Fakhruddin As'ad Gurgani

Bust of Fakhruddin As'ad Gurgani

Fakhruddin As'ad Gurgani, also spelled as Fakhraddin Asaad Gorgani (Persian: فخرالدين اسعد گرگاني‎‎), was an 11th-century Persian poet. He versified the story of Vis and Rāmin, a story from the Arsacid (Parthian) period. The Iranian scholar Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub, however, disagrees with this view, and concludes that the story has its origins in the 5th-century Sasanian era. Besides Vis and Rāmin, he composed other forms of poetry. For example, some of his quatrains are recorded in the Nozhat al-Majales.

Biography

A native of Gorgan, Gurgani accompanied the Seljuq ruler Tughril during his campaigns in Iran. When Tughril seized the major Iranian city of Isfahan from the Kakuyids in 1051, he appointed a certain Amid Abu'l-Fath Muzaffar as its governor. Gurgani thereafter settled in Isfahan, where he established good relations with its governor, who took him under his protection.^[1]

During one day, when Gurgani and Abu'l-Fath Muzaffar were talking, Abu'l-Fath Muzaffar asked the following thing; “What do you say about the tale of Vis and Rāmin?” Gurgani then told him that the story was only written in Middle Persian. Abu'l-Fath Muzaffar then asked Gurgani to versify the story, which he did; during the Mehregan festival, Gurgani presented the poem to him, in which he applause's Tughril, the vizier Abu Nasr Kunduri, and Abu'l-Fath Muzaffar.^[1] Gurgani later died in c. 1058.

References

1. Meisami 2002, pp. 162-163.

Sources

• Jan Rypka, History of Iranian Literature. Reidel Publishing Company. ISBN 90-277-0143-1 OCLC 460598 LCC PK6097.R913 ASIN B-000-6BXVT-K
• Vīs and Rāmīn, by Fakhr al-Dīn Gurgānī, translated from Persian by George Morrison, UNESCO Collection of Representative Works: Persian heritage series, no. 14, xix, 357 p. (Columbia University Press, New York, 1972). ISBN 0-231-03408-3.
• Gorgani, Fakhraddin. Vis and Ramin Trans. Dick Davis. Washington DC: Mage, February 2008 ISBN 1-933823-17-8. Now available as a Penguin Classic ISBN 0-14-310562-0
• Meisami, Julie Scott (2002). "GORGĀNI, FAḴR-AL-DIN ASʿAD". Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. XI, Fasc. 2. pp. 162–163.