Fashioning Persian Identity: Asadi’s Staged Dispute between a Zoroastrian and a Muslim

This paper focuses on the earliest surviving specimens of Persian debate poetry ( mon ā zara ) , a genre which deals with controversial topics such as the Persians’ supremacy over the Arabs or the superiority of Islam over Zoroastrianism. Focusing on one panegyric by the poet Asadi Tusi (1 01 0–70) , this paper contextualizes such debates in a cultural milieu of eleventh-century Persia. It shows how poets, as an indispensable part of the court hierarchy, participated in constructing a new identity for Persians by formulating a Persian standpoint on controversies of the day.

A popular genre in Persian poetic tradition is the monāzara (or monāzera), a disputation or debate between two entities, objects, ideas, or persons (Keyvāni, 199-203;Pourjavady, 99-100, 627-32;Seyed-Gohrab 2020;de Bruijn 2006-7;Abdullaeva 2009Abdullaeva , 2012;;Tafazzoli 1997Tafazzoli /1376, 256-59;, 256-59;Reinink and Vanstiphout 1991;van Gelder 1987van Gelder , 1991;;Belhaj 2016).The genre goes back to pre-Islamic times, when disputes were written in various languages.After the conquest of Persia and the start of the conversion of Persians to Islam in the seventh century, debate poems came into vogue in the intellectual milieu and at the élite courts of the Abbasid period (750-1258).At gatherings organized at the courts or mansions of the aristocracy, religious leaders of various communities were invited to debate controversial religious subjects (Griffith;van Berkel;Bauer,.Such contests took place between members of the Zoroastrian communities and Muslims or Muslims and Christians, Manicheans, or Jews.These debates, which belong to the genre of apologetic literature, have survived in both Middle Persian and New Persian.1 The fact that disputations became popular during this period shows how religious communities in the early Islamic Middle East responded to the rise of Islam.The Arab-Islamic invasion of Persia created a very complex situation for Persians as they processed the socio-political transformation and the integration of Islam in their lives.Organizing debate gatherings (majles) between members of different religions, including Zoroastrianism, enabled Persians as new converts to reflect on their previous religion and how it contrasts with the new religion.What are the praiseworthy qualities of each religion, and how could they be confident of the advantages of Islam?Moreover, such debates enabled the Persians to publicly renew their conversion, emphasizing that they are true Muslims and that they have distanced themselves from Zoroastrianism.Such regular debates also enabled Muslims to gain knowledge of the other religions, creating an interreligious dialogue.At Islamic courts, information about Zoroastrianism was freely available, especially because Persian converts occupied key political positions.Analysing Mādayān ī Gizistag Abālish (The Book of the Accursed Abālish), a dispute between a Zoroastrian priest and a heretical dualist (zandik) at the court of the caliph Ma ʾmun (r., in which the latter acts as judge and takes the side of the Zoroastrian priest, Sahner gives examples (68) of Zoroastrian converts at the Abbasid court, observing that rulers such as Ma ʾmun knew a good deal about Zoroastrianism as some of those converts served him and other Abbasid rulers as viziers-most famously, the brothers Fazl b.Sahl (d. 818) and Hasan b.Sahl (d.850-1).Jealousy and court intrigues led to accusations that some of these converts were crypto-Zoroastrians.While Fazl b.Sahl was accused falsely (and unsuccessful) of remaining a Zoroastrian, Māzyār (d.840), the Qārenid prince of Tabaristan, represents an opposite case.After being overthrown by a rival, he fled to Baghdad to ask for the caliph's help.Ma ʾmun agreed to support him if he would convert to Islam.Māzyār accepted, but, after his return to Persia, he rejected Islam, and "resumed practicing Zoroastrianism, and reportedly harassed local Muslims" (Sahner,(68)(69).
As we shall presently see, against the backdrop of actual debates between individuals at the courts, the genre of the literary debate emerged, which in a stylized fashion depicted the differences between religions and proclaimed the superiority of one religion over another.Persian debate poems would remain popular through the eleventh century, during which Persian poets addressed Islamic religious supremacy in a context of Arab ethnic hegemony in order to create a new identity for Persian Muslims.

The Poet, His Life and Work
Asadi Tusi (1010-70) served at the court of the Daylamite Abu Nasr Jastān.2He is among the few poets whom we know to have copied another author's manuscript, namely Abu Mansur Movaffaq Heravi ( fl. 980-90)'s Ketāb al-abniya ʿan haqāʾeq al-adviya (The Book of the Foundations of Real Properties of the Remedies), which he did in 1055-56.In 1065-66, he moved to Nakhjavān, where he completed the epic Garshāsp-nāma (Book of Garshāsp), dedicating it to the ruler of Nakhjavān, Abu Dolaf Shāybāni (de Blois 2000;Sādeqi 2003Sādeqi -4/1384;;Seyed-Gohrab and McGlinn, 27-28).In addition to this epic of nine thousand couplets in the motaqāreb meter, he wrote a dictionary of Persian, the Loghat-e Fors, which defines unfamiliar vocabulary in the Persian poetry of Khorasan for the people of Arrān and Azerbaijan.3It is the oldest extant dictionary, preserving a large number of couplets from tenth-century poets.Perhaps the oldest manuscript is in the unique miscellany Safina-ye Tabriz (The Vessel of Tabriz), dated 19 July 1321.
