Manūchihrī's Māzandarān Ode: An English Version

Author(s): A. D. H. Bivar
Source: The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 1 (1990),
pp. 55-63
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25212570
Accessed: 07-09-2016 10:41 UTC

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 MANUCHIHRFS MAZANDARAN ODE:
AN ENGLISH VERSION

By A. D. H. Bivar

For Ehsan Yarshater

"An unconsidered trifle""
The Persian province of Mazandaran has characteristics unique in the land
of Iran, even among its Caspian neighbours. The landscape of mountain,
forest, ricefield and sea has its special freshness and charm, worlds away from
the rocky plateau and searing desert further to the south. Its beauty was
appreciated among others by the Safavid Shah 'Abbas, who built an
engineered highroad hidden to-day by the forest above Galugah, and
maintained favoured residences at Behshahr and Farahabad. For the visiting
stranger, the most obvious impression is that created by the perennial
Mazandaran cloud, a sea of cotton tufts, as it is often described,1 rising
steadily up the hillsides with the growing heat of the day, to sink back into
the valleys with the chill of evening, or fall as soft drizzle through the hours
of darkness. When the traveller ascending the mountainside reaches the level
of condensation, suddenly he is in a world of total humidity, with streaming
perspiration, and water running from the trees and undergrowth. Twenty
minutes later he has passed through the cloudbase, and entered the bone-dry
world of "Iraq". Dry sand replaces the treacherous "yellow clay" (zarde gil)
beneath his feet, and the cool breeze in an instant evaporates the moisture
from his shirt.
A journey in the mountains brings unforgettable images: the skyline of
scented herbs on the high plateau above Chahardeh - bushes of which the
spreading twigs condense the last wisps of rising cloud, channelling moisture
to their roots in a soil where no rain falls; the two limestone sheets of
the Tang-i Shamshlrbur, between which, hardly wider than the loaded
pony, the way runs beside a trickling stream across the Elburz to
Mazandaran;2 the forest floor 2000 feet above Sarkalata alive with tiny
1 Cf. Erich E. Schmidt, Flights over ancient cities of Iran (Chicago, 1940), p. 53 and pi. 57,
"Shore of the cotton sea".
2 H. L. Rabino, Mdzandardn and Astardbdd(London, 1928), p. 59; G. C. Napier, "Extracts
from a diary of a tour in Khorasan, and notes on the eastern Alburz tracts ", Journal of the Royal
Geographical Society, XLVI (1876), p. 70: "From Chardeh [sic] the road rises over easy slopes
to a pass, known as Sar-i Halala, thence over wide green plateaux, and through a short defile
to the Tung-i Shamsherbur, a curious natural passage between two perpendicular sheets of
limestone, as smooth as a wall, and of 20 to 30 ft in height. The softer strata between and on
each side of the limestone have apparently been worn away by the action of the weather. The
passage is 150 yds long, with an average width of 18 ft. A little stream and the path finds an exit
through a natural gap, 14 ft wide and nearly meeting overhead".

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 56 manuchihri's mazandaran ode

