Books by Pasha M. Khan
The Broken Spell: Indian Storytelling and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu is a monograph on... more The Broken Spell: Indian Storytelling and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu is a monograph on the rise and fall in popularity of "romances" (qissah)—tales of wonder and magic told by storytellers at princely courts and in public spaces in India from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. Using literary genre theory, author Pasha M. Khan points to the worldviews underlying the popularity of Urdu and Persian romances, before pre-existing Islamicate rationalist traditions gained traction and Western colonialism came to prominence in India.
In the introduction, Khan explains that it was around the end of the nineteenth century that these marvelous tales became devalued by Orientalists and intellectually colonized Indian elites, while at the same time a new genre, the novel, gained legitimacy. Khan goes on to narrate the life histories of professional storytellers, many of them émigrés from Iran to Mughal-ruled India, and considers how they raised their own worth and that of the romance in the face of changes in the economics, culture, and patronage of India. Khan shows the methods whereby such storytellers performed and how they promoted themselves and their art. The dividing line between marvelous tales and history is examined, showing how and why the boundary was porous. The study historicizes the Western understanding of the qissah as a local manifestation of a worldwide romance genre, showing that this genre equation had profound ideological effects. The book’s appendix contains a translation of an important text for understanding Iranian and Indian storytelling methods: the unpublished introductory portions to Fakhr al-Zamani’s manual for storytellers.
Papers by Pasha M. Khan
Urdu and Indo-Persian Thought, Poetics, and Belles Lettres. Ed. Alireza Korangy. Leiden: Brill, 2017. 23-72., 2017
Khan, Pasha M. "'Abd al-Nabī Faḳhr al-Zamānī and the Courtly Storytellers of Mughal India." In Ur... more Khan, Pasha M. "'Abd al-Nabī Faḳhr al-Zamānī and the Courtly Storytellers of Mughal India." In Urdu and Indo-Persian Thought, Poetics, and Belles Lettres. Ed. Alireza Korangy. Leiden: Brill, 2017. 23-72. Postprint (formatted 2020). The page numbers of the published version are indicated in red. The text of this postprint is not identical to that of the published version. Copyright (c) 2020 by Pasha Mohamad Khan ([email protected]). This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. It may be shared for noncommercial purposes, with attribution. It may not be altered, transformed or built upon without the permission of the author. 'Abd al-Nabī Fakhr al-Zamānī and Other Storytellers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries To men of sense, a sage's company is life increased twofold. Pay heed to this! 1 The efforts of Shamsur Rahman Faruqi to shine a light upon every aspect of the Dāstān-i Amīr Ḥamzah have been tremendous. The fruits of his research and analyses are laid out extensively in his multivolume study Sāḥirī, Shāhī, Ṣāḥibqirānī-running to four volumes at present, and encompassing the Ḥamzahnāmah's poetics, a theory of its orality, its history as a book, and an encyclopedia of its interior world. One of the bases upon which much of the analytical portion of Sāḥirī, Shāhī, Ṣāḥib-qirānī's enterprise is founded is Faruqi's uncovering of the history of the Ḥamzah-nāmah's performances, including the methods of storytellers, as well as their lives and social circumstances. At the very outset of his study Faruqi descries the chasm in the biographical literature, and mourns the fall of the storytellers of Lucknow into the darkness of obscurity: With regard to the ones who created the Naval Kishor version of the Dāstān-i Amīr Ḥamzah, we cannot even say whether they have been buried in Lucknow or somewhere else. Few peoples have treated their benefactors the way the people of Urdu and the people of India have treated the craftsmen of that majestic chronicle of wonders. 2 True to his scholarly indignation, Faruqi proceeds to exert himself mightily to shrink this great gap in our knowledge, both in the first volume of his study and in a more concerted manner in the second, in which he gathers together what is recorded of the lives of the Lucknow storytellers. It was indeed from Faruqi Sahib that I first learned of the existence of the storyteller Fakhr al-Zamānī and his fascinating work, the Ṭirāz al-akhbār, a translation of whose 1
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2017
In the present study, I will outline the difficulties of establishing a one-to-one relation betwe... more In the present study, I will outline the difficulties of establishing a one-to-one relation between storytellers and romances by touching upon the lives of a number of qissah-khwans who had emigrated from Iran to India and discussing why they were considered “worthy”; that is, why they were deemed to possess a relatively high quantity of cultural capital. Through the examples of these Persian-language storytellers, I will show that individuals who told romances were almost never valued exclusively for their storytelling abilities, though this ability was the specific cultural competence of their profession. Rather, they all filled several other roles that made them valuable to their patrons, to their contemporaries, and to those who remembered them in histories and tazkirahs. While the value of storytelling as an activity is nonisolable from other activities performed by storytellers, it nevertheless often had a central role in storytellers’ efforts to advance themselves. The telling of tales appears as a key strategy in a broader effort to increase storytellers’ worth, whether as storytellers or as performers of other activities. After discussing the problems that arise when we try to isolate storytellers’ strategies to increase both their worth and that of their stories, I will look in passing at three strategies that allowed storytellers to convince the consumers of their stories of the worth of their storytelling: emphasis on the romance genre’s political exemplarity, the capture of youthful patrons, and the presentation of stories as models of linguistic and rhetorical excellence.
