Abū Tāhir Tarsūsī

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Abū Tāhir Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Alī ibn Mūsā at-Tarsūsī also Tartūsī or Tūsī ( Persian ابو طاهر محمد بن حسن بن علی بن موسی الطرسوسی, DMG Abū Ṭāhir Muḥammad b. Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. Mūsā aṭ-Ṭarsūsī ) was a professional storyteller in Iran in the 12th century, of whom several prose stories have come down, including the Dārāb-nāma .

Lifetime

Little is known about the person of Abū Tāhir. The time he lived and worked can only be roughly determined by the chronological order of his texts. On the basis of linguistic studies, the Iranist Gilbert Lazard has located the writing of Abū Tāhir's stories in the 11th or 12th century. He considers it impossible to write it after the 12th century. Mahmud Omidsalar has recently confirmed Lazard's assessment in a detailed text analysis of the Dārāb-nāma . He dates the writing of the text to the 6th century, which essentially corresponds to the 12th century Christian calendar.

origin

Abū Tāhir's origin is also uncertain, as his nisba is sometimes given as Tūsī, Tartūsī or Tarsūsī. These variants are possibly due to the fact that Abu Tāhir originally comes from Tūs in Khorasan and that he himself or one of his ancestors stayed temporarily either in Tarsus in what is now Turkey or Tartus in Syria. There, in the 9th and 10th centuries, numerous Muslim fighters, also from distant areas such as Khorasan, came together to fight the Byzantines. Many of them later returned to their countries of origin and took the names of the places where they fought into their Nisba. The fact that Abū Tāhir is preferably called Tarsūsī or Tartūsī in Persian manuscripts, but is usually called Tūsī in Turkish manuscripts of his Abū Muslim-nāma , could be due to the copyist's attempt to make the author more interesting by referring to the more distant place.

Abū Tāhir's writings indicate that he was inclined to Shia and was an advocate of the Shuʿūbīya , a Persian national movement that sought to push back the increasing Arab dominance in the country.

Works

The works of Abū Tāhir can be roughly divided into two groups: those relating to pre-Islamic Iran and others whose protagonists date from the early Islamic period. The first includes the Dārāb-nāma , which deals with Dārāb, the grandson of the Kayanid prince Isfandiyār , and his son Iskandar. The Qirān-i Habaschī ( Qiran of the Abyssinians ) is played in the time of the first Kayanid Kai Kobad , the Qahramān-nāma ("The Book of Qahramān") in the Hushangs . The second group of texts includes three other works: The Abū Muslim-nāma deals with the revolt of Abū Muslim in Khorasan against the Umayyads in the 8th century. The Musayyab-nāma is about the events after the Battle of Karbala , in which the Prophet's grandson and third Shiite Imam, Husayn , was killed. The heroic deeds of Husayn's half-brother and avenger Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya have been depicted by Abū Tāhir in Jang-nāma-yi Muhammad Hanafiya ( The Book of Battles of Muhammad Hanafiyya ).

literature

  • Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan Abū Ṭāhir Ṭarsūsī: Ḥamāsa-yi Qirān-i Ḥabašī. Bar asās-e nusḫa-ye fārsī-ye kitābḫāne-ye Berlīn wa tarǧuma-ye baḫšhā-ye oftāde az nusḫa-ye turkī-ye kitābḫāne-ye Mellī-ye Pārīs. Ed. Mīlād Ǧa'farpur. Entešārāt-e Elmī wa Farhangī, Tehran 1395hš (= 2016).
  • Muḥammad ibn-Ḥasan Abū Ṭāhir Ṭarṭūsī: Abū Muslim-nāma. Ed. Ḥusayn Ismā'īlī, 4 vols., Entešārāt-e Mo'īn, Našr-i Qaṭra; Tehran 1380hš (= 2001).
  • Abū Ṭāhir aṭ-Ṭarsūsī: Dārāb-nāma-yi Ṭarsūsī. Ed. Zabīḥollāh Ṣafā, 2 vols., Šerkat-e entešārāt-e ʿelmī o farhangī, Tehran 1344–46hš / 1965–68, Repr. 1374hš / 1996. Digitized
  • Marina Gaillard: “Abū Ṭāhir Ṭarsūsī”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, three (EI³). Edited by Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, D. Matringe u. a. First published online: 2007. First print edition: ISBN 9789004161641 , 2007, 2007-3. Consulted online on 12 February 2018. (Gaillard, EI³)
  • Gilbert Lazard: La langue des plus anciens monuments de la prose persane. Librairie C. Klinckensieck, Paris 1963. pp. 125f. (No. 70)
  • Mahmud Omidsalar: "Dārāb-nāma-ye Ṭarsūsī: barrasī-ye tasḥīḥ-e ostād Ṣafā wa bāz-nigarī dar tārīḫ-e tā'līf-e kitāb", in ders .: Sī-o-do maqā ola dar naqīḥ- -e mutūn-e adabī. Bunyād-e Mawqūfāt-e Doctor Maḥmūd Afšār, Tehran 1389hš / 2010. Pp. 317-340.

References and comments

  1. ↑ Lazard, La langue des plus anciens monuments , pp. 125f.
  2. ↑ Omidsalar, "Dārāb-nāma-ye Ṭarsūsī," 2010.
  3. ^ Gaillard, "Abū Ṭāhir Ṭarsūsī", EI³.
  4. ^ Gaillard, "Abū Ṭāhir Ṭarsūsī", EI³.
personal data
SURNAME Tarsūsī, Abū Tāhir
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abū Tāhir Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Alī ibn Mūsā at-Tarsūsī (full name); ابو طاهر محمد بن حسن بن علی بن موسی الطرسوسی (Persian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Iranian professional storyteller
DATE OF BIRTH 11th century or 12th century
DATE OF DEATH 12th century or 13th century