crabs, yet ten miles from the sea; the splendour of an osprey fishing on the
Tejen at Sangtarashan, and the knowledge from a village guide that the bird's
local name was surkhdb, that of the epic hero Suhrab;3 on a gloomier note,
the rocky village of Warn near Kiyasar, where the scourge of the poisonous
bug, the shabgaz, leaves children with scars like cigarette-burns on arms and
bodies, and a foreigner lacking immunity risks his life to sleep. Nor indeed
can one ever forget the people of the mountains: sturdy, law-abiding, and
incredibly hospitable, if at times amusingly argumentative: convinced, above
all, that their land is the world's only source of blackberries (tamishk), and
that every solid citizen must live under a roof of ceramic tiles (sufdl), as
indeed I do.
It is to Ehsan Yarshater that I owe thanks, not only for frequent kindness
and encouragement over the years, but also for the strenuous efforts that
made possible my longest and most productive journey in the province,4
enabling me to see something of these and other wonders fortunately still far
from the tourist track. For such personal support, as for his innumerable
contributions to the advancement of every aspect of Iranian Studies, deep
appreciation is due. With memories of Mazandaran in mind, it may be
suitable to offer as my gift for his birthday this English version of the ode in
which the poet Manuchihrl of Damghan (Abu Najm Ahmad b. Qus b.
Ahmad Manuchihrl DamghanI) describes the landscape of Mazandaran.
Written, as the heading in the manuscripts asserts, in praise of the Ziyarid
Amir of Jurjan, Manuchihr b. Qabus (402/1012 to 420/1029), who ruled
much of the area - and therefore naturally composed before that prince's
death - the poem presents a lively picture of the region's features. Since the
poet took as his pen-name (takhallus) Manuchihrl, the derivative from that
of his patron, we cannot doubt that he travelled across the mountains from
his home town of Damghan to the royal court at Jurjan, the modern
Gunbad-i Qabus.
Present-day commentators have occasionally debated whether Manuchihrl
had first-hand knowledge of the Mazandaran hills, or drew his local colour
from hearsay, and from stereotyped literary conceits. The latter are certainly
present. Yet for one who has travelled the mountain routes, if only for a
moment, the authentic local colour of the poet's descriptions seems obvious
in every line. The present contributor is no specialist in the study of Persian
poetry, and does not offer these lines as an essay in scholarship. They are
intended rather to call attention to the interest of Manuchihri's poems, and
3 Manuchihrl mentions the surkhab in his Ode no. XIII: surkhab ghawwasikunad. Kazimirsky
(see n. 7, below), p. 180 translates "/e canard se fait plongeur"; DabirsiyaqI (see n. 8 below), in
his glossary of birds, p. 422, prefers to translate pelican. The Persian dictionaries also offer
uninformed identifications of the bird.
4 Some of the results are incorporated in our Eastern Mazandaran I, Corpus Inscriptionum
Iranicarum, Pt. VI, Vol. VI, Portf. 1 (London, 1978).

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 MANUCHIHRl'S MAZANDARAN ODE 57

to make a specimen quickly accessible for some of those whose Persian is no

better than his own. To preserve in English a verse form, essential to convey
the flavour of the original, the extremely terse wording of the Persian has
occasionally been expanded, and embroidered, to complete the metre and
rhyme. Though from time to time concepts are introduced unstated in the
Persian, efforts were made to preserve the poet's imagery, and introduce
details implicit in the setting. When, for example, in line 19 of the poem, the
hailstorm is likened to the blacksmiths' "mallets of steel" (puldd), the
allusion seems obvious to the township of Pulad Mahalla high in the Elburz
range, where iron was mined, and blacksmiths manufactured weapons
during the Middle Ages.
Another surely authentic feature of the poem is the frequent allusion to
Zoroastrian concepts and customs: the ddhurdn fire, sanctum even of a
modest community; the festival of the Bahmanjana with its celebrations; and
the traditional Zoroastrian modes of music named after Ram, the Spirit of
Joy, and after the Ganj-i Gav, a celebrated treasure discovered in the time of
Khusrau II (a.d. 590-627). These melodies were performed by the minstrels
(khuniydgardn) and musicians (rdmishgardn), as they had been during the
times of the Sasanians.5 Conquered for Islam only under the Abbasids during
the second century of the Hijra, the Caspian region of Tabaristan long kept
alive Zoroastrian traditions, and inscriptions in Pahlavi were still being
written there in the fifth Muslim century, as the inscription of Radkan
shows.6
So far as the text of Manuchihrf s poem is concerned, the situation is not
an entirely happy one. The Paris edition and translation of Kazimirsky7 seem
based on only a single nineteenth-century manuscript, together with use of a
Tehran lithograph edition. Though the meaning is usually clear enough,
variant readings are not cited, and the edition is in no sense critical. The
recent Tehran edition of M. DabirsiyaqI, on the other hand,8 lists 21
manuscripts available in Tehran, from which many readings are included in
his apparatus criticus. None of these copies, however, appears earlier than the
nineteenth century, and if any survives from nearer the period of the poet, it
seems not to have been collated. In particular, the second half of 1. 1001/30
seems obscure, and various emendations have been suggested. I have
attempted to follow DabirsiyaqI's text here, but the poet's exact meaning,
with whatever reading, is still far from clear to me. I include a romanised text
5 Cf. Mary Boyce, "The Parthian gosdn and the Parthian minstrel tradition", JRAS, 1957,
pp. 20-1 and 25.
6 Bivar and Yarshater, Eastern Mazandaran I, p. 7, n. 3 and PI. 38-9.
7 A. de Riberstein Kazimirsky, Menoutchehri: poete persan du lleme siecle de notre ere (du
5ieme de rh^gire^ (Parjs? 1886)? pp 225 and 97, where the poem is no. XXXVI.
8 Divdn-i Manuchihrl DamghanT, ed. Muhammad Dablrsiyaql (Tehran, 1356/1977), p. 66,
no. 31.

