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Abstract
This article seeks to foreground Salman Rushdie’s special relationship with stories and images from Dastan-e Amir Hamza and the Hamzanama within his “Eastern literary ancestors.” I argue that a deeper, more nuanced understanding of Rushdie’s writing can be garnered by seeking to understand his storytelling craft within his obsessive indebtedness to the oral traditions of the Indian Subcontinent that he claims “ownership” of. In the latter half of the analysis, the paper specifically discusses Rushdie’s novel, Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (2015), as a story that belongs in the dastan. I argue that given the linguistic fluidity of the narrative structure, Rushdie’s novel does not have the stability of form or story outside the genre.
Notes
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 The Satanic Verses controversy (or the Rushdie Affair) refers to the reaction in the Muslim world to the publication of Rushdie’s 1988 novel that was largely considered blasphemous. In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, the then leader of Iran, issued a fatwa (legal pronouncement in Islam) that Rushdie was wajib-ul qatal (one who should be killed). Various attempts were made on Rushdie’s life following which he had to go into hiding. For details regarding this time see Salman Rushdie’s autobiographical memoir Joseph Anton (2012).
2 Dastan literally means long story. It is an Indo-Persian storytelling genre that Julia Rubanovich (Citation2012) defines as “capacious fictional prose narratives with branching plots, which relate the heroic-romantic adventures of their eponymous heroes, often with a religious, Islamic emphasis. Their composition and transmission are connected with the professional or semi-professional storyteller…Lacking a strict genre definition, dastans were variously defined by their authors as a tale, story or book” (651). While Rubanovich uses the word dastan to denote this genre, Francis Pritchett (Citation1991) and Pasha Muhammad Khan (Citation2013, 2019) choose an Anglophone approximation: romance. Mariam Zia (Citation2017) takes issue with this approximation and argues that to use the word dastan for the genre is the first step to reclaim it critically.
3 See for instance Kalimuddin Ahmad (Citation1966). Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi ([1867] 2005) writes that a Muslim woman should be forbidden from reading Dastan-e Amir Hamza, or for that matter, the Arabian Nights, as these texts are not meant for pious women (653).
4 The entire Dastan-e Amir Hamza is in 46 volumes of about 1000 pages each. I refer here to the one-volume ‘original’ story: Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgirami (1855/1871). The Adventures of Amir Hamza Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi. Modern Library Classics. Random House, New York: 2007. This is an anachronistic story about the life and times of Hamza bin Abdul Muttalib. The story of Hamza or The Adventures are based, in part, on the character of Prophet Muhammad’s uncle Hamza bin Abdul Muttalib who lived in Arabia (566–625 C.E.). However, being narrated in its full glory in the Indian Subcontinent, not only does the dastan make ample use of the Indian culture and rituals but also mentions inventions like gunpowder that are historically completely removed from the historical Hamza’s day and age.
5 I borrow Marina Warner’s phrase here (Citation2011).
6 Discussing Dastan-e Amir Hamza, Zia writes: “I see the dastan as ahistorical and areligious in its narrative strategies not because it negates the historical and the religious but because it takes it all within its folds like all acts of storytelling must. The profane does not reject the sacred, and religiosity is not threatened by cultural norms. Dastan-e Amir Hamza is representative of the storytelling tradition that existed outside these cordoned off divisions of the sacred and the profane” (11).
7 Qissah is the name given to a story, complete in itself, that belongs within the dastan. The words qissah and dastan can also be used interchangeably in some contexts.
8 The title amounts to one thousand and one nights as an oblique reference to the other name by which the Arabian Nights are known. When asked in a interview with The New Yorker’s Deborah Triesman (2015) about where the idea that jinn cross over from Fairyland to our world (for a thousand and one nights) and wreak havoc here came from, he replied that he “wanted to write a modern wonder tale” like the Hamzanama or Arabian Nights and that he “felt a strong urge to swing to the other end of the literary spectrum and make up something wildly surreal.”
9 All surviving Hamzanama paintings have been printed in Seyller andThackston (Citation2002). The catalogue was published during an exhibition of the paintings at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. It comes with an indispensable introduction for anyone wanting to acquaint themselves with the tradition and its history. For a detailed analysis and reconstruction of the manuscript from an art historian’s perspective see Faridany-Akhavan (Citation1989).
10 Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar (1542–1605) was the third Mughal Emperor who expanded Mughal rule through most of the Indian Subcontinent. His greatest feat, arguably, was the development of Din-e-Ilahi (The Religion of God) which was a syncretic religion to unify Islam and Hinduism and develop a culture of homogeneity.
