About the same time the use of the Persian language in literature gradually started to gain terrain in the center, including Ray (at that time an important city, the ruins of which lie near Tehran, the present capital of Persia) and Isfahan, the Caspian provinces, and especially the northwestern province of Azerbaijan. In terms of the stylistic theory that we are discussing here this signified the development of a new literary style, “the style of Iraq” (sabk-e Erâqi), i.e., the style which developed in “Persian Iraq” (Erâq-e Ajam), the medieval appellation for what in ancient times was known as Media, or western Persia. If we accept the year 1100 as a rough dating of the first signs of stylistic change, the period of the style of Iraq spans over four centuries.
Geographically, the entire area where Persian was spoken became involved. The reputation of “the city of poets” which Shiraz in the southern province of Fârs gained, dates from the 13th to 14th centuries. Even places outside Persia, such as Baghdad and Anatolian Konya in the west as well as the Sultanate of Delhi in the east, were included in this stylistic period. Politically, it encompasses upheavals of great historical impact, of which the rise and disintegration of the Saljuq sultanate and its successor states, the Mongol conquest, the reign of the Timurids, and finally the coming into power of the Safavids were the most important. The religious landscape of Persia was also altered drastically, first by the expansion of Sufism and then, after 1500, by the forced establishment of Twelver Shi’ism as the state religion by the Safavids.
In the early decades of the 16th century the Timurid prince Bâbor, who was well familiar with Persian literary tradition, fled from Central Asia to India, where he became the founder of the Mughal dynasty. One of the things Bâbor carried with him was the tradition of patronage by his ancestors, who had liberally favored both literature and the visual arts. For several centuries Persian literature had already been cultivated in the Subcontinent. It had flourished in particular during the period of the Sultans of Delhi, when the great Indo-Persian poet Amir Khosrow of Delhi (1253– 1325) enjoyed their patronage. The establishment of a vast Muslim empire by the Mughals, which eventually encompassed the greater part of the Subcontinent, gave a new and strong impetus to Persianized culture in India. Islamic courts in many different regions grew into important centers where Persian was used and Persian letters flourished. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries they attracted scores of artists and poets from Persia. Incentives for the drain of artistic talent from Persia were, on the one hand, the expectation of profits to be gained at the Indian courts and, on the other, the experience that the Safavids were far less enthusiastic patrons of letters than former Persian rulers had been. The number of Persian poets who had immigrated to India was supplemented by many who were born in India and sometimes were not even native-speakers of Persian
Periodization of Classic Persian Literature: Alternative Approaches