Asadi's originality as a poet is evident in his Garshāsp-nāma and five debate poems (munāzarāt).The debates are couched in the form of qasida, which, in Khaleghi-Motlagh's words is "unprecedented in Arabic or New Persian."These debates deal with "Bow and Arrow (Neyza ō kamān)," "Day and Night (Shab ō ruz)," "The Sky and the Earth (Āsmān ō zamin)," "Arabs and Persians (ʿArab ō ʿAjam)," and "A Zoroastrian and a Muslim (Mogh ō Mosalmān)."As we will shortly see, the gist of the last two debates is that a Muslim Persian is superior both to a Zoroastrian and to an Arab Muslim.Although these disputes are sometimes regarded as an example of pro-Shoʿubiyya statement, the reality is more complex.The Shoʿubiyya movement promoted the equality of non-Arabs, especially Persians, with Arabs in the fields of religion and literature, from the ninth century to the eleventh century.4In Asadi's debates, being of Persian stock is a precondition for a loftier culture and religion.
Asadi often employs archaic language in his poetry, which sometimes makes it hard for a modern reader to appreciate.Khaleghi-Motlagh is right that Asadi is more concerned with the poetic value of his versification than with the story line.One reason why his Garshāsp-nāma failed to present Garshāsp as a greater hero than Ferdowsi's Rustam was Asadi's obsession with descriptions, pieces of didactic and homiletic nature, and his prodigious use of rhetorical figures, rather than with telling the story, a quality in which Ferdowsi excels in every respect.It should be mentioned that these elements make Asadi's poetry superior in term of poetic merits (Omidsalar).5 This paper aims at analyzing Asadi's dispute between "A Zoroastrian and a Muslim," contextualizing it within the socio-political and religious milieu of the time.To my knowledge, historians of Persian literature have not analyzed this debate.Studies on Persian debate poetry make only passing references to the poem, without paying attention to the cultural and literary value of such apologetic writings and the purposes of such poems.Broadly speaking, Asadi's dispute poems belong to the type of debates organized in the majles culture of the Abbasid era (Brookshaw).6At the Abbasid court, such debates took place not only as a ritual performance confirming Islam as the pre-eminent religion but also to address the challenges Islam was facing as a new religion.Such debates integrate politics with religion, addressing questions of ethnicity Journal of persianate studies 16 (2023) 1-24 and loyalty.In addition, these debates were a courtly entertainment in which poetry was recited to entertain the courtiers and to elicit praise for the virtuosity of the poet, who could display his originality and mastery in a strictly conventional poetic tradition.

Asadi's Monāzaras
Although Khaleghi-Motlagh edited and published the disputation in 1978, European scholars such as Carl Hermann Ethé (1844Ethé ( -1917) ) and Evgeniĭ Èduardovich Berthels (1890Berthels ( -1957) ) had already devoted attention to them (see Berthels, II, 20-22;Ethé;Khaleghi-Motlagh 1977/1356, 671-78;Abdullaeva, 2009, 73-75).We do not have any earlier texts devoted to questions of conversion and the superiority of one religion or ethnicity over another.A few older debates in verse form appear in Ferdowsi's Shāh-nāma as parts of a larger narrative.The Shāh-nāma includes debates between the prophet Mani and a high-ranking Zoroastrian priest and between a Zoroastrian priest and Mazdak.But Asadi's monāzaras are different, belonging to the efflorescence of Persian literature in the eleventh century, which introduced new genres, themes, and motifs in the production of a Persian Islamic culture.Asadi is original in introducing such debates, which are integrated within a qasida form.The debates constitute the opening section (nasib) of the qasida, which is followed by the gorizgāh and madih.These nasibs are quite long, longer than the praise section, whereas a common Persian nasib does not commonly exceed fifteen couplets.The dialogue form creates suspense, especially by giving the first turn to the adversary, which invites the audience to anticipate his rival's response.To my knowledge, Asadi's disputes between a Zoroastrian and a Muslim, and a Persian and an Arab, were not imitated by later generations of Persian poets.One thirteenth century masnavi, entitled "Hekāyat-e shāhzāda-ye Irān-zamin bā ʿOmar-e Khattāb (The Tale of the Prince of Iran with ʿOmar b. al-Khattāb)" (Fereydun b.Marzbān, fols.137-447), presents a debate over how to rule an empire between the captured son of the last Sasanian shah Yazdegerd III (r.632-51) and the second caliph ʿOmar (r.634-44) (Sahner, 65).The poem opens with ʿOmar addressing the captured prince, assuring him that he is safe and asking he wishes.The prince responds, "Find me a ruined village."ʿOmar gives the order to seek such a village in the entire Persian empire, but they cannot find one.The caliph asks the prince, "Why do you want a ruined village?Choose a thriving one."The prince says that his intention was to give ʿOmar a lesson in how to rule until the day of reckoning.
