Iranshah - The Kushnameh: The Persian Epic of Kush the Tusked

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

In the early 2000s, while working with Iranian scholars to locate material related to ancient and medieval Korea described in Persian manuscripts, I came across The Kushnameh, a Persian epic and part of a mythical history of Iran written by Iranshah b. Abul-Khayr between the years 1108 and 1111. Not only was the book not well known to Korean scholars, but I was surprised to learn that the land of Besila that appears in the book refers to the ancient Korean kingdom of Silla. As a scholar who has studied historical encounters between Korea and the Middle East, the Besila story in The Kushnameh, although in the form of an epic romance, was of extraordinary interest to me. I thus worked with Daryoosh Akbarzadeh to translate the parts of The Kushnameh set in Korea into Korean, using Jall Matns edition of the text. As a result of this work, over the past decade, three international conferences on The Kushnameh were held in Seoul, Tehran, and Istanbul.

It was my great luck to meet Kaveh Hemmat, and I suggested he translate The Kushnameh into English in order to share it with a wider audience of researchers and readers. With the support of the Korean Studies Promotion Services, in 2017 Dr. Hemmat began this translation, based on the British Library manuscript, OR 2780. Thanks to his efforts, I hope that the scholarly world and ordinary readers with an interest in Persian literature and historical interactions between Korea and the Middle East will find this book useful.

In truth, our research on The Kushnameh, including this translation, would not have been possible without generous support from the government of Korea. This work was supported by the Laboratory Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and by the Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS 2015 LAB 1250001).

Finally, special words of appreciation go to Nam-Kyu Min and Kyoo Chul Moon, both of whom provided unwavering support and patient advice throughout the research process. I would also like to thank the University of California Press for their interest in the book, especially Eric Schmidt and the editorial staff for their professional advice and cooperation during all stages of production.

Hee Soo Lee

June 2021

The present work is only one of the more visible results of a long, collaborative endeavor, and I am grateful for the support of Hee Soo Lee and other members of the project for all their work. I would like to thank Cameron Cross and Austin OMalley, much more knowledgeable scholars of Persian literature than myself, for their early feedback on the translation. My thinking about the text has benefited greatly from conversation with colleagues in the Great Lakes Adiban Society, including Alexandra Hoffmann, Rachel Schine, Sam Lasman, and Paul Losensky. Special thanks are due to editors Eric Schmidt and Cindy Fulton and copyeditor Caroline Knapp for their patience, diligence, and speed in helping to bring this volume to the public. I would also like to thank my father, Amrollah Hemmat, a far more accomplished translator than myself, for encouraging me to take on this project with the advice that one learns the art of translation from the many hours spent doing the work. I wish to express gratitude and appreciation to my young daughter, Veda, for her patience while I was at the computer even more than usual, and for her persistent curiosity, which brings me joy every day. Finally, and most of all, I would like to thank my partner, zge Kocak Hemmat, the love of my life, for her encouragement, patience, and feedback, for being not only my closest and dearest companion, but a partner in reading and thinking.

Kaveh Hemmat

June 2021