rough octavo paper (24 cm length and 15 cm width). The book has a marcasitic binding. The present manuscript has footnotes (Rekabeh) and the titles of its odes are written in cinnabar (Shangarf/red ink). Between the first and the second odes by Azhari and after his sonnet number 160, some pages are missing. According to the book, the poet has started writing his formerly-composed poems from1030 AH. He has finished the book, based on what has been mentioned in the final pages of the book, in 1054 AH in GharaBagh when he was about 63. The writings in the margins of the collection finished four years later in 1059. This treaty has been corrected deductively, and the writers have used a descriptive-analytical style to elaborate and analyze the content and the structure of the poems.

Azhari (born 991 AH) is said to be originally from Fars Province. He was a contemporary of Hakim Shafaie Isfahani who has accompanied King Abbas I, the well-known Safavid king, in his military attack on Gharabagh and had a luxurious life for many years. Meanwhile, he became the correspondent of Ghale’h Bost for some time and felt homesick many times. Azhari has written his poems in many genres including odes, sonnets, couplets, quatrains, and fragments. His collection of poems has two prologues in poetic prose, one of which starts the collection, before his odes, and the other follows the odes and precedes his sonnets. The preface of his collection starts with the praise of God, the Prophet (PBUH), Imam Ali (AS), and other Imams (AS). It follows with the praise of Shah Abbas Safavi and finishes with points about the book itself. There are 627 sonnets in his collection. In total, they have 4494 lines. The major theme of his sonnets is the description of love and the beloved. A distinctive feature of his sonnets is the literary figures and novel identical ending syllables (Radif). In his sonnet writing, he has followed the Iraqi School, especially Hafez’s style. He has about 215 fragments with 1208 lines. These poems are mostly about requests, demands, satire, and history-telling. His fragments provide the reader with good information about the poet’s life. Among his poems, there are 505 quatrains. In this type of poem, Azhari gives voice to his emotions about love, the beloved, carpe diem, and a strong desire for visiting Mecca. The specific feature of his quatrains is their four-line rhyming pattern. Azhari has 7 poems in the pattern of couplet poems (Masnavi) which include 271 lines. The couplets are largely satiric in nature. Despite his contemporaries, Azhari has not deployed the every-day language in his poems. His poems are full of archaic words, phrases, and structures. This showshis imitation of six-century poets, especially Khaghani. Furthermore, his use of many literary figures such as fantastic etiologies, oxymorons, allusions, preferential similes, and implicit similes is evidence of his following the Iraqi style, especially Hafez.