It is not clear whether the Zoroastrian and Muslim in Asadi's poem are based on specific individuals of his time.The text is purely literary, the persona is imaginative, and the poem is designed to be performed not only as a pastime for courtiers, but also to reinforce and renew power relationships.Such poems are certainly a warning not to err in religion and not to be tempted to return to Zoroastrianism, as some individuals did.8Information about the poem's audience is lacking, but it was probably performed for Persian Muslim courtiers who wanted to hear a set of Zoroastrian beliefs, as a nostalgic glimpse of a by-gone culture, and to see how Zoroastrian norms, rituals, and values contrasted to those of the new religion.Asadi's other debate that we will consider here, between a Persian and an Arab, makes it clear that the Persians are superior to the Arabs and are better Muslims.The two poems complement each other.Yet, Khaleghi-Motlagh's characterization of these debates as anti-Shoʿubiyya is problematic, when we consider that the Arab is defeated by the Persian and that prejudicial traits are associated with the characters of Arabs.
It is also not clear whether there is any historical reality behind the narrative.The Zoroastrian is just a literary figure in this poem, but the poet is probably imagining him as a high-ranking personage, as was common in other debates in which Zoroastrians participated.Asadi bases his debate on the power of argumentation.At the beginning, he states that the loser must convert to whichever side has the more persuasive arguments.As we know from various sources, high-ranking Zoroastrian priests were excellent debaters.This may be one reason that Asadi refers to the power of argumentation.In Abālish, as Sahner indicates (67), the key debater is the famous priest Ādurfarnbag, the Zoroastrian leader in Baghdad, who compiled the Dēnkard and was the author of a large collection of legal responsa-many of which address the challenges 8 In other debates, the fear of conversion to other religions dominates.In Mādayān ī Gizistag Abālish, the main protagonist is Abālish, who was a good Zoroastrian until he erred in his doctrine and became a dualist (zandiq) and starting disputing with people.As Sahner states (66-67), "Abāliš' fall from grace occurred during a visit to a fire temple called 'Pušt.' The text tells us that he came there seeking to take the wāj-the priest's blessing before the meal-but no one was available to help him.Therefore, he left the temple and bumped into a man who was possessed by Wrath (Pahl.xešm), one of the most powerful demons, sometimes associated in Zoroastrian lore with Arabs and Islam."He comes to Baghdad and it is here that Ma ʾmūn and the qāzi of Baghdad, assemble "a motley crew of debaters to challenge Abāliš, including Muslims, Jews, and Christians."Asadi's poem contains one hundred and eight couplets and is structured around the superiority of fire over earth as claimed by Zoroastrians, giving several convincing arguments about the validity of Zoroastrian beliefs and rituals.In many debates, there is a judge who sides with one of the parties, but here there is no judge and the rhetorical structure indicates that the Muslim is going to win.The Muslim is allotted thirty-seven couplets, while the Zoroastrian gets twenty-night.9The conversion of the Zoroastrian to Islam is a marker of Islam's triumph.It is symbolic for a Zoroastrian to be defeated at such an aristocratic Persian gathering, not only showing the superiority of Islam over Zoroastrianism, but also emphasizing the lofty intellectual aptitude that the followers of the new religion had acquired.And yet, Asadi, who authored the epic Garshāsp-nāma, which preserves part of pre-Islamic Persian culture, safeguarded also the memories of Zoroastrian past.Although the Muslim Persian wins over the Zoroastrian, the poet has succeeded in making a statement about Zoroastrianism, placing it at the center of a courtly debate four hundred years after the Arab Muslim conquest.
The Zoroastrian begins with arguments in praise of fire, from lines four to thirty-three.10The Muslim commences his counter-arguments by focusing on the qualities of the earth, from lines thirty-four to seventy-one.The two parties have almost equal numbers of lines.Couplets 72-73 emphasize the shortcomings of the Zoroastrian in presenting his arguments, followed by praise of Islam as the true religion (din-e haqiqat) and its prophet as the best of prophets.Asadi started his Garshāsp-nāma with an encomium on God (eighteen couplets), followed by praise of the prophet with references to his nocturnal ascension (twenty couplets), while chapter three is devoted to extolling Islam (in thirty-night couplets) as the true religion (Asadi, 1-5).In this monāzara, couplets 74-75 function as the gorizgāh, in which the poet mentions the patron's name.Here he refers to the just king (shāh-e ʿādel) and then to the vizier, Abu Nasr Ahmad b. ʿAli: 9 In Abālish, the caliph Ma ʾmun sides with the Zoroastrian priest.In other instances, as reported in Masʿudi's Moruj al-dhahab, he executes people of other religious convictions, as in the story of ten Manichaeans whom he orders to spit on the portrait of Prophet Mani and, when they refuse, he orders their execution.10 On the significance of fire in Zoroastrianism, see Boyce.Lewis,.Through this characterization, he creates space for himself to show his poetic skills, devoting twenty-nine couplets on various characteristics of fire and showing how he can connect