Reformulation of Shahnameh Legends in Bahram Beyzaie's Plays

Abstract

This essay explores Bahram Beyzaie's inter-paradigmatic reformulations of Iranian dramatic forms and Shahnameh legends in plays which highlight the voice of the periphery against the center and imbue these narratives with motifs that relate them to the present. The essay first reviews Beyzaie's work with the Shahnameh and then examines the Shahnameh cycle of Jamshid and Zahhak to provide the context for in-depth analyses of Azhdahak (1959), Karnameh-ye Bondar-e Bidakhsh (The Account of Bondar the Premier, 1996), and the first episode of Shab-e Hezar-o-Yekom (The One Thousand and First Night, 2003) in which Beyzaie reconstructs the cycle of Jamshid and Zahhak.

Notes

¹Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London, 2004), 12–13.

²See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge, MA, 1968).

³For more, see Bahram Beyzaie, Namayesh dar Iran (Tehran, 1965).

⁴James Mew, “The Modern Persian Stage,” The Fortnightly Review LIX, no. 8 (June 1896): 905–6.

⁵Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1995), 30.

⁶Nushabeh Amiri, Jedal ba Jahl (Tehran, 2009), 25–6.

⁷Margaret Masterman, “The Nature of a Paradigm,” in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge, 1979), 65.

⁸See Bahram Beyzaie and Hamid Amjad, “From the Land of the Pure, in Search of the Lost Origin” Iranian Studies (current issue).

⁹For references to Hezar Afsan, see Ebn-e Nadim, Alfehrest (986 AD), Persian trans. Mohammad Reza Tajaddod (Tehran 1967), 538–41; and Mas'udi, Morvvej o-Zahab va Ma'aden al-Johar (947 AD), Persian trans. Abolqasem Payandeh (Tehran, 1977), 610–11.

¹⁰Abolqasem Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, ed. Djalal Khaleghi Motlagh (New York, 1987), 43: 33–4.

¹¹Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, 51: 170.

¹²Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, 44: 60–74, 51: 171–4.

¹³Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, 52: footnotes 2 and 19.

¹⁴Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, 57: 38–41.

¹⁵Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, 58: 54–68.

¹⁶Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, 68–9: 219–20.

¹⁷Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, 70: 236–43.

¹⁸Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, 127: 610.

¹⁹Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, 71: 265–8 and 73: 307–10.

²⁰Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, 80: 403–9.

²¹Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, 82: 420–36

²²Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh, 83: 452–5.

²³Ahmad Dinvari, Akhbar-o-Tteval, Persian trans. Mahmoud Mahdavi Damghani (Tehran, 1995), 30–31.

²⁴Mohammad Jarir Tabari, Tarikh-e Tabari (915), Vol. I, Persian trans. Abolqasem. Payandeh (Tehran, 1973), 138–42.

²⁵Mohammad Mirkhond, History of the Early Kings of Persia, trans. David Shea (London, 1832), 130–34.

²⁶Abdorrahim Zaker Hosein, Adabiyat-e Siyasi-ye Iran dar Asr-e Mashrutiat (Tehran, 1998), 446, 475.

²⁷See Ahmad Shamlu, “Haqiqat Cheqadr Asibpazir Ast,” Adineh, no. 47 (July 1990): 6–11.

²⁸ Yadgar-e Zariran is a Middle Persian text commemorating Zarir as a sacrificial hero. Though its extant version was written in the 1300s, scholars date it back to the third century AD. For the text, see Mehrdad Bahar, Pajhuheshi dar Asatir-e Iran (Tehran, 2002), 262–77. See also Mary Boyce, “Ayādgār i Zarērān,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ayadgar-i-zareran (accessed June 15, 2011). Some scholars have argued that it is a pre-Islamic play of ta'ziyeh type. See, for instance, Naghmeh Samini , Tamashakhaneh-ye Asatir (Tehran, 2008), 165–78.

²⁹Bahram Beyzaie, “Azhdahak,” in Divan-e Namayesh (Tehran, 2001), 10–11.

³⁰Foucault, Discipline, 27.

³¹Hamid Amjad, “Interview with Bahram Beyzaie,” Simia 2 (Winter 2008): 256–62.

³³Bahram Beyzaie, “Karnameh-ye Bondar-e Bidakhsh,” Divan-e Namayesh (Tehran, 2001), 67.

³²Foucault, Discipline, 33–4, 170–71, 195–230.

³⁶Beyzaie, “Karnameh-ye,” 72.

³⁴Plato, “Book II” in The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Published by the Internet Classics Archives) at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.3.ii.html (accessed 12 July 2012).

³⁵Beyzaie, “Karnameh-ye,” 58–61.

³⁷Bahram Beyzaie, Shab-e Hezar-o-Yekom (Tehran, 2003), 43–4. As with other cases in Beyzaie's works, this echoes an actual event, involving Abdollah Ebn-e Taher (R. 828–44), the Taherid ruler of Khorasan and a Middle Persian manuscript of Vameq and Azra. See Dolatshah-e Samarqandi, Tazkerat-o-Shoara, ed. Edward Brwone (Cambridge, 1900), 30.

³⁸Marilyn Jurich, Schehrazade's Sisters: Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World Literature (Westport, CT, 1998).

³⁹Beyzaie, Shab-e, 8.

⁴¹Beyzaie, Shab-e, 8–9.

⁴⁰Beyzaie, Shab-e, 6.

⁴²Beyzaie, Shab-e, 9.

⁴³Beyzaie, Shab-e, 10. For the origin of Beyzaie's suggestion, see Ebn-e Balkhi, Farshameh (ca. 1110) (Tehran, 2005), 11.

⁴⁴Beyzaie, Shab-e, 11.

⁴⁶Beyzaie, Shab-e, 15.

⁴⁵Beyzaie, Shab-e, 13.

⁴⁷Beyzaie, Shab-e, 15–16.

⁴⁸Beyzaie, Shab-e, 19.

⁴⁹Beyzaie, Shab-e, 23.

⁵⁰See Bahram Beyzaie, Rishehyabi Derakht-e Kohan (Tehran, 2004), 83–116.

⁵¹Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zone (New York, 1969), 261.

⁵²Bat-Ami Bar On, “Marginality and Epistemic Privilege,” in Feminist Epistemologies, ed. L. Alcoff and E. Potter(London, 1993), 88 and 96.

⁵³Beyzaie, Shab-e, 22–4.

⁵⁴Beyzaie, Shab-e, 28–9.

⁵⁵Beyzaie, Shab-e, 34–5.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Saeed Talajooy

Saeed Talajooy teaches Persian language, literature and culture at the University of Cambridge.