11 Amartya Sen writes in his Argumentative Indian (Citation2005):
the most powerful defence of toleration and of the need for the state to be equidistant from different religions came from a Muslim Indian Emperor Akbar…The nature and strength of the dialogic tradition in India is sometimes ignored because of the much championed belief that India is the land of religions, the country of uncritical faiths and unquestioned practices. (xiii-xiv)
12 Professional storytellers; narrators of the dastan.
13 Explaining storytelling in the Hamzanama, Rushdie writes:
Interestingly, in spite of the association with the Prophet, the fictional Hamza’s adventures are almost entirely secular in nature. There is very occasionally a might feat of piety. One of the most celebrated images of the Hamzanama shows Amir Hamza’s ally, Prince Said Farrukh-Nizhad, singlehandedly lifting an elephant, a feat so impresses two of his enemies that they straightaway convert to Islam; however, even in this story of piety the fabulous overwhelms the spiritual. For the most part, the spiritual dimension is absent from Hamza’s adventures, both in story and in picture form. The subject of Islam’s victory over Zoroastrian sun worshippers and other lowlifes is present as an underlying theme, but it rarely surfaces, though when it does it does so in awe-inspiring fashion … The saga is a torrent of episodes of derring-do, in a world characterized by the frequent interventions of magic, and also by the importance of ayyars: spies…Sorcery and treachery are the true poles of this world, while faith and unbelief, good and evil, trail someway behind” (2002: 186).
14 A similar concern is raised, for instance, in The Enchantress of Florence (2008), a novel set in Mughal Emperor Akbar’s court, that takes ‘real’ stories and characters from history and weaves a fictional narrative around them: “Abul Fazal, with a sardonic edge to his voice, additionally remarked that the king’s belief in the alleged harmlessness of stories was becoming an embattled position to defend” (204).
15 The Quran (31:6) “But there are, among men, those who purchase idle tales, without knowledge (or meaning), to mislead (men) from the Path of Allah and throw ridicule (on the Path): for such there will be a Humiliating Penalty.” Trans. Yusuf Ali.
16 In the novel, Ghazali literally lets Zumurrud, the Grand Ifrit out of the bottle (121).
17 I refer here specifically to the concept and the theorization of the uncanny a feeling of the “strangely familiar” that stems from Sigmund Freud’s essay “The Uncanny” (1919). Rushdie’s novel and the déjà vu inherent in the experience of reading his work for those familiar with his “Eastern literary ancestors” is one way in which Freud’s essay can be illuminating for our present concerns. See Nicholas Royle (Citation2003) for incisive insights into the relationship between the Rushdie oeuvre and the uncanny. Mariam Zia frames her discussion of the dastan as a genre using Freud’s Citation1919 essay.
18 There is an earlier reference to this particular Hamzanama painting both in “The Composite Artist” (186) and in Haroun and the Sea of Stories (137).
19 “smokeless fire” is the exact Quranic terminology used for the “matter” jinn are made of: 55:15
20 Besides various other references to the existence of jinn, there is an entire chapter in The Quran titled “The Jinn” (Chapter 72).
21 Quraisha is Amir Hamza’s daughter from Aasman Peri in The Adventures of Amir Hamza. The plausibility of jinn and human marriages and procreation is documented by Marina Warner with reference to “an elusive Syrian treatise”:
A remarkable legal treatise was drawn up in Syria in the fourteenth century to determine the status of such unions in accordance with the faith, with the Koran and the Hadith as well as the biographies of the Prophet. Though the theological evidence comes down on the side of disapproval of such marriages, they are not deemed inconceivable: indeed the very disapproval expressed by these highest authorities admits their possibility … Some of the learned opinion oppose such beliefs arguing that, quite apart from the unlawfulness of such procreation, jinn cannot take the fully human form necessary to conceive a human baby – the existence of the jinn is not in doubt, but the suitability of their form. (48)
22 Dunia means “world” in Urdu and Duniazát means “those who belong to the world”. “Zat” is a word used to denote caste.
23 Rushdie’s allegorical reference to 9/11.
24 In keeping with the fluidity of the oral narrative, Rushdie choses to change names in a way that the reference and character remains intact while he carves a new story around them.
25 One Thousand and One Nights or The Arabian Nights.
26 The postscript reads: “May the beneficent God bless this translator and transcriber…and may the truth and fiction of this tale be attributed to the inventors of the legend” (906).
27 Salman Rushdie’s father adopted Ibn-Rushd’s name as the family name a year before Rushdie was born as he sided with Rushd’s philosophy as opposed to that of Ghazali’s. (Rushdie 2012: 269)
28 The Simurgh, in Eastern traditions, is a mythical bird similar to the Phoenix: wise, benevolent and powerful enough to carry an elephant. The Simurgh has a significant role in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and Fariduddin Attar’s Conference of Birds.
29 Amar Ayyar’s most prized occult gift. A zambil is a bag that can “can accommodate the entire contents of the world in it, will produce all that you may wish for, and will vouchsafe to its care” (The Adventures of Amir Hamza 229). “Amar’s zambil is perhaps based on Zambil-e Suleiman, a wallet or leather bag in Suleiman’s possession which produced anything he wished for. (It was also called Amban-e Suleiman).” The Adventures of Amir Hamza, 945, n.191.
30 Trickster. One of the primary characters of Dastan-e Amir Hamza is Amar Ayyar, the master trickster. He appears in Rushdie’s stories as Umar the Ayyar (The Enchantress of Florence) and Omar the Ayyar (Two Years).