fire to other elements (earth, water, and wind), as well as to the role of fire in Zoroastrianism.The same applies for the earth, which he associates with Islam in thirty-seven couplets.Stating at the beginning of the poem that the arguments of each side will determine which religion is superior, Asadi establishes that intellectual knowledge and poetic skills are essential.The fact that the poet chooses convincing poetic arguments as yardsticks for the superiority of one religion is present in Persian poetics.The power of persuasion lies in the use of metaphors which the literary theoretician ʿAbd al-Qāher al-Jorjāni (d.1078 or 1081) called takhyil ("make-believe"), to be applied in argumentative discourse (Heinrichs 1991, 180-82).12Heinrich terms this "poetic argumentation," which is based on literary devices such as the analogy and the simile.These literary tools are used to rouse the audience's imagination, to evoke emotions, and even to stir them to action.A lucid example is Rudaki's (860-940) poem, which the twelfth-century Nezāmi ʿAruzi utilizes (1996/1375, 49-54) in his Chahār-maqāla (Four Discourses, 1155-57) to emphasize the power of argument by telling how Rudaki's qasida moved Nasr II b.Ahmad (r.914-43) to return to Bukhara after many months in Herat.Many notables tried to convince the ruler to return, but none could persuade him until Rudaki composed a poem, accompanied by music, evoking nostalgically the memories of Bukhara and stimulating the senses of his audience to such a degree that when he reached the sixth verse, the amir descended from his throne and, without boots, mounted his steed and galloped in the direction of Bukhara.Here, the power of argument is connected to senses, nostalgia, and music to have the utmost effect.In later centuries, philosophers such as Nasir al-Din Tusi (1201-74) developed further this idea, emphasizing that the power of conviction is superior to the naked truth (Landau,16).By focusing on the elements fire and earth, Asadi narrows the subject-matter to exhibit his virtuosity in contriving new images, metaphors, and rhetorical devices.In this monāzara, Asadi's style differs from other notable early poets, such as ʿOnsori (c.961-1039), Farrokhi (d.c. 1037), and Manuchehri (d.c. 1040), who had an inimitably simple (sahl-e momtaneʿ) style.
Asadi's qasidas have an even more convoluted style than his Garshāsp-nāma.This is not to say that the Garshāsp-nāma is not itself a learned poem.Yaghmāʾi gives Asadi the epithet of hakim ("the sage"), with regard to the Garshāsp-nāma-an honorific given to great poets such as Sanāʾi and Saʿdi (de Bruijn 1983, 22)-since the epic is not a simple story of historical myth, but, rather, the poet sought to "cultivate literary maxims, showing how to use Persian words, and explicating ethical, didactic, and social prescriptions.One third of the epic is certainly on wisdom, homily, and instructions of life, of which no one is needless" (Asadi, 2).Yaghmāʾi observes further that Asadi's source for this epic was Middle Persian material which he accessed directly, indicating his knowledge of this language.
The association of fire with Zoroastrianism and earth with Islam has symbolic implications.While Persian poets usually praise fire, especially when they describe the sun, here, the depiction of fire-however positive the allusions-is meant to humiliate Zoroastrianism and to stress the superiority of earth.Moreover, in Islam, fire is associated with Satan.In the rich mystical literature, Satan claims to be made of fire and, therefore, superior to mankind.When God created Adam and asked the angels to come and admire his creation and to prostrate themselves before Adam, Satan refused.According to the Qurʾan (7:12), when God asked Satan, "What made you disobey Me?" Satan replied, "I am better than Adam, for You have created me out of fire and Adam out of clay."Asadi's cultured audience knew that Islam had introduced such negative associations with fire.Thus, his association of Islam with the earth is a clear allusion to the Qurʾanic dispute between Satan and God.Satan was an angel of propinquity, lovingly serving God for thousands of years, but when God created Adam, Satan fell from grace and was even cursed (Awn; Seyed-Gohrab 2017; Gösken, 101-2).13The fall of the fire-bred Satan and the 13Gösken discusses (101-2) fire as a metaphor denoting divine inspiration based on Rumi's Masnavi.In this passage, the poet depicts how human beings are absorbed in God after having annihilated all their human attributes.(Foruzānfar,452;Harb,10).14Although Asadi imitates Ferdowsi in his epic, he has apparently a different idea regarding the symbolism of fire and earth.Foruzānfar cites two couplets from Ferdowsi's introduction in which the poet depicts the creation of the world based on the four primal elements.After praising God and intellect, the poet begins to describe fire, which he contrasts with the earth:  of the Creation is based on Islamic tradition in which everything is made of the four elements.Yet, the pre-Islamic Persian story of creation differed, "where man is produced by the 'first of the spirits' Ohrmazd, in five parts, body (tan), vital soul (gyān), spiritual soul (urwān), spiritual form (ēwēnag) and immortal spirit ( frawahr).The Pahlavi Bundahišn says that the body of the first man, Gayōmard, was made of metal (āyoxšust), and that the first human couple was produced from his seed, which had been preserved in the earth after the attack of the evil spirit, Gannāg Menōg" (Williams,149).
