Hamid Dabashi - Truth and Narrative: The Untimely Thoughts of Ayn Al-Qudat

The Untimely Thoughts of Ayn al-Qut al-Hamadhn

First published in 1999
by Curzon Press

This edition published 2016 by Routledge
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1999 Hamid Dabashi

Typeset in Sabon by LaserScript, Mitcham, Surrey

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ISBN 13 : 978-0-7007-1002-7 (hbk)

For
Theodore Riccardi, Jr

Gli arredi festivi gi cadano infranti,
.
Di barbare schiere latroce ululato
Nel santo delubro del Nume tuon!
[Throw down and destroy all festive decorations,
.
The horrible howlings of barbarian legions
have thundered in the Holy Temple of God!]
Temistocle Solera
From Giuseppe Verdis Nabucco

This book has been in gestation for quite a number of years. The idea of a book on Ayn al-Qut was first suggested to me by Ian Netton in the course of a conference in Washington, DC. Lengthy conversations with Theodore Riccardi on a range of issues have always been a source of critical thinking in this, as in all my other work. My detecting Ayn al-Qut counter-narrating the sacred universe of his birth and breeding occurred at a time of wonderful and enabling dialogues with Theodore Riccardi. I dedicate this book to him in recognition of those liberating moments when ideas matter most, institutions least, objectivity nowhere in sight. George Salibas impeccable sense of critical judgment, seasoned by a right dose of melting irony, has been instrumental to my reading of our intellectual history. Mahmoud Omidsalar, as always, is my partner to endless conversations and my first and fiercest reader. Reza Afshari is one of my most recent addressees. I deeply admire his sense of moral outrage. To all these dear friends and distinguished scholars goes my most sincere gratitude. They will hear and read the echoes of their voice in mine. Said Amir Arjomand and Mahmud Omidsalar have read earlier versions of this text and have given me much advice. Had it not been for Said Amir Arjomand, I would have missed the text of Ghyat al-Imkn f Diryat al-Makn . Acquisition of the manuscript of Ayn al-Quts letters was facilitated for me by my graduate student Pardis Minuchehr during her trips to Turkey and Iran. I am extremely grateful for her help. Before I heard Muhammad Ghaffari, one of our most brilliant actors/directors, reading Ayn al-Quts letters out loud, I could never imagine the power of his words. For extraordinary moments of reading Ayn al-Qut together, I am thankful to Muhammad Ghaffari. I am extremely grateful to Professor Ahmad Mahdavi Damghani, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of Arabic poetry has been instrumental in my reading of poems appearing in Ayn al-Quts texts. It has been a rare privilege for me to have uninhibited access to the generosity of Professor Damghani and his phenomenal knowledge of medieval adab in both its Arabic and Persian contexts. Through his son Amir Hossein, the prominent Iranian scholar Nasrollah Pourjavady sent me a few of his most recent publications. Without this generosity I would not have had access to these crucial texts. I thank him for his friendship and colleagiality. Another distinguished Iranian scholar, Muhammad Reza Shafii Kadkani, has not only been a model of precision and insight in his scholarship always to be imitated, never to be matched but has kindly kept me abreast of his most recent works. I have benefitted much from this privileged position.

My sincerest thanks, as always, go to Selma Pastor, the loyal partner of my writing craze for a decade and half now. She has spoiled me beyond any reasonable expectation, as with age my already indecipherable handwriting is becoming increasingly atrocious. I have written this book on a strange assortment of objects in even a stranger geography of places. The 30th Street Station in Philadelphia (the city in which I have lived most of my adult life and which I dearly love), the Union Station in Washington, D.C., and that God-forsaken center of the universe, Penn Station in New York are the three spots, linked by the Yankee Clipper, in which the idea of this book gradually took shape. From these three points on the AMTRAK line to the heat of Mezzagiorno in Calabria, from the post-modern state of New Jersey to the ancient villages of Europe I have written and mailed bits and pieces of this book to Selma in Sewell, N.J. She has deciphered my hieroglyphics with astonishing competence and returned back to me sections and chapters of what you are about to read. She has graciously coped with my insatiable urge for revision. All I have seen from her have been clean and competently typed pages. All she has seen from me have been scribble-scrabbled scrawlings in search of clarity and precision. All the successes of that search are hers, the failings mine. The task of proofreading was done first by Manuchehr Kashef and then by Kamran Rastegar, my colleague and graduate student at Columbia, respectively. I am grateful to both of them. The final preparation of the Index is also the work of Kamran Rastegar.

I could not have written this book without the benefit of the cumulative efforts of a number of distinguished scholars who have facilitated our access to Ayn al-Quts texts. Af Usayrn, the prominent Ayn al-Qut scholar, must be considered the doyen of this area. Without Usayrns monumental work on Ayn al-Qut, no one else could have had accurate access to the man and his ideas. Usayrns critical editions of Ayn al-Quts texts and his copious introductions and notes are indispensable sources of any relatively reliable interpretative approach to the ideas of the medieval Persian. Rahim Farmanashs biographical treatise, Shar-i Awl wa thr-i Ayn al-Qut , is a safe and sound guide through the maze of hagiographical sources on Ayn al-Qut. Mohammed ben Abd el-Jalils edition and annotated translation of Shakw al-Gharb , as well as A. J. Arberrys annotated English rendition of it, are brilliant pieces of Orientalist scholarship. E. Bertels, E. Browne, J. Rypka, and Z. af have each discussed Ayn al-Quts writings in their respective histories of Persian (mystical) literature. I have benefited from all these works. That in my reading of Ayn al-Qut I have radically departed, in tone and texture, language and rhetoric, from the underlying sentiments of all these prominent scholars is no indication of ingratitude. Without their groundbreaking work, no one could even begin to read Ayn al-Qut. But great giants are never immune to pygmies jumping on their shoulders. We are all the sum of moral debts we incur. The rest is vanity.

The following is a chronology of some major social, political, and intellectual events surrounding the time and thoughts of Ayn al-Qut. The events are inevitably selective. They are meant to suggest some of the major events that were present and perhaps paramount in Ayn al-Quts mind when he lived and wrote his books. In every chronological item, the first date is in the Islamic calendar, the second in the Gregorian.