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This chapter focuses on the Tarikh-I Chingiz Khan. It discusses, from a comparative perspective, the celebrated Jami، al-tawarikh of Rashid al-Din and its abridgement in Tarikh-I Chingiz Khan. The main point of interest in the chapter is what the author of Tarikh-I Chingiz Khan chose to include, what he chose to omit, and why. While the Jami، al-tawarikh is a history of the Mongols, of the rise of Chiniz Khan, of the Islamic world and the contact between Islam and other races, the Tarikh-I Chingiz Khan is a book of genealogy, whose purpose is to eulogize the virtues of Chingiz Khan, his pious works and the qualities of his rule.

This chapter sets the stage for the discussion of ʿAbd al-Rahman Jami by providing an overview of the relevant geography and history. It covers Khorasan, the region of which Herat was the principal city in the time of Jami and the main setting for his career; and the Timurid dynasty that ruled Khorasan and contiguous lands throughout his life. It traces the coming of Islam to Khorasan with the armies that began arriving there in the time of ʿUmar b. al-Khattab, the second Caliph, and its swift embracing by the indigenous population of Khorasan. It also maps the rise of the Persian language which accompanied the assimilation of Islam as religion and culture. The Sufism that enjoyed primacy among the various facets of Jami’s persona was also well-established in Khorasan, where it found literary expression in both Arabic and Persian.

This chapter traces the genealogy and life of ʿAbd al-Rahman Jami. Nur al-Din ʿAbd al-Rahman Jami was born in Kharjird at the time of the evening prayer on Shà ban 23, 817/November 7, 1414. Jami and his father, Nizam al-Din Ahmad, moved to Herat, probably in 830/1426–7. Different accounts provide different reasons for this relocation, the most credible being that Jami’s father wanted him to benefit from the more ample educational resources available in Herat. During his early years in Herat, Jami is presumed to have been engaged in the study of Qurʿanic exegesis and its various levels, the traditions of the Prophet (hadith), as well as jurisprudence (fiqh) and its methodology (usul).

This chapter focuses on Jami’s associations with the monarch, Sultan Husayn Bayqara and the statesman and poet, ʿAli-shir Navaʾi. Jami’s association with Bayqara began at the very outset of his reign when, together with Navaʾi, he dissuaded him from having the names of the Four Caliphs removed from the Friday sermon. Jami’s primary purpose in associating with Bayqara was comparable to that of Ahrar in dealing with the Timurids of Transoxiana: interceding with rulers on behalf of the ruled. Closer and more intimate than Jami’s relations with Bayqara were his links to Navaʾi, the third member of what has been called the Herat triumvirate. On occasion, Navaʾi served Jami as an effective and sympathetic intermediary with Bayqara, but more importantly, he was both his pupil and his consultant in all matters literary.

This chapter explores the poetry of ʿAbd al-Rahman Jami, which reflected his tastes, predilections, and general cast of mind. Its significance, however, transcends the personal, with the vast poetic corpus that Jami was able to elaborate, by virtue of a versatile and vigorous talent, representing a summation of the traditions of Persian poetry. This chapter talks about Baharistana, a work loosely modelled in terms of format on the Gulistan of Sà di, in which Jami surveyed the traditions of Persian poetry. It also talks about his other works, such as Silsilat al-Dhahab and Haft Awrang, among others.

This chapter explores the Sufism reflected in Jami’s poetry. It considers his writings about the distinctive practices of the Naqshbandiyya, and his profound and lasting loyalty to the writings and doctrines of Muhyi l-Din ibn ʿArabi, a culminating figure in the elaboration of theoretical Sufism and known for that reason as al-Shaykh al-Akbar (‘the Supreme Shaykh’). These two emphases of Jami’s Sufism—the Naqshbandi and the Akbari—were entirely compatible. While Jami had been preceded by others in propagating the doctrines of Ibn ʿArabi in the Persian-speaking world, the acceptance of them was far from universal. Such was the case in Herat, so Jami took it on himself, in debate and in writing, to defend al-Shaykh al-Akbar’s teachings against all comers, drawing in equal measure upon his erudition and his polemical gifts.

This chapter examines Jami’s views about society. It argues that Jami’s own temperament was ideal for a certain mode of ‘solitude within society’. Apparent in much of his work is a tension between a thoroughgoing involvement in the society of his time on the one hand, and a wistful longing for solitude on the other. The paradox is comprehensible in that the misanthrope needs to mingle with his fellows in order to nurture and confirm his disdain for them. Jami also believed that the great majority of his contemporaries did not even count as true human beings, and had detailed criticisms to make of virtually every class of his contemporaries. He bestows his scorn impartially on elite and commonalty alike, with concentration on the former.