The ideas Asadi unfolds in this particular monāzara can be found almost identically in his Garshāsp-nāma.(This also removes any doubts regarding the authenticity of the poem, voiced by 452 n. 1].) Asadi identifies himself with the Muslim narrator by using the pronoun "I."Here, the Muslim says of Adam and Satan: The earth is the qebla [direction of prayer]: due to the significance of Adam's clay, The angels prostrate before it, the prophets go on pilgrimage to it.In their origins, Satan is made of fire and Adam of earth.Look, which one of the two is better, and think of him.often squeezed into one couplet, while in the epic, they are elaborated.For instance, the following image of the earth as a mother is found in one couplet in the monāzara: The earth is like a mother: plants are like her breasts The living creatures are as children [nourished]  The earth is like a love-seeking mother;

‫مهرجوی‬ ‫مادر‬ ‫چون‬ ‫زمینست‬
All the plants are like her breasts.

‫اوی‬ ‫پستان‬ ‫چو‬ ‫ها‬ ‫رستنی‬ ‫همه‬
She has created many thousand children in differing forms

‫کنار‬ ‫در‬ ‫همی‬ ‫پروراند‬ ‫شان‬ ‫که‬
For Asadi, the earth is superior to the other elements, which he also emphasizes in an extensive description of over forty-five couplets in the Garshāsp-nāma, concluding, "look which of the other elements has the virtues of the earth [listed above]" (Asadi, 10 l. 45).His recycling of metaphors and images in his monāzara makes his style convoluted.Yet, in his "Dispute between Earth and Sky," there is no winner.The poem's narrator declines to judge between the arguments.Instead, he introduces Time as the judge, who proposes to strike a peace: When their dispute was dragging on, suddenly, Time came between them saying, "Why quarrel?… You both should strike peace and till eternity be loyal In peace and do not molest each other through disloyalty."Coming back to the debate between "A Zoroastrian and a Muslim," the Zoroastrian starts his arguments by describing a rich catalogue of fire images derived from the Persian literary tradition, positing the superiority of fire due to its association with warmth and the life-giving sun.He notes that the fire's heat causes clouds to exist and the wind to blow, it causes trees to fruit and seasons to change, colors to appear, and life to enter the world.Then, the Zoroastrian refers to the role of fire in the religious rituals of Hinduism and Zoroastrianism: Indians burn their dead in fire, while Zoroastrians believe it possesses a sacred value, as their priests girdle themselves before it.The fire is, therefore, the Zoroastrians' qebla because of its central position in the cosmos, illuminating the world, giving warmth to the world, and even giving life to creatures.16The Zoroastrian says that he sees the sun in the heat of fire and the sun performs miracles in the world; therefore, he sees the sun as a prophet.The sun's warmth makes animals move, while at sunset, serpents become active.Such references to the sun as the stimulus for movement and even the invoker of the soul are part of medieval biological philosophy.Persian treatises on the development of the embryo say that during the nine months of gestation, the embryo is under the influence of the nine spheres.The fourth month, when the soul enters the body, is associated with the sun.The Zoroastrian emphasizes that, without fire, the other three elements cannot subsist.Moreover, the fire plays a role during the resurrection and the hereafter, defining how one individual is spared, while another is punished.Afterwards, the Zoroastrian mentions historical events in which fire is associated with the prophets, citing how Abraham was thrown into the fire, but it became miraculously cold.He won over his adversaries and became a prophet (Renard).The Zoroastrian also refers to the role of the fire in material culture, by mentioning how it is used to melt silver and gold and to create fragrances by burning ambergris and aloe-wood.Towards the end, the Zoroastrian proudly states that God has sent the sun like a prophet to perform all these miracles and this is why he worships fire, "If all these virtues belong to the fire and the sun, / my qebla is better, do not deny all these" (Khaleghi-Motlagh, 1978/1357, 83, line 33).
In his refutation, the Muslim argues that the earth occupies the lowest position among the four basic elements because of its humbleness: it is not a flaw, but rather a virtue.The answers the Muslim gives come from common knowledge of the fire's negative qualities.For instance, in refuting the positive role fire played for Abraham, he states that the same fire burned his tongue 16 In this poem, both the Zoroastrian and the Muslim use the Islamic Arabic term qebla (direction of prayer), which is not strange as it is in a Persian Islamic context.The term is also used in other Zoroastrian texts; see, for example, Williams, 153.(though it appears that Asadi confuses here Moses for Abraham).Moreover, the Muslim adds, if God spoke to Abraham through the fire, he also spoke to Noah through the earth to generate the deluge.Fire is associated with infidels, as it burns them in hell, says the Muslim.It is certainly a miracle that the earth is suspended in the middle of the heavens while the earth is the heart of the world, everything revolving around it.The Muslim refers to the creation myth and how God created Adam from earth and asked Satan, made of fire, to prostrate before a handful of clay.For several couplets, the Muslim elaborates on the earth as a mother who gives birth to creatures, offers them food and shelter, and takes care of them.The Muslim refers to the cliché metaphor of the earth as a guest-house and God as its host.Asadi then employs an original image, presenting the