Awhadi (Rukn al-Din)

Rukn al-Din Awhadi was born about 680 AH (1281-2) at Maragha in Adharbayjan. He lived for many years in Isfahan, and the author of the Haft Iklim, for that reason, called him a native of that city. Little is known of his life, but there is scarcely any doubt that he died in 738 AH (1337-8), and he was buried at his birthplace, where his tombstone is still to be seen. ¹

He took his takhallus from the name of his master, Shaykh Awhad al-Din of Kirman. His diwan amounts to about ten thousand verses, some of them eulogies of his patrons, the Ilkhan Abu Sa'id and his vizier Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad, son of Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah. In one poem he attacks the pretensions of a contemporary poet called Salman (the entry is cut off at this point in the scan). As a poet he shows little originality, and most Persian critics rank him second-rate, because his diction is weak in places and much of his verse is laboured. ¹

His best work is in his mathnawis. The earlier, the Dah-nama, also called the Mantiq al-'ushshaq in some manuscripts, is ten letters from an imaginary lover to his mistress. It was dedicated in 706 AH (1306-7) to Wajih al-Din, grandson of Nasir al-Din of Tus. The longer and far better-known Jam-i Jam, the goblet of Jamshid, was written in 733 AH (1332-3) and dedicated to Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad. Like Sana'i's Hadiqat al-haqiqa, it covers the whole field of ethics, and its last part turns to the Sufi path. ¹