All external links were active on 22/09/2015 and archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machin... more All external links were active on 22/09/2015 and archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine: https://archive.org/web/ Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at http:// www.openbookpublishers.com/isbn/9781783741021#resources ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-102-1 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-103-8 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-104-5 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-105-2 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9978-1-78374-106-9
Indian Economic and Social History Review. 49.4., 2012
This article considers the reception and genre of the Shāhnāmah in India. It takes as its startin... more This article considers the reception and genre of the Shāhnāmah in India. It takes as its starting-point comments made by the poet Mirza Asad Allah Khan Ghalib in 1866, moving on to look at a Mughal Shāhnāmah adaptation, the Tarikh-i dil-gusha-i Shamsher-Khani, and its Urdu translations, as well as other Persian, Urdu and Arabic texts. It investigates the (mis)identification of the Shāhnāmah’s genre, looking at cases in which it was understood as historiographical rather than as a romance, and seeking an explanation for this ‘contamination’ of the sincere genre of history by the mendacious romance genre. A methodological split in the historiographical corpus is proposed, between a rationalist (‘aqli) and transmission-based (naqli) method. The contest between these two methods is considered, and the prevalence of transmission-based history and its similarity to romance is brought forward as a possible reason for the porousness of the border between these ostensibly opposing genres.
Nationalism in the Vernacular: Hindi, Urdu, and the Literature of Indian Freedom (Ed. Shobna Nijhawan), 2009
Nationalism in the Vernacular: Hindi, Urdu, and the Literature of Indian Freedom (Ed. Shobna Nijhawan), 2009
A newly proofread (2015) and uncut version of the introduction to and translation of shahr-āshob ... more A newly proofread (2015) and uncut version of the introduction to and translation of shahr-āshob poems from “The Lament for Delhi” (Fughān-i Dihlī) eventually published in: Nationalism in the Vernacular: Hindi, Urdu, and the Literature of Indian Freedom. Ed. Shobna Nijhawan. Delhi: Permanent Black. 2009. 88-92.
Translations by Pasha M. Khan
The Story of Raskhan, 2021
This is a translation that I made, initially (2012) for use in the classroom. If you spot any err... more This is a translation that I made, initially (2012) for use in the classroom. If you spot any errors or infelicities, please do email me to let me know, and I will revise the document.-PMK
Formatted 2021).
Talks by Pasha M. Khan
“Qissahs on Their Own Terms: Shifting Epistemologies between the Dastan, Romance, and Novel.” Sye... more “Qissahs on Their Own Terms: Shifting Epistemologies between the Dastan, Romance, and Novel.” Syeda Mubarik Begum Urdu-Persian Studies Conference and Workshop. Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Lahore School of Management Studies. Online via Zoom seminar. (2021, October 29).
Ubiquitous in our time is the "novel," a genre of writing that by now has little in the way of a dominant archetype to bind it definitionally to the miscellany of realistic, fantastical, mundane, and magical texts that circulate under its name. The history of the novel has swallowed up other narrative forms, so that the qissah and romance are now understood as imperfect precursors to the novel. This talk looks at how the qissah became devalued by comparison to the novel. Urdu, Punjabi, and Persian qissahs in South Asia depicted wondrous beings:\ swine-riding sorcerers, seven-foot-tall purple-skinned jinns, and man-eating ducks. They thrived and were even valued for their wonders through much of the pre-colonial period in spite of critiques from rationalist Muslim commentators. The colonial devaluation of these tales of wonder was effected by charging the qissah/dastan with being a "romance," a supposedly worldwide genre of narrative that had, in its English and French incarnations, already been contrasted negatively to the upstart novel genre in eighteenth-century Britain and France. In this talk I will consider not only how this shift occurred, but also how the worlds represented in South Asian storytelling (qissah-khwani/dastan-go'i) can be understood in their own epistemic terms.