earth as a court and all creatures as servants coming and going and bowing in prayer.In another metaphor, the poet compares the heavenly spheres to a court and the earth to the king.The constant movement of the spheres is likened to the activity of servants at a court.Even the seasons of the year are the earth's servants, for the earth bestows them with robes of honor in colors befitting them: plain white for the Winter, green for Spring, a two-colored garment for the Summer, and yellow silk for Autumn.The Muslim also describes the earth as an epistle and the trees as the letters of speech written upon it.The centrality of the earth is depicted through the metaphor of the point, from which perfectly straight lines lead to the celestial spheres precisely as though drawn by a pair of compasses.17The earth is also the substance from which human beings are made.In the poem, the Muslim states that humankind will rise again from the earth on the Day of Resurrection.To refute the Zoroastrian's arguments about the superiority of the sun, the Muslim also lists 17 Asadi is referring here to the position of the earth according to medieval Islamic cosmology.The earth is the lowest of the nine celestial spheres.The geocentric idea is described here as a dot in the middle of the spheres.A description of this cosmology is offered by Nezāmi ʿAruzi: Now you must know that this world, which lies in the hollow of the Heaven of the Moon and within the circle of this first Sphere, is called "the World of Growth and Decay."And you must thus conceive it, that within the concavity of the Heaven of the Moon lies the Fire, surrounded by the Heaven of the Moon; and that within the Sphere of the Fire is the Air, surrounded by the Fire; and within the Air is the Water, surrounded by the Air, while within the Water is the Earth, with the Water round about it.And in the middle of the earth is an imaginary point, from which all straight lines drawn to the Heaven of the Moon are equal; and when we speak of "down," we mean this point or what lies nearest to it; and when we speak of "up," we mean the remotest heaven, or what lies nearest to it, this being a heaven above the Zodiacal Heaven, having naught beyond it, for with it the material world terminates, or comes to an end.Neẓāmi ʿAruzi, 1996/1375, 7-8; tr.Browne, 4-5 Downloaded from Brill.com 06/06/2024 06:22:50AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/several flaws of the sun.For instance, he states bombastically that the sun is preoccupied with the earth as it revolves around it.He notes that the sun blinds the eye of a person who stares at it.He then depicts the earth with familiar images as God's outspread cloth, while the sun is its candle, illumining the earth's plains and oceans.He adds that the spread cloth is not there for the candle, but vice-versa, so that the earth can be fecund.
This set of imagery and cultural allusions to fire and to the earth, created in an associative fashion, is not really based on doctrinal dichotomies between Islam and Zoroastrianism.Rather, it is a catalogue of images for literary argumentation which the poet utilizes arbitrarily to praise earth and dispraise fire.Although the poem's title, "A Dispute between a Zoroastrian and a Muslim," suggests hostility, the argumentation is far from unfriendly.The two sides remain civil and the Zoroastrian gives in easily and accepts the Muslim's rebuttal about the superiority of the earth.
It may, at first sight, seem remarkable that a poet, who is entirely committed to Islam, writes an epic of nine thousand couplets on a pre-Islamic Iranian champion and composes odes to Zoroastrianism and the excellence of Persians.Indeed, his other monāzara, "The Dispute between an Arab and a Persian" is far more controversial for its depiction of the differences between the two parties.The poem is also less civil as the intention of each side is to magnify the wicked traits of the other to establish their own superiority.18The setting is a Persian courtly gathering.When an Arab hears someone listing the superiority of Persians over the Arabs, he becomes angry and shouts: One of those present grew agitated and shouted: "What is a Persian?Pride belongs to Arabs! O ignorant idiot!" Khaleghi-Motlagh 1978/1357, 69 l. 4 ‫چیست‬ ‫عجم‬ ‫گفت‬ ‫و‬ ‫همه‬ ‫زان‬ ‫یکی‬ ‫آشفت‬

‫نادان‬ ‫ابله‬ ‫ای‬ ‫رسد‬ ‫را‬ ‫عرب‬ ‫اهل‬ ‫فخر‬
In return, the Persian calls the Arab a madman and likens Arabs demeaningly to demons in the desert and camel-drivers.Then, the Arab lists the virtuous traits of the Arabs in twenty-one couplets, alluding to the rich vocabulary of the Arabic language, the classical Arab poets, hospitality, courage, horse and camel husbandry, the kinship of the Prophet Mohammad, the language of the Qurʾan, and the location of God's house in Mecca.The Persian, who is identified with the poet, responds in some seventy couplets, listing deleterious traits of Arabs as thieves, as those who bury their baby girls alive, and as those who treated Mohammad disrespectfully and even hurt him (Giladi,(185)(186)(187)(188)(189)(190)(191)(192)(193)(194)(195)(196)(197)(198)(199)(200).19The Persian even states that the ancestors of the Arabs, Mohammad, and the source of the Arabic language itself all go back to Persian roots.The Persian is exaggeratedly persistent in allocating everything to Persians.Such ideas were not unique to Asadi, for, centuries earlier, Ebn Qoteyba had complained of Persians who claimed kinship with the prophets: They [the Persians] also lay claim to the prophets, saying that only four of them-Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, Shuʿayb, and Muḥammad-were Arabs.This claim is an empty boast: it has no substance and is a flagrant injustice to the Arabs.