This chapter discusses the legacy of Jami. A half century after his death, a significant portion of the Islamic world was effectively reconfigured into four empires: Safavid, Uzbek, Ottoman, and Mughal. From a purely cultural point of view, they had much in common and formed what has come to be known as the ‘Persianate world’. As poet, scholar, and Sufi, Jami represented a summation of precisely the Perso-Islamic cultural tradition, and it was entirely natural that his legacy should be cultivated throughout the Persianate world and even beyond. This was an outcome he seems to have anticipated by arranging for the copying and dispatch of his works to places as far apart as Istanbul and the Deccan.

This chapter includes a bibliography of the references cited in the present study of Jami’s life and work. In addition, it includes a discussion of various studies of Jami’s life and character, his poetry, his Sufism, and major editions and translations of his works.

Highlighting a neglected function of pictorial arts in the Persianate world, the introduction exposes the phenomenon of the “fixed figure-types” by presenting a mid-sixteenth-century Safavid painting from Jami's epic Haft awrang. The composition is used to describe this extraordinary trend in the history of Islamic art which had begun some eighty years earlier during the rule of the last Timurid prince. Understanding the implied significance of these enigmatic figures within an otherwise coherent illustration is possible through familiarity with discourse of Sufism and the contemporary production and reception of Persian Sufi poetry during the latter part of Jami’s life, when Sufi manuscript paintings began to include emblematic figure types.

This chapter returns to the Safavid painting ‘Depraved Man Commits Bestiality’, discussed in the Introduction, in order to decipher the significance of the enigmatic figure-types in their maturity, seven decades after their first appearance and after the dramatic changes in the politico-religious life of the region. Analysing the subject matter of the painting as a portmanteau of the content in Jami’s text together with a contemporary royal dictum from Shah Tahmasp, the interpretation of the figure-types demonstrates their appropriation by the Safavid programme of legitimacy and their convergence with the official ideology of the Imami creed.

Chapter 2 examines the representation of epigraphic inscriptions in Persian painting, inscriptions that appeared in pictures as ornaments adorning buildings. It argues for a shift in these inscriptions’ content and function in the late Timurid period. Until the mid-fifteenth century, inscriptions were mainly used to link painting to patron. But in the Cairo Bustan, the poetic verses were chosen so as to convey a celebration of the painter. As such they constitute an example of wasf (ekphrasis), a description of the visual that was also a discourse of praise. Moreover, the verses were picked from the poetry of ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami, a late fifteenth-century poet. The inscriptions thus staged a model for the pictures’ reception, a model in which the painting would circulate among famous poets such as Jami, prompting responses about the medium and its makers. A possible institutional setting for such a scenario was the majlis, a form of social gathering that fuelled the art of jawab (response).

Features particular to the Qur’an’s presentation of Yusuf’s temptation necessarily influence the interpreters’ treatments of the narrative. Importantly, Surah 12:24 states that sexual desire of Zulaykha (the Arabic name given to wife of the Aziz) also stirred in Yusuf until a warning from God cooled his ardor and caused him to flee her. There is mention of a “witness” who suggested that the Aziz would be helped in determining who was at fault in the incident if he inspected the way Yusuf’s garment was torn. Considerable commentary engaged the qur’anic report of a banquet Zulaykha gave for women of the city, who suffered dramatic consequences from laying eyes on Yusuf’s beauty. Interpreters’ interests in Zulaykha led to a sequel in which, wearied and aged, she reappeared in Yusuf’s life as a person reformed. This extended narrative inspired the philosophy of spiritual love in Jami’s fifteenth-century classic, Yusuf and Zulaykha.

In his essay on Muslim mahākāvyas, Luther Obrock studies exchanges between the cosmopolitan idioms of Sanskrit and Persian at pre-Mughal Sultanate courts. He introduces three remarkable texts: Udayaraja’s Rājavinoda, an encomium that praises the Muzaffarid Sultan Mahmud Begada of Gujarat using terms adapted from idealized representations of Hindu kingship; Kalyana Malla’s Sulamaccarita, a retelling of both the Biblical narrative of David and Bathsheba and the story of the jinn and the fisherman that appears in the Thousand and One Nights; and finally Shrivara’s Kathākautuka, a translation of Jami’s Yūsuf wa Zulaykhā that effectively transforms the Persian, Sufi-influenced masnavī into a Sanskrit kāvya of Shaivite devotion. These works can be understood as sites of cultural and literary encounter where poets and intellectuals experimented creatively to secure Sanskrit’s continuing relevance in the changing literary ecology of the regional sultanates.