Poetry
دیوان
Not translated into English
Ayesha Durrani · 1882
Synopsis
The Persian divan of Ayesha Durrani, about three thousand poems in its first collected state: ghazals, quatrains, mukhammas and qasidas, arranged in the alphabetical order of the rhyme. Many follow the manner of Hafez and Jami, and that of the poets of the so-called Indian style, Saeb and Kalim. The ghazals speak of the pain of loss and the beauty of love.
Context
The collection was compiled under the reign of Emir Abd al-Rahman Khan: a manuscript of 1881 or 1882 survives, and the Iranica dates the printing of the divan, in lithography, in Kabul to 1887-1888. The government press reissued it in 1920 or 1921, running to more than three hundred pages. After the revolution of 1978, the regime promoted her work to win women over to its programmes, and a girls' school in Kabul, rebuilt after the fall of the Taliban, bears her name.
Who it is for
Poems in Persian, not translated. It helps to know that the collection is arranged by rhyme and not by date.
Prizes and reception
No prize. Her divan was reprinted in Kabul more than thirty years after its first printing, under a different reign.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.