Ebn Qoteyba, 24; tr.Savant and Webb,25 The speaker then refers to Persians as learned people as evidenced by the impact of the philosopher Abu Bakr Mohammad b.Zakariyyā Rāzi (known in Latin as Rhazes, c. 854-925 or 935) and by great poets such as Rudaki (860-940), ʿOnsori, ʿAsjadi ( fl. eleventh century) and Kesāʾi (c.953-1001), as well as the glory of pre-Islamic Persian culture, with mythic kings such as Kayumars, Hushang, and Jamshid, and heroic champions such as Sām, Garshāsp, and Rostam.20 Afterwards, he complains of the Arabs' treatment of Persian pilgrims who journey for thousands of kilometers to perform the pilgrimage but are then stripped of their dress and provisions and even robbed of their shoes.The Persian continues to praise the agreeable climate of Persia with its fertile soil, rivers, and mines of gold, silver, and lapis lazuli; the pleasant fragrance of the land and the diversity of its fruits and foods.He describes Persians as wearing silk and brocade, while the Arabs wear cotton.He also contrasts the eating habits of the Arabs with those of the Persians, stating that the Persians eat fowl and lamb, but the Arabs eat snakes, locust, mice, and dead lizards (see Zimmt; Daryaee; Jamshidi).
This litany of pejorative traits is used to highlight the differences between Muslim Persians and Arabs, emphasizing the former's superiority and sophistication of their ancient culture.Asadi appropriates Islam for the Persians and rejects the idea that the Arabs, especially the tribe of Qoraysh, are exceptional.The poet emphasizes that being a good Muslim is based on piety and fear of God-not ethnicity-and stresses that Islam is a religion of equality.
If we interpret the poem based on Foruzānfar's previously-mentioned argument-that fire is a marker of Shoʿubis and the earth is an identifier of anti-Shoʿubis-it becomes clear that Asadi is celebrating here his identity as a Muslim Persian, turning his back on Zoroastrianism.In Khaleghi-Motlagh's view: Asadi is actually the best example of those groups of Persians who, when they turned their backs on their ancestors, and gradually became firmly rooted in Islamic beliefs and convictions, did not abandon the racial fanaticism of the first generation.To exercise their fanaticism in the field of the new religion and culture, they rather found a new motivation to gallop on this road.Applying the analogy of a wet-nurse who is kinder than a mother, they saw themselves more Muslims than the Arabs.Khaleghi-Motlagh 1977/1356, 677 The monāzara as a literary form has a function in a community.As Rezaei Yazdi states, it is a debate between competing discourses which engaged in opposing, informing, appropriating, and complementing each other.… It forms the frame narrative through which the foreign and the indigenous, the traditional and the modern, the religious and the national, the rational and the inspirational coexist, intersect, repel, attract, overlap, and, most importantly, inform each other.The narrative features of the munāzirah reflect the social dialogue among disparate yet complementary ideologies.
Indeed, narrative overlap is a salient feature of the munāzirah.
Rezaei Yazdi,20 While, in the dispute between a Zoroastrian and a Muslim, the emphasis lies on the literary and philosophical power of the speakers, in the debate between the Arab and Persian, one may argue that the poem consists of a compendium of traits employed by the aristocracy and possibly other hierarchies in eleventh-century Persia to characterize Arabs, drawing on previous literature, as well as on oratories from the culturally-learned and political élite.Without the approval of his audience, the poet could never achieve his goal-that is, to compose a long panegyric in which the patrons admire the poet's wit and eloquence in conveying social, political, and religious sentiments.One of the tasks of the courtly poet was to underscore and preserve the exploits of the subject being praised.By choosing the compositional structure of a debate in his long opening, the poet opts for a dialogical approach, allowing several personae in his poem to convey their rival ideologies.These voices create tensions, contestation, and provocation with the aim of convincing the judge to select the most successful debater.The judge's verdict reveals the ideology of the court, expressing the court's religious beliefs and cultural modes.Although these courts promoted Islam, the ideologies expressed in such debates do not necessarily convey conventional Islamic rules, but rather create a space to express the court's version of Islam.Thus, in one lengthy courtly prose debate between wine and the rose, the wine wins and the courtiers raise a toast to its victory (Seyed-Gohrab 2013, 84-85).
The monāzara is polyphonic inasmuch as there are perhaps four personae present: the proponent, the opponent, the judge, and the poet himself.The last two may be combined.The words and phrases put in the mouth of the opponent express ideologies that rival those of the proponent.Even the linguistic style of these persona may differ to signal tensions and differences.The position of the judge is also complicated as he commonly appropriates and voices the general sentiments of the community.In Asadi's poems, the poet openly sides with the Persian against the Arab and the Muslim against the Zoroastrian, removing the boundary between the author and the narrator.In both of these poems, the poet responsively sides with the winner, imbuing victory with an authoritative aspect.Positioning himself as a judge gives the poet another layer of authority, establishing a direct connection with the patron and the audience.In fact, as a feature of the genre, the monāzara blurs the boundary between the author and narrator, but in Asadi's poems discussed here, the author voices his presence to define his narratorial direction.
