Между любовью и политикой: поэма Шаха Шуджа‘ «Душа влюбленных» (часть I)

Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Востоковедение и африканистика. 2025. Т. 17. № 3. С. 442–455.

Nikitenko E., Chalisova N.

Shah Shujaʻ the Muzaffarid (r. 1358–1384) entered the history of Persian literature both as a generous patron of arts and as a gifted author. The ghazals of the poets close to him (Hafiz, Jahan-Malik Khatun, ‘Ubayd Zakani, and others) contain many political allusions to the events of his reign, among them his temporary loss of Shiraz (1364–1366) to his brother Shah Mahmud, and his victorious return. His own narrative poem “The Soul of the Lovers” (Rūḥ al-‘āšiqīn, 1366/67), belonging to the genre dah-nāma, is also based on these events. The main body of the poem includes the messages exchanged between the lover-narrator (“Shah Shujaʻ”) and his beloved who remains in Shiraz. In our paper, “The Soul of the Lovers” is contextualized to Persian literary history and the author’s political biography (the tradition of “royal poetry” in Persian, the genesis and diversity of the dah-nāma genre, and the relevant episode of Shah Shuja’s reign are under discussion). We analyze the plot pattern of the poem, and examine its intertextual connections to the poems of royal authors and the early dah-nāma poems, as well as Nizami’s “Xusraw-u Shīrīn” and Gurgani’s “Vīs-u Rāmīn”, the main sources of inspiration for the dah-nāma genre. 

In the Conclusion part, we put forward the hypothesis that Shah Shujaʻ intended his “Soul of Lovers” as a political allegory. He transferred to his verse romance the technique of political allusion honed by his contemporary ghazal poets, and crafted the character of the Beloved as a personification of his desired Shiraz; negotiations with the city elite (presented as correspondence between lovers) turned successful and led the ruler back to the throne.

Keywords: allegory, аллегория, персидская поэзия, Persian poetry, Shiraz, romantic narrative poem, Шираз, любовная поэма, Шах Шуджа‘