Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings.

• Author: Omidsalar, Mahmoud

Olga Davidson's book has two parts. The first, "The Poet and His Poetry," contains three chapters: "The Authority of Ferdowsi the Poet," "The Authority of Ferdowsi's Shahnama," and "Ferdowsi's Oral Poetic Heritage."

In the first chapter, Davidson argues that Daqiqi was a Zoroastrian and therefore the representative of the ancient Iranian oral tradition. Ferdowsi's description of the former poet as his only predecessor cannot be taken literally, but should be viewed as an appropriation of Daqiqi's "performance." By this appropriation Ferdowsi implicitly declares himself the heir to the Middle Persian tradition, and does so with a gesture typical of oral poets (pp. 25, 28; see p. 93). Unfortunately, the Zoroastrianism of Daqiqi, which was once accepted by a number of scholars (see Safa's Hamasah sura i, 4th ed., p. 163), is no longer presumed. Most specialists now consider him to have been a Muslim (for a summary of these views, see Khaleghi-Motlagh's and Afshar's papers in Yadnamah-ye Daqiqi).

In her second chapter, the author argues that frequent reference in the Shahnamah to "performances" by mobads (Zoroastrian priests) and dehqans (which Davidson explains as "Zoroastrian landowners"), as the oral sources of the epic, reveals its basically oral authority. Ferdowsi also refers to a book of epic tales - in prose, from which he versified - as his written source. Davidson understands the poet to claim that this was a "Pahlavi," that is, a "Middle Persian Book of Kings." She suggests that the idea of the book to which the poet refers involves an idealized composition in performance, and that it is not only an object, but also a symbol expressing the authority and authenticity of the oral poetic traditions in performance (p. 53). Davidson rejects Noldeke's interpretation that the words mobad and dehqan are stylized ways of expressing the consultation of texts, and writes: "Noldeke's reasoning was based on the assumption that the Shahnamah is a text that is meant to be read [sic]" (p. 41).

In chapter three, the author argues that evidence from the Shahnamah as well as classical Persian poetry shows that the authority of the text was essentially provided and maintained by "the creative power of a rich oral tradition" (p. 72).

The second part of the book is entitled "The Hero," and has six chapters. In the first three the author argues that Rustam is not an extrinsic and intrusive figure in the epic, and that the concept of a "Book of Kings" need not be incompatible with "an epic of heroes." Chapters five and six are designed to demonstrate that Rustam's role in the epic is both heroic and central to the concept of the Keyanid kingship (p. 127), and that he is both an "insider" and an "outsider" in the national tradition. In her next chapter, "The Concept of Premature and Immature Fatherhood in the Story of Rostam and Sohrab," she addresses the problem of "how far Rostam has to go in his role as the guardian of the farr" (p. 128), as he "sacrifices his son" in the service of the throne.

That Rustam is not an outsider to the epic has long been known. Safa, whom Davidson accuses of having considered the Rustam cycle of tales intrusive (p. 5), has, in his Hamasah Sura i (first published in 1942), argued convincingly against this intrusiveness (see pp. 564-65 of the 4th ed., published in 1363 sH.). As for the hero's sacrifice of his son, although this interpretation of the death of Suhrab seems to be very popular, there is no question of sacrificing here, unless we consider all filicides to be sacrificial acts. Rustam simply kills the boy when they both fall victim to a conspiracy that prevents them from recognizing one another. I have discussed the metaphorical aspects of this story in detail elsewhere (Iranshenasi 2 [1990]: 342-69), and will not labor the point here. Suffice it to say that Rustam is no Abraham. On the surface, he killed his son by mistake. On a deeper level of analysis, the tale's narrative logic demanded that he take the boy's life.

Chapter eight is devoted to a study of Goshtasp and his father Lohrasp in the context of Indo-European heroic tales. In this chapter, Davidson concludes that although Lohrasp and Goshtasp are father and son, they generally fit the pattern of dioscurism (p. 155). The last chapter analyzes the narrative of the seven trials of Rustam and Esfandiyar. The author focuses on the hero's feasting in the course of his trials, and suggests that feasting is the historical context for the narration of the hero's exploits, which are not only his ordeal, but also symbols of the well ordered society, and dramatic representations of the move from disorder to order. She observes that the strong parallelism between the hero's ordeal and the feast makes the two practically identical. In order to observe this, she relies on the words haftkhan (which she spells haftkhwan) "seven trials," and haft khwan "seven courses." According to Davidson, the words haft khan "seven trials," and haft khwan "seven courses," are practically synonymous, and show that, for both Persian and Greek heroes, feasting is fighting (pp. 166-67).

Elegant as this interpretation is, the two words, unfortunately, are neither related nor are they more than mere homophones. The Moscow edition renders the word for trial as khwan, while it should be spelled without the letter waw as khan. The correct spelling, which does have etymological justifications, is found in Khaleghi-Motlagh's edition. The word khan is related to the Persian khanah "house," kandah "moat," and has no relationship with khwan, with its culinary implications. Indeed, most authoritative manuscripts of the epic place the various episodes of Rustam's trials under the Arabic title of manzil "station" or "encampment," which further supports the correct spelling, khan.

The book ends with a "Conclusion," and an appendix, called "A Formulaic Analysis of Samples Taken from the Shahnama of Ferdowsi." There is a bibliography and an index. The book is well written and handsomely produced. However, I am unable to agree with a single one of its main arguments.

Listing all my disagreements with Professor Davidson's readings and interpretations of the Shahnamah in even a review article is impossible. I will therefore address myself to a few important issues only. These are Davidson's suggestion that Ferdowsi's epic is not really a versification of an older prose Shahnamah, and her argument that the authority of the text, or for that matter the poet himself, is rooted in the so-called Iranian poetic oral tradition. I will also point out what I consider to be poor methodology in her essay. Before doing so, however, I would like to state that this review should not be understood as a censorious evaluation of the work of my learned friend, Professor Davidson, in particular. It should, however, be viewed as a critique of the alarming relaxation of scholarly standards in Shahnamah studies, in general.

Part of the problem is a growing deficiency in linguistic and technical competence. Simple items of vocabulary are often misunderstood, and elaborate interpretations and theoretical structures are built on the basis of these misunderstandings. Since theory may be broadly defined as the art of making scholarly generalizations, and since scholarly generalization presupposes a profound command of the data, those who do not specialize are also unable to theorize meaningfully. In the case of Shahnamah studies in this country, the dearth of data often approaches the vanishing point. This in turn, endows American theoretical approaches to the poem with such insubstantial airiness that any healthy reader risks contracting pneumonia. Professor Davidson's book is composed in this tradition of American Shahnamah scholarship. In addition to its many linguistic errors and wild generalizations, it suffers from a paucity of relevant sources, made only worse by an overabundance of irrelevant references.

A mere glance at Davidson's bibliography shows that she is either unaware of the existence of an important body of Shahnamah scholarship in Iran, or chooses to disregard it. None of the important papers which came out of the Shahnamah Foundation in Iran, for example, is...