Persianate Storytelling and Storytellers in the 16 th and 17 th Centuries

This study explores how Persianate storytellers (qīṣṣah-khwān, afsānah-gūyān) worked in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Relying mainly on Persian and Ottoman collections of biographies of poets (taẕkirah), some of which pertain to storytellers, the study seeks to identify as many Persianate storytellers of the 16th and 17th as possible. Storytellers recited the Ḥamzah-nāmah (the story of Ḥamzah, uncle of the Prophet Muḥammad), the Shāh-nāmah, and other works before kings and notables as well as in public squares or coffee shops for ordinary people. One manual for storytellers, Ṭirāz al-akhbār, written by ʿAbd al-Nabī Qazvīnī in Mughal India, outlines four styles of Persianate storytelling: Iranian, Central Asian (Tūrān), Indian, and Ottoman (Rūm). Thus, the manual’s author makes clear that he understood these four regions to share a common culture of Persianate storytelling. The migration of storytellers supported this shared culture. Most storytellers in India were migrants from Iran and Central Asia, and even in the Ottoman Empire, some storytellers originated in the Safavid Empire

Animal science · Art · Biology · Literature · Narrative · Storytelling · Eurasian Exchange Networks · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Islamic Studies and History