“(Trans-?)Masculinity, Transformation, and Patriarchy in an Urdu Tale.” Centre for South Asian St... more “(Trans-?)Masculinity, Transformation, and Patriarchy in an Urdu Tale.” Centre for South Asian Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Online via Zoom seminar. (2021, April 13).
This talk will explore gender, transformation, and patriarchy in the 19th-century Urdu Qissah-i Agar o Gul (Tale of Agar and Gul), a story of the deeds of Prince Agar, who begins his life as the daughter of the vizier of Poppyseed City. Agar's tale is queer in many senses, involving real or apparent same-sex desire, bursting with innuendoes and oddities, and driven by the question of Prince Agar's gender. The talk will question the romantic strategy of celebrating Agar's tale as an anti-patriarchal transgender narrative, and will begin an examination of the story's instances of transformation more broadly, in relation to desire. Prince Agar's maleness makes his tale revelatory of the oppressive force of norms of masculinity and the workings of patriarchy, hetero- or not, through representations of manly virtues, sexual pursuit, traffic in women, rape, and the possibility of a reproductive future.
Digital Resources by Pasha M. Khan
The Noon Meem Rashed Archive is a collection of the papers of the poet N. M. Rashed ((Nazri Muham... more The Noon Meem Rashed Archive is a collection of the papers of the poet N. M. Rashed ((Nazri Muhammad Rashed, 1910-1975) the "father" of Modernism in Urdu poetry. It was donated to the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal, the city in which the donor and N. M. Rashed's daughter, Yasmin Hassan, resided. The Archive contains Rashed's personal documents, handwritten and typewritten drafts of his poetry, and many letters written to prominent writers from the 1950s to the 1970s. Our blog explains and provides links to digital surrogates of the documents, which are being uploaded to the Internet Archive. A Facebook page for the Archive also exists at: https://www.facebook.com/nmrashedarchive.
Uploads
Books by Pasha M. Khan
In the introduction, Khan explains that it was around the end of the nineteenth century that these marvelous tales became devalued by Orientalists and intellectually colonized Indian elites, while at the same time a new genre, the novel, gained legitimacy. Khan goes on to narrate the life histories of professional storytellers, many of them émigrés from Iran to Mughal-ruled India, and considers how they raised their own worth and that of the romance in the face of changes in the economics, culture, and patronage of India. Khan shows the methods whereby such storytellers performed and how they promoted themselves and their art. The dividing line between marvelous tales and history is examined, showing how and why the boundary was porous. The study historicizes the Western understanding of the qissah as a local manifestation of a worldwide romance genre, showing that this genre equation had profound ideological effects. The book’s appendix contains a translation of an important text for understanding Iranian and Indian storytelling methods: the unpublished introductory portions to Fakhr al-Zamani’s manual for storytellers.
Papers by Pasha M. Khan
Translations by Pasha M. Khan
Formatted 2021).
https://www.academia.edu/14080821/The_Lament_for_Delhi_Introduction_to_Selected_Poems_longer_version_
This foreword is referenced in the published introduction. The original by Salāh al-Dīn Ahmad appears in Fughān-i Dihlī. Ed. Tafazzul Husain Khan Kaukab Dihlawi. Lahore: Academy-i Punjab, 1954.
Talks by Pasha M. Khan
Ubiquitous in our time is the "novel," a genre of writing that by now has little in the way of a dominant archetype to bind it definitionally to the miscellany of realistic, fantastical, mundane, and magical texts that circulate under its name. The history of the novel has swallowed up other narrative forms, so that the qissah and romance are now understood as imperfect precursors to the novel. This talk looks at how the qissah became devalued by comparison to the novel. Urdu, Punjabi, and Persian qissahs in South Asia depicted wondrous beings:\ swine-riding sorcerers, seven-foot-tall purple-skinned jinns, and man-eating ducks. They thrived and were even valued for their wonders through much of the pre-colonial period in spite of critiques from rationalist Muslim commentators. The colonial devaluation of these tales of wonder was effected by charging the qissah/dastan with being a "romance," a supposedly worldwide genre of narrative that had, in its English and French incarnations, already been contrasted negatively to the upstart novel genre in eighteenth-century Britain and France. In this talk I will consider not only how this shift occurred, but also how the worlds represented in South Asian storytelling (qissah-khwani/dastan-go'i) can be understood in their own epistemic terms.