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 58 manuchihri's mazandaran ode

of my reading of the poem, with which I provide Dablrsiyaqfs line-numbers

for reference purposes, followed in turn by the English version.

Romanised Persian text

bar amad zi-kuh abr-i Mazandaran
chu mar-i shikanjT, u maz andar an
ba-san-i yak! zangl-yi hamila
shikam karda hangam-i zadan giran.
hame zad In dukhtar-i sar-safed
chu plran-i fartut-i panba-saran.
juz In abr u juz madar-i Zal-i zar [975]
na-zadand chunln pisar madaran
hame amadand az hava khvard khvard
chu panba safee andar, an dukhtaran.
nishastand zaghan ba-balln-ishan
chumn dayagan-i siyah-ma'jaran.
tu goyl ki bagh andarun roz-i barf
saf-i naz bud9 u saf-i 'ar'aran
basf khvaharan and bar rah-i raz
siyah-muzagan u saman-chaduran
ba-pushand dar zer-i chadur hame [980]
sitabraq zi-bala-yi sar ta ba-ran
zi-zaghan bar nuzh goyl ki hast
kulah-i siyah bar sar-i khvaharan.
chunln kargah-i Samarqand gasht
zamin az dar-i Balkh ta-Khavaran
Dar u bam u dlvar-i an kargah
chunln zangiyan-and u kaghazgaran
mar In zangiyan-ra chi kar uftad
ki kaghazgaran-and u kaghazkharan.
na-khvardand kaghaz az In beshtar [985]
na kaghazfurushan na kaghazkharan
shavad kaghaz-i taza u tarr u khushk
chu khvarshed lakhtl ba-tabad bar-an.
wa-lakin shavad tarrl In afzun
chu taband besh andar an nlran.

9 Here I have retained Kazirmirsky's reading, as against Dablrsiyaqfs possibly superior

narbun "pomegranate-tree", since it provides a more convenient translation.

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 MANUCHIHRl'S MAZANDARAN ODE 59

English version
Uprising from the entrails of the hill,
Mazandaran clouds all the valleys fill.
A writhing serpent's form, that tightly holds,
Coil upon coil, the mountain in its folds.
Like some black mother near the hour of birth,
The pregnant ranges lift the swelling earth.
The daughters they bring forth, lo! White of hair
As cotton-tufted greybeards dwelling there.
Besides this cloud, and Zal of ancient fame 5
No mother bore a child thus marked for shame.
On, on they press, those daughters, everywhere,
Like tufts of cotton rising through the air.
Upon their tree-tops perch censorious crows,
As black-veiled village nurses sit in rows.
Now snowfall comes within the garden banks.
The cypress-trees and spruces stand in ranks.
So country sisters to the vineyards go,
With blackened boots, and wraps as white as snow.
Beneath the wrap, a headscarf hanging round, 10
Falls to the thigh, and on the head is bound.
The crows upon the pine-top make us say:
"Those sisters wear their hats of black to-day".
White as a paper-works in Samarqand,
From Balkh to Rayy the snow blots out the land.
Patchwork the door, roof, wall of that abode,
Where blackamoors and fullers share the load.
Yet what befalls these blackamoors, you'd say.
Paper they form, yet paper steal away!
Such paper is consumed more swiftly then
Than merchant's store, or sheets beneath my pen.
True paper, fresh, grows drier hour by hour, 15
When briefly sunlight warms it with its power.
This white expanse grows moister, as the light
Of heaven shines upon it in our sight.

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 60 MANUCHIHRl'S MAZANDARAN ODE

shuda abglran fasirda zi-yakh

chunln kus-i royln-i Iskandaran.
chu sandan-i ahangaran gashta yakh
chu ahangaran abr-i Mazandaran
bar-ayad ba-zer an tagarg az hava [990]
chunan putk-i pulad-i ahangaran.

chi behtar zi-khargah u tarum kunun

ba-khargah u tarum damn adhuran
furo burda mastan sar az behoshl.
bar-avarda avaz-i khunyagaran
ba-josh andarun dlg-i Bahmanjana
ba-gosh andarun Bahman u Qaysaran
sar-i babzan dar sar u ran-i murgh
bun-i babzan dar kaf-i dilbaran.
kabab az tanura dar-avlkhta [995]
chu khunln varaq-ha-yi joshanvaran.
khudavand-i ma gashta mast u kharab
girifta du bazu-yi u chakaran.
yak! namdarl ki ba-nam-i vay
shudastand be nam namavaran,
ba-'umrl chunan gohar-i pak-i tu
na-ayad yak! gohar az goharan
ba-dada ast dad az tan-i khvesh-i-tan
chu neko-dilan u neko-mahzaran.
kasi ku dihad az tan-i khvesh dad [1000]
na-bayad-sh raftan bar-i davaran

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 manuchihri's mazandaran ode 61

The forest pools to ice are hardening.