Another feature of a monāzara is the lack of chronicity: It is of course possible to establish a specific chronology for an individual munāzirah in many cases, but it is not possible to wholly impose narrative time, in the sense of a completed plot, on it, for as a genre the munāzirah, though informed by and premised on modern temporal categories, has its own internal temporal logic.The time of the munāzirah is anchored in a present that is fragmented and inconclusive.This present is the meeting place of the past and future epochs which, though summoned as temporal spans, are deployed as contemporaneous conditions.Their contemporaneity is mediated through the universal time of Islam.
In this temporal orientation, the wretched present is a time teeming with idealized past memories and equally idealized future possibilities whose realization is possible through resorting to the timeless teachings of Islam.Applying this essential feature of the monāzara to Asadi's two poems, it becomes clear that the author is creating an idealized constellation of traits for Persians when he is confronted with an Arab, romanticizing the past and hoping for an idealized future.His poems form a juncture of past and present, rejection and acceptance to consolidate a new faith with ancient ethnically-Persian identity.In the intersection of the present-caught between past glory and uncertain future-the poet creates a narrative space to invite dialogic, polemic, and even contrary ideas to meet, with the aim of suggesting a new identity.As Sahner rightly states (63), "with few exceptions, Zoroastrians failed to launch a targeted apologetic response to Islam in the post-conquest period, comparable to that of Christians."The question is to what extent the contents of Asadi's debates reflect a Zoroastrian apologetic response to Islam or whether this debate is purely a means to show how Persian Muslims have accepted a new identity in which being both a Persian and a Muslim formed a central connecting bond.
The debate between an Arab and a Persian is very different from the debate between the Zoroastrian and the Muslim.In the former, the poet assumes a strict anti-Arab attitude, which contextualizes the poem within the discourse of the Shoʿubiyya movement.Assessing the two monāzaras, it becomes clear that the dispute between the Zoroastrian and the Muslim is more a literary enterprise than a religious doctrinal dispute, while the debate between the Persian and the Arab is a fierce Shoʿubi piece, claiming a central position for the Persians in the Islamic world.Asadi's affiliation to Shiʿism is not evident, although at several points in the Arab and Persian monāzara he refers (60-61) to the first imam ʿAli b.Abi Tāleb and his sons Hasan and Hoseyn.Together, these monāzaras introduce a new identity for Persians in which pre-Islamic Persian tradition is an integrated part of the Muslim Persian culture, which is quite distinct from that of the Arabs.21 Downloaded from Brill.com 06/06/2024 06:22:50AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ of living under Islamic rule-and an authority on the Dādestān ī Dēnīg and the Shkand-Gumānīg Wizār.
luminous fire was set up on high ‫تابناک‬ ‫شده‬ ‫بر‬ ‫آتشی‬ ‫یکی‬ Amongst wind and water, above the dark earth.… … ‫خاک‬ ‫تیره‬ ‫بر‬ ‫از‬ ‫آب‬ ‫و‬ ‫باد‬ ‫میان‬ The earth had no lofty position; ‫جایگاه‬ ‫نبد‬ ‫بلندی‬ ‫را‬ ‫زمین‬ It was a center obscure and black.

BibliographyF.
Abdullaeva, "The Bodleian Manuscript of Asadī Ṭūsī's Munāẓara between an Arab and a Persian: Its Place in the Transition from Ancient Debate to Classical Panegyric," Iran 47 (2009), pp.69-95, DOI 10.1080/05786967.2009.11864760.21 The Shoʿubiyya movement was very diverse in the Persian cultural sphere, as poets such as Mahyār Deylami ( fl. tenth century) and Bohtori wrote in Arabic praising pre-Islamic Persian glory, while Ebn Qoteyba (828-89) wrote an entire book on the "Excellence of the Arabs (Fazl al-ʿarab)," adding more nuance to the discussion.Although he is fierce in his judgement of the Persians, he distinguishes between the Persians in Khorāsān and those from other parts of Iran.Downloaded from Brill.com 06/06/2024 06:22:50AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Know that this excellence of mine comes from the just king, And from the grace of the select judge, the crown of nobles, The grand and noble Abu Nasr Ahmad b. ʿAli, The chief of all viziers, the candle of time, and the pride of the tribe.Asadi chooses to symbolize Zoroastrianism with fire and Muslims with earth, two of the four elements of Empedocles (c.490-30 BCE)(Seyed-Gohrab 2010, 90-101; Downloaded from Brill.com 06/06/2024 06:22:50AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ triumph of the earth-born Adam is an analogy for the fall of Zoroastrianism and the rise of Islam.Foruzānfar observes that the Shoʿubis considered fire superior to earth.He gives examples of both Persian and Arabic poets such as Bashshār b.Bord (714-84) and Ferdowsi Downloaded from Brill.com 06/06/2024 06:22:50AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ at her side.

19
Reference to the practice of infanticide as an Arab tradition, associated particularly with the pre-Islamic inhabitants of Arabia, appears repeatedly in Persian poetry until modern times.20 Interestingly, he assesses the collected work of Rudaki at one hundred and eighty thousand couplets, whereas the number that have survived the teeth of time is considerably less; see Khaleghi-Motlagh 1978/1357, 119.from Brill.com 06/06/2024 06:22:50AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Rezaei Yazdi, 21 Downloaded from Brill.com 06/06/2024 06:22:50AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Journal of persianate studies 16 (2023) 1-24