Afghanistan Project CMS

<p>One way to understand literature is to look at the courts that produced it.</p> <p>One of the first courts that spawned a golden age in Persian literature occurred during the reign of the Samanids, in their twin capitals of Samarkand and Bukhara. And many of the court poets came from Balkh, in today&rsquo;s Afghanistan.</p> <p>Their pinnacle poets were Rudaki and Dakaki. But before them and around them, we know there were many others. We don&rsquo;t just have the stars but, of course, you have many other poets. And, to show this fluidity of borders and fluidity of culture, we see that many of the poets up in Bukhara come from Balkh, actually. So we have Abu Shakur of Balkh, Shahid of Balkh, and a woman named Rabia of Balkh.</p> <p>The role of the poet in the Persian Court was to praise the king, but also to guide him because remember a king had tyrannical powers. He could kill anyone he wanted. His command was the law. [...] So the role of the court here and the role of the poet also is to guide the king and keep him just.</p> <p>And so in the poems where they&rsquo;re praising him, what are they praising? They are praising, &ldquo;Oh, you are so kind. Oh, you are so just. Oh, you are so generous. No one has ever seen such a just and generous and kind and merciful king as you.&rdquo; So it was not just flattery. This is trying to guide them to proper behavior.</p> <p>One of the most brilliant examples of the important role of the poet in guiding the king happens in the Samanid court of Bukhara. This is one of the most glorious courts of Persian culture and literature.</p> <p>The king took his whole army throughout his lands down to Herat, and was having fun for a year. The whole army was there for a year. Another year goes by and they&rsquo;re still away from home and down in Herat, and they go hunting and they go fighting and they keep the peace of their land. And then a third year goes by and they start to grumble and springtime is coming and the heat of summer, and then another winter is coming. And four years have gone by, and they really want to go home.&nbsp;And so they go to Rudaki, the poet and then the chief poet of the Samanid Court and said, &ldquo;Please do something. Please get to him and we&rsquo;ll pay you lots of money to get us home.&rdquo;</p> <p>After breakfast one time Rudaki comes into the presence of the king and the musicians are playing and entertaining the king. It&rsquo;s a very soft, quiet morning and the poet walks in and the king nods to him, and he begins his song as a love song and he talks about the river that&rsquo;s back at home.</p> <p>Rudaki begins his poem talking about the fragrance of the river, and what&rsquo;s beautiful about the opening of the poem is that the three syllables of the three most important words rhyme. So you have &ldquo;bou&rdquo;, which is fragrance and &ldquo;drou&rdquo; which is river, and muliyan is the river. So he says, &ldquo;bou and drou and muliyan, [PH] ayad hami,&rdquo; and this ending of &ldquo;ayad hami&rdquo; means it comes on forever. It&rsquo;s always coming toward you.</p> <p>Then he goes on, &ldquo;Our friends are there and the memory of our friends is always with us and coming toward us.&rdquo; And then he says, &ldquo;Oh, Bukhara.&rdquo; The name of the home where they want to go, right. &ldquo;Oh, Bukhara, be happy. Your king is coming home. Oh, Bukhara, be happy. The moon is coming back to the heavens. Oh, Bukhara, you are such a beautiful garden. The beautiful cypress is coming back to its garden.&rdquo;</p> <p>With these images of beauty and the river and the silken sands of the Oxus calling him, it is so effective that by the end of the poem, the king jumps up without his riding boots on and jumps on his horse and starts running before the people can take down the tents and close up camp. By the time they get back to Bukhara, Rudaki is a very rich man.</p> <p>Samanid court poetry was so popular&mdash;and continues to be so&mdash;because it speaks to all the emotions that everyone feels. But the poets used this opportunity to impart philosophical lessons as well.</p> <p>There are emotional moments followed by moral and didactic sayings by the poet that see you shouldn&rsquo;t do this. See what happens when injustice rules the world. See what happens when love is not brought together.</p> <p>Some may think of poetry as the domain of dreamers, but in Central Asia, poetry has power.</p>