The great Azerbaijani poet Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209) received a young Kipchak slave girl named Appaq (Afaq) from the shah of Der-bent in 1173 as a gift for his first poem. Appaq (“Snow White”) became Nizami’s beloved wife. Nizami’s next poem recounted the legend of the horsewoman Shirin (“Sweet”) and Khosrov, based on real historical figures. Shirin was the wife of the Sassanid (Persian) king Khosrov II (AD 590-628). Their love story inspired poetry within a century of their deaths. Shirin’s ethnic origin differs in the many versions of her tale. She has been identified as Armenian, Caucasian, Albanian, Aramaic, Kurdish, Khuzistani, Khorezmian, and Syrian, but Nizami based his romantic portrait on his Kipchak wife Appaq, who died while he was writing this poem.
Shirin inherited Armenia from her aunt, described as an Amazonlike “queen, stronger than any man, who lived a contented life with no husband.” The ruins of Shirin’s Castle can be seen near Kermanshah, western Iran. The Karakalpak people of ancient Khorezm (Uzbekistan) claim Shirin’s grave, in Devkesken-Vasir. The courtship of Shirin and Khosrov was the subject of hundreds of exquisite miniature paintings showing them dressed alike in tunics and trousers, armed with quivers of arrows, bows, and swords, riding fine horses, chasing deer and lions together, playing polo, or conversing in a flowery meadow with their horses grazing nearby. Paintings also depict Shirin hunting on horseback with her band of armed maidens, some of whom demonstrate the notorious Parthian shot. Another favorite subject was Khosrov’s first glimpse of Shirin while she was bathing, with her sword, bow, and quiver beside her on the stream bank (fig. 22.1).13
FiG. 22.1. Khosrov glimpses Shirin bathing. Her quiver, bow, and sword are suspended in the tree. Miniature illustration of the Khamsa of Nizami, ca. 1420. Inv. I. 4628, S. 231, Museum fur Islamische Kunst, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, bpk, Berlin/Staatliche Museen/Art Resource, NY.
Nizami’s sensuous poems are remarkable for their humanistic portrayals of women as “lovers, heroines, rulers, and even educators and challengers of men.” As “equal and in some cases the superior to men” women are capable of ruling countries, fighting on the battlefield, and providing “deep insight into social and philosophical issues.” The leading Persian scholar Kamran Talattof convincingly refutes other modern Iranian writers who claim that the women in Nizami’s poems are not meant to be real characters but represent “symbols, codes, and secrets” with Islamic religious meanings, and that Shirin’s only function “in the story [is] to exalt the. . . male character.” Their perspectives bring to mind the Hellenocentric, symbolic interpretations of Amazons favored by many Western classicists.14
World History
