Poetry
Munis ul-ushshoq
Not translated into English
Shermuhammad Munis · 1814
Synopsis
The great divan of its author, which bears as its title his pen name: the friend of lovers. The ghazal holds the largest place in it; then come the ode, stanzas of five and six lines, the quatrain and other forms of classical poetry, in the literary Turkic language of the scholars of Khiva. Love is sung in both its aspects, human and divine. Other pieces lecture the great, reproach them for their ignorance and for the neglect in which they leave poets, and call on rulers to practise justice.
Context
A first, slimmer collection had been put together around 1804; the poet then drew from it this divan of about eight thousand four hundred couplets, which the sources date to 1813 and 1814 or to 1815. The court calligraphers copied it many times, manuscripts of it are preserved at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent, and it was lithographed in Khiva. Its author was writing the chronicle of the dynasty in the same years. Selections of his poems appeared in Tashkent in 1957 and in 1980.
Who it is for
A divan of court poetry in Chagatai, with no French version. The context of the Khanate of Khiva and its learned court sheds light on the work.
Prizes and reception
His chronicle of Khiva, completed by his nephew, was published in Leiden in 1988, then translated into English by Yuri Bregel in 1999.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.