Like dread Iskandar's drum of bronze they ring.
Ice like the blacksmith's anvil starts to clamour.
Now our land's cloud brings down the blacksmith's
hammer.
Below that cloud the hailstones rattle down,
Like the steel mallets of our blacksmiths' town.

At such a season, what more welcoming 20

Than yurt or shack, and blessed Hearth within?
The heads of tipsy folk sunk down in slumber,
The minstrels striking up a rousing number.
Stewpot for Bahman's feast a-bubbling.
Of Bahman's feats, and Caesars slain, they sing.
The skewered chicken pierced through head and thigh.
(A sweet companion holds the skewer nigh.)
That bleeding morsel on the fire, we find,
Calls riven breastplates to the warrior's mind!
Our prince has drowned his sorrow now, and reeling. 25
Attendants keep his head towards the ceiling.
Yet man of fame with such renown as he
Puts all the famous in obscurity.
For in a life-time never jewel so pure,
Will come forth from the mine - and that is sure.
Justice he rendered for your hurts so keen,
Like the lion-hearted ones of noble mien,
And he that renders justice in the field
To lawyers' wiles shall never have to yield.

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 62 MANUCHIHRl'S MAZANDARAN ODE

mara ba-thana-ha-yi u nest tab

karayl piyada manam ba kharan
tu-ra goyam ay sayyid-i mashriqayn
ki mardum miran-and u tu na-miran
dar-amad tu-ra roz-i Bahmanjana
ba-ferozi In roz-ra bagzaran.
may-i za'fari khvar zi-dast-i but!
ki goyl qazlbl-st az khayzuran
may-i za'faranl ki chun khvarde-ash [1005]
ravad su-yi dil rast chun za'faran
na ba-rang-i u bayad-at rang-i gul
na ba-boy-i u nargis u zaymuran.
zi-ramishgaran ramishl kun talab,
ki ramish buvad nazd-i ramishgaran.
ba-zl hamchunin saliyan-i diraz
danan u daman u chaman u charan
du gosh-at hamesha su-yi Ganj-i Gav
du chashm-at hamesha su-yi dilbaran.

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 manuchihri's mazandaran ode 63

No power have I enough to sing his praise, 30

Who trudging by, at hireling donkeys gaze.10
O Lord of East and West, to thee I say,
Though men must die, thy fame fades not away.11
Now Bahman's festival has dawned for you.
The glory of this day keep well in view.
Sip now the yellow wine from beauty's hand,
Lissom and slender as a willow12 wand.
The saffron wine which as one sinks the draught,
Lights up the heart swift as an arrow-shaft.
With such a glow, what colour has the rose? 35
What fragrance where the sweet narcissus grows,
Or scented basil? Players, raise a measure!
Forever let them sound the mode of pleasure.
Thus mayest thou thrive for many a year and long,
Sprightly and gay and mettlesome and strong.
Ears tuned to the mode of the "Cow's treasure",
Eyes gazing in the sweetheart's stars of pleasure.

10 The correct reading of the text is uncertain here. Kazimirsky reads: gar aylpiyada manam
ba-kharan " Si tu vas a pied qui que tu sois, moi je serai avec les anes "; but this does not seem
an entirely apposite meaning. DabirsiyaqI, p. 68, prints the first word as kardyi, and cites several
emendations in the note, of widely differing and hardly more satisfactory sense.
11 Kazimirsky read turdb-and " Though men are dust", but the general meaning of the phrase
is hardly in doubt.
12 khayzuran, literally "bamboo", lacks an erotic nuance in English, so ''willow" seems a
more appropriate translation. Al-Khayzuran was, however, the name of the celebrated
concubine of the Caliph al-Mahdl, and the mother of al-Hadland Harun al-Rashld, cf. Hilal al
Sabf Rusum Dar al-Khilafa, tr. Elie A. Salem (Beirut, 1977), p. 50.

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