Baba Tahir

Baba Tahir, also known by the byname 'Uryan, was a mystic and poet who wrote in a Persian dialect. Rida Quli Khan, writing in the nineteenth century and giving no source, placed him under Daylami rule and gave his death as 401/1010; the Encyclopaedia of Islam treats this as unsupported. An enigmatic quatrain about the "alif-kadd" was read numerically by Mahdi Khan as giving a birth date of 326, a reading the entry calls ingenious but not evidence. ²

The only early historical notice is in the Rahat al-Sudur (c. 601/1204). Its author reports that when the Saljuq sultan Tughril entered Hamadan in 447/1055, Baba Tahir addressed him with a rebuke about how he would treat the Muslims, and the conqueror was impressed. The story points to a death after 447/1055, but it fits a floruit under the Daylamis, the Buyids and their relatives the Kakuyids, whose rule in Hamadan ended with Ibrahim Yinal's expedition in 435/1043-4. He may have been a contemporary of Avicenna, who died at Hamadan in 428/1037. Legends that make him a witness to the execution of 'Ayn al-Qudat in 533 or a contemporary of Nasir al-Din Tusi (d. 672) are pure inventions. ¹

Sources call him Hamadani, and some call him Luri, a form whose link to Lurestan is not settled. His tomb stands on a small hill north-west of Hamadan, in the Bun-i Bazar quarter, beside the grave of a Fatima who is said to be his faithful companion. The building is humble. The tomb is already mentioned by Hamd Allah Mustawfi in the Nuzha (740/1340). ³

The poems are in a dialect very close to literary Persian but mixed. Some forms are typical of the Lur dialects (for example nam becoming num, dastam becoming dastum, and raftam becoming raftum), and some verb forms recall Kurdish and the Gurani of the west. Huart's proposal of 1885 to call it "Muhammadan Pahlavi" has not been accepted. Scholars agree that oral transmission has reshaped the text, and that the poet may have imitated the speech of his followers. ³

The metre is the hazaj musaddas mahdhuf, and a modern editor preferred to call the quatrains du-bayti (distichs) rather than rubai, a name tied to a different metre. The authenticity of some quatrains is doubtful, and Zukowski reports verses in the Diwan of Mulla Muhammad Sufi of Mazandaran. The poems return to a wandering dervish with no roof, who sleeps with a stone for a pillow, is troubled by spiritual anxieties, and calls for annihilation in God (fana') as the only remedy. His sentiments are sincere and his images fresh. He lacks the hedonism of 'Umar Khayyam and his serenity before death, but has a mystic fire that Khayyam lacks. ⁴

Huart's 1885 edition gives 59 quatrains. Leszczynski's German translation (Munich, 1920) renders about 80 quatrains and one ghazal. Husayn Wahid Dastgirdi's Diwan (Tehran, 1306/1927) contains 296 du-bayti and four ghazals, with 62 more in an appendix. Mirza Mahdi Khan's edition in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1904) corrects the earlier text and adds a commentary. Arberry's translation of 1937 renders 60 du-bayti. ⁵

The treatise known as the Kalimat al-qisar ("Brief Sayings") has 368 Arabic maxims in 23 chapters on knowledge, gnosis, inspiration and insight, reason and the soul, this world and the next, dhikr, and sincerity and spiritual retreat. Two examples are "real knowledge is the intuition that follows the knowledge of certainty" and "ecstasy is the loss of the knowledge of existing things". Commentaries include one attributed to 'Ayn al-Qudat (d. 533/1138-9, though a legend links it to Baba Tahir), an anonymous Arabic commentary, and a Persian commentary by Mulla Sultan 'Ali Gunabadi printed in 1326/1906. The Paris manuscript Arab 1903 holds an abridged text of the first eight chapters and a commentary, al-Futuhat al-Rabbaniyya, by Diyani Beg al-'Azizi, completed in Sha'ban 890/September 1485 at the request of Abu '1-Baka, who had owned the text since 853/1449-50 and had let it fall into the well of Zamzam before it was recovered. ⁶

The students of the Hamadan madrasa told him to spend a winter night in icy water to find knowledge. He did so, and in the morning said: "Last night I was a Kurd, and this morning I have become an Arab." Zukowski heard the story in Tehran, and it is still current in Hamadan. The saying appears in the preface to Rumi's Mathnawi, where it is attributed to an unknown ancestor of Ibn Akhi, a Turk of Urmiya, and in Jami's Nafahat al-uns, where it is attributed to Abu 'Abd Allah Babuni. Other legends have him melting the snow on Mount Alvand by the heat of his spiritual fire. ⁶

Gobineau noted in 1859 that the Ahl-i Haqq honoured Baba Tahir and his sister Bibi Fatima. The Sarandiam places him among the angels of the third period and as an incarnation of Azra'il and Nusayr. In its account, the "King of the World" visits Baba Tahir in Hamadan. The thin Fatima Lara, who served the poet and fed the army, dies with her head on the King's knees, and the King promises to reunite them on the Day of Judgement, like Layla and Majnun. Her grave lies beside his. The encyclopaedia suggests that the episode may recall Tughril's entry into Hamadan. ⁷