This talk will explore gender, transformation, and patriarchy in the 19th-century Urdu Qissah-i Agar o Gul (Tale of Agar and Gul), a story of the deeds of Prince Agar, who begins his life as the daughter of the vizier of Poppyseed City. Agar's tale is queer in many senses, involving real or apparent same-sex desire, bursting with innuendoes and oddities, and driven by the question of Prince Agar's gender. The talk will question the romantic strategy of celebrating Agar's tale as an anti-patriarchal transgender narrative, and will begin an examination of the story's instances of transformation more broadly, in relation to desire. Prince Agar's maleness makes his tale revelatory of the oppressive force of norms of masculinity and the workings of patriarchy, hetero- or not, through representations of manly virtues, sexual pursuit, traffic in women, rape, and the possibility of a reproductive future.
Digital Resources by Pasha M. Khan
In the introduction, Khan explains that it was around the end of the nineteenth century that these marvelous tales became devalued by Orientalists and intellectually colonized Indian elites, while at the same time a new genre, the novel, gained legitimacy. Khan goes on to narrate the life histories of professional storytellers, many of them émigrés from Iran to Mughal-ruled India, and considers how they raised their own worth and that of the romance in the face of changes in the economics, culture, and patronage of India. Khan shows the methods whereby such storytellers performed and how they promoted themselves and their art. The dividing line between marvelous tales and history is examined, showing how and why the boundary was porous. The study historicizes the Western understanding of the qissah as a local manifestation of a worldwide romance genre, showing that this genre equation had profound ideological effects. The book’s appendix contains a translation of an important text for understanding Iranian and Indian storytelling methods: the unpublished introductory portions to Fakhr al-Zamani’s manual for storytellers.
Formatted 2021).
https://www.academia.edu/14080821/The_Lament_for_Delhi_Introduction_to_Selected_Poems_longer_version_
This foreword is referenced in the published introduction. The original by Salāh al-Dīn Ahmad appears in Fughān-i Dihlī. Ed. Tafazzul Husain Khan Kaukab Dihlawi. Lahore: Academy-i Punjab, 1954.
Ubiquitous in our time is the "novel," a genre of writing that by now has little in the way of a dominant archetype to bind it definitionally to the miscellany of realistic, fantastical, mundane, and magical texts that circulate under its name. The history of the novel has swallowed up other narrative forms, so that the qissah and romance are now understood as imperfect precursors to the novel. This talk looks at how the qissah became devalued by comparison to the novel. Urdu, Punjabi, and Persian qissahs in South Asia depicted wondrous beings:\ swine-riding sorcerers, seven-foot-tall purple-skinned jinns, and man-eating ducks. They thrived and were even valued for their wonders through much of the pre-colonial period in spite of critiques from rationalist Muslim commentators. The colonial devaluation of these tales of wonder was effected by charging the qissah/dastan with being a "romance," a supposedly worldwide genre of narrative that had, in its English and French incarnations, already been contrasted negatively to the upstart novel genre in eighteenth-century Britain and France. In this talk I will consider not only how this shift occurred, but also how the worlds represented in South Asian storytelling (qissah-khwani/dastan-go'i) can be understood in their own epistemic terms.
This talk will explore gender, transformation, and patriarchy in the 19th-century Urdu Qissah-i Agar o Gul (Tale of Agar and Gul), a story of the deeds of Prince Agar, who begins his life as the daughter of the vizier of Poppyseed City. Agar's tale is queer in many senses, involving real or apparent same-sex desire, bursting with innuendoes and oddities, and driven by the question of Prince Agar's gender. The talk will question the romantic strategy of celebrating Agar's tale as an anti-patriarchal transgender narrative, and will begin an examination of the story's instances of transformation more broadly, in relation to desire. Prince Agar's maleness makes his tale revelatory of the oppressive force of norms of masculinity and the workings of patriarchy, hetero- or not, through representations of manly virtues, sexual pursuit, traffic in women, rape, and the possibility of a reproductive future.