ذوق‌اسم در دربارهای دوران اسلامی؛ معرفی و بررسی یک سنت ادبی

Introduction

If Dari (Persian) is considered the “shared cultural language of the Eastern empires” – from its adoption as an administrative language by the Sāmānids in the first half of the 10^th century, to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20^th – the phrase “the millennium of the Dari Empire” may rightly designate that era. Throughout this millennium, within its vast geography, numerous dynasties and diverse peoples ruled, yet Dari functioned as the common medium across that expanse. Among many sovereigns – from Mongolia and Indonesia to Eastern Europe and the northern and eastern coasts of Africa – Persian names are found.
This paper focuses on a distinct aspect of those Persian names in Islamic courts, where poetic imagination played a conspicuous role. The Ottoman Empire provides a vivid example: its court registers contain a plethora of Persian names. Apart from their linguistic form – names such as GolČičak, EmsālNur, QončeNegār, or DorreNow – these Ottoman names invite questions: Were they conventional female names of their time? What do some, such as PartowNahāl or PiruzFalak, mean and how were they interpreted? Why and how did names like NaqšeDel, TireMozhgān, or NāvakMesal, reminiscent of poetic metaphors, enter courtly naming? How could seemingly adverse names such as DelĀšub (heart‑troubler) or NālānDel (lamenting heart) become appellations for beloveds of the court? May a shared aesthetic principle be discerned among them? This study argues that the “Persian poetic mindset” gave rise to such names and seeks to demonstrate and analyze this claim.
As Persian poetry evolved throughout the Islamic period – progressing from its early classical forms toward late traditional ones – the role of poetry increasingly permeated the life of the Persian‑speaking world. By the 16^th and 17^th centuries, poetry had become nearly all‑encompassing; life itself seemed to begin and end with poetry. Moreover, Persian poetic theory came to favor compression: the independence of the verse and ultimately the single line. Did poetic imagination extend to linguistic structures smaller than the mesrā'? These two tendencies – the poeticization of all life aspects (including naming) and the aesthetic of succinct artistic expression – together sustained the “tradition of ‘Zowqesm’” or poetic Persian names. Poetry first influenced honorifics and epithets, then personal names, investing them not only with linguistic but with artistic purpose.

Literature Review

Research devoted to Persian names – especially from literary and aesthetic standpoints – is strikingly scarce. The present study may be regarded as a complement to Annemarie Schimmel’s “Islamic Names” (1997), which occasionally approaches the idea underlying this paper but omits any recognition of the millennial tradition of Persian poetic and aesthetic naming explored here.

Methodology

Continuous engagement with courtly names during teaching and academic research gradually led the author to hypothesize that the poetic quality, broad geographical spread, and thousand‑year longevity of certain names constitute distinct evidence for a “tradition of poetic naming” in Persian culture. This hypothesis was pursued through extensive library study and note‑taking from texts containing Islamic‑era court names, resulting in a large catalogue of poetic Persian names. The present paper, as a first step in examining this literary‑historical tradition, demonstrates the existence of such aesthetic naming and offers a rhetorical‑stylistic analysis of these names as products of “artistic language”.

Discussion

The structure of a “Zowqesm” (poetic name) may be described as a composite of the following features:

Defamiliarization and novelty: A poetic name evokes surprise through unfamiliarity or unprecedented usage – just as an innovative metaphor does in poetry. For instance, XubNegār likens the bearer to an image or idol of beauty, renewing the worn metaphor Negār by defamiliarizing it through the addition of Xub.
Verse‑likeness: Poetic names inherit rhythm, mesra', distich, and rhyme common in Persian verse. Nearly all are two‑part structures – analogous to a distich – and often exhibit internal sound repetition (e.g., JahānPahlavān).
Euphony and sonic grace: Pleasant sound – absence of cacophony and presence of phonetic devices – guides their creation. Alliteration and internal rhyme form part of the aesthetic, as in ŠārŠāh, KāmKār, ŠirGir.
Figurative and imaginative resonance: Metaphor, ambiguity, and other tropes abound. Consider the delicate name MehrJān, interpretable variously as “the soul made of love, the essence formed of the sun, or the one beloved by all hearts”. The name simultaneously alludes by pun (Ihām) to the festival Mehregān, making the person themself an embodiment of joy.
Emotional evocation: Effective names generate feelings – majesty and sanctity for men, attraction and affection for women. Compare Qodratollāh with the more poetic QadarQodrat: the latter carries intensified emotive and semantic force, fulfilling the courtly desire for awe and charisma purely through naming.
Continuity with poetic tradition: The poetic name condenses verse into nominative form; poetry becomes embodied within the name itself. A modern example illustrates the principle. The eminent poet Abolqāsem-e Lāhuti (d. 1956), Minister of Culture of Tajikistan, affectionately called his wife Cecilia SelseleBānū (Lady of the Chain). For those unfamiliar with Persian poetic conventions, this might seem obscure, but within that tradition it carries two meanings: “the lady of beautiful tresses” and “the lady who holds the chain binding the lover”, both echoed in a verse of Hāfez. Lāhuti’s creation of SelseleBānū thus exemplifies the survival of the courtly poetic‑naming tradition into modernity.


Conclusion

This study has examined in detail the principal poetic features – defamiliarization, musicality (phonetic and rhetorical embellishment), imaginative richness, and emotional resonance – manifested within Persian poetic names. It demonstrates that the fundamental principles governing Persian poetry equally operate within this domain of naming. Accordingly, just as poetry has been described as the “resurrection of words”, one may regard the “Zowqesm” as the “resurrection of names.”