Rashīd al-Dīn Watwāt

Rashīd ad-Dīn Muhammad ibn Muḥammad al-ʿUmarī ( Arabic رشید الدین محمد بن محمد العمري, DMG Rašīd ad-Dīn Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Ǧalīl al-ʿUmarī ) - with the surname "Watwāt" ( Arabic وطواط, DMG Waṭwāṭ ), so " bat " (since it was probably a particularly small, unattractive man) - was one of the most important Muslim writers of the 12th century and the central figure of cultural life at the court of the aspiring Choresm Shahs from the Anushteginid dynasty (1077–1231). The alleged descendant of the caliph Umar ibn al-Chattab (hence the Nisba Umari ) was probably born in Balch or Bukhara in 1088/89 and then spent most of his long life in the Choresm capital of Gurganj (now Köneürgenç ), where he lived in 1182/83 ( or five years earlier) died.

Always successfully defending his exclusive position at the court of the Khorezm Shahs (against other poets like Chaqani ), Raschid ad-Din Vatvat (or simply Raschid-i Vatvat), who wrote in Persian and Arabic , primarily served Ala ad-Din Atsiz (reigned 1027 / 28-1056), but also his successor Il-Arslan (reigned 1056–1172) as "Head of State Chancellery" and as such (ie in the name of the Shahs) and as a committed private scholar wrote a large number of rhetorically impressive letters ( including to the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad and the Seljuk Sultan Sandschar ), some of which were collected and have been preserved until today. In addition, Vatvat created, among other things, annotated collections of 100 sayings each of the four rightly guided caliphs (the best known is on Ali ) and a much admired handbook of rhetorical figures called "The gardens of magic in the subtleties of poetry" . His far-reaching fame is based more on his prose works than on his poetry (several thousand verses), which are mainly very artistic and often almost exaggeratedly embellished poems of praise ( qasids ) on Atsiz and his victories.

Since Vatvat, who was known for his difficult character and his arrogance, was a loyal supporter of the Anuschteginids despite occasional tensions between him and Atsiz, he attracted, among other things, the enmity of the powerful Seljuk sultan Sandschar, whose supremacy over Khorezm Atsiz repeatedly tried to shake off. Vatvat, who was in contact with many other poets of his time , fought a kind of "poetic war" with Anvari , also Enweri (died 1152), the court poet of the Seljuks, and allegedly had almost been executed by Sandschar he wouldn't have made him laugh.

Works and literature

• Saʿīd Nafīsī (Editor): دیوان رشید الدین وطواط (Divān-i Rašīd ad-Dīn Vaṭvāṭ) , Tehran 1339 (1960) = collection of Vatvat's Persian poems
• ʿAbbās Iqbāl Āštiyānī (Editor): حدائق‌ السحر فی دقائق ‌الشعر (Ḥadāʾiq as-siḥr fī daqāʾiq aš-šiʿr) , Tehran 1308 (1929/30) = Vatvats "The gardens of magic in the subtleties of poetry"
• Heribert Horst: Arabic letters from the Ḫōrazmšāhs to the caliph's court from the pen of Rašīd ad-Dīn Waṭwāṭ in: ZDMG , Vol. 116 (1966), pp. 24-43 (10 letters in translation) and the state administration of the Großselǧūqen and Ḫōrazmšāhs , Wiesbaden 1964 (summary of the content of several letters)
• Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer (Ed. And transl.): Ali's Hundred Sprüche, parphrased in Arabic and Persian by Reschideddin Watwat , Leipzig 1837
• Edward Granville Browne : A literary history of Persia , Vol. II - From Firdawsí to Saʿdí (1000-1290), Cambridge 1956, pp. 308-310 and 330-333
• Françoise C. de Blois: Article “Rashīd al-Dīn Waṭwāṭ” in: Encyclopaedia of Islam , New Edition (ed. By PJ Bearman et al.), Leiden 1960–2004
• Jan Rypka: History of Iranian literature (ed. By Karl Jahn ), Dordrecht 1968, p. 200

See also

• List of Persian writers
• Persian literature