Final Hameed copyedits

content/issues/5/mapping-persian-literacy/index.md

@@ -86,9 +86,9 @@ Who were the different groups of students studying the *Gulistan*? Given the cen
 
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-The map above plots some of the manuscripts of the *Gulistan* and its commentaries that were produced in India between roughly 1650--1900. The raw data for the map was derived from the bibliophilic labor of Ahmed Monzavi, a cataloger from Iran who, together with a team of researchers, undertook a massive research project spanning the late 1950s to the early 1980s. Monzavi and his team cataloged all the Persian manuscripts then present in the libraries of Pakistan. This team of scholars browsed through manuscripts scattered across the country, whether in small village libraries, special collections in universities, or the private collections of individuals. The output of this labor of love is a fourteen-volume tome, an extract of which was printed separately: manuscripts of the writings of Saʿdi.[^5] In this small book are listed about 370 manuscripts of the *Gulistan* itself and about two hundred manuscripts of commentaries on the text. These are the manuscripts that found their way into a recognized collection in Pakistan. There were probably thousands of additional manuscripts produced in South Asia. Some of these are located in libraries in India; many were taken to other parts of the world. Princeton University, for instance, holds a [manuscript](https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/9975743063506421) of a *Gulistan* commentary that was composed in Dehvi, a village in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh in Northern India. A large number of manuscripts, however, were destroyed over time by human negligence and such elements as wind, water, and worms.
+The map above plots some of the manuscripts of the *Gulistan* and its commentaries that were produced in India between roughly 1650--1900. The raw data for the map was derived from the bibliophilic labor of Ahmed Monzavi, a cataloger from Iran who, together with a team of researchers, undertook a massive research project spanning the late 1950s to the early 1980s. Monzavi and his team cataloged all the Persian manuscripts then present in the libraries of Pakistan. This team of scholars browsed through manuscripts scattered across the country, whether in small village libraries, special collections in universities, or the private collections of individuals. The output of this labor of love is a fourteen-volume tome, an extract of which was printed separately: manuscripts of the writings of Saʿdi.[^5] In this small book are listed about 370 manuscripts of the *Gulistan* itself and about two hundred manuscripts of commentaries on the text. These are the manuscripts that found their way into a recognized collection in Pakistan. There were probably thousands of additional manuscripts produced in South Asia. Some of these are located in libraries in India; many were taken to other parts of the world. Princeton University, for instance, holds a [manuscript](https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/9975743063506421) of a *Gulistan* commentary that was composed in Dehvi, a village in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh in Northern India. A large number of manuscripts, however, was destroyed over time by human negligence and such elements as wind, water, and worms.
 
-The manuscripts cataloged in Monzavi's book are therefore only a fraction of the actual number of *Gulistan* manuscripts and commentaries that circulated in early modern India. When it comes to identifying the places of origin of these manuscripts, we encounter obstacles that further limit our already delimited data set. For example, many entries do not include a place of origin at all. This means that the cataloger could not identify an explicit place where the manuscript was first copied using the front matter or end matter, the handful of pages that a cataloguer usually scans when compiling a manuscript's meta-data. (There could, nonetheless, be other clues to the place of origin in the manuscript that awaitdiscovery by future scholars who read the manuscript in its entirety.) Even when a location is given, the exact provenance can be ambiguous. We are told, for instance, that one commentary was copied on June 22, 1890 CE, in Sharifabad. But, in early modern times and even today, there were many towns referred to by the name of "Sharifabad." Because this manuscript is currently located in a library in Sargodha near Okara, Punjab---just over a hundred miles from one of these Sharifabads---we can assume that's where it was created. But this goes to show the degree of detective work that is needed to place these manuscripts accurately.
+The manuscripts cataloged in Monzavi's book are therefore only a fraction of the actual number of *Gulistan* manuscripts and commentaries that circulated in early modern India. When it comes to identifying the places of origin of these manuscripts, we encounter obstacles that further limit our already delimited data set. For example, many entries do not include a place of origin at all. This means that the cataloger could not identify an explicit place where the manuscript was first copied using the front matter or end matter, the handful of pages that a cataloger usually scans when compiling a manuscript's meta-data. (There could, nonetheless, be other clues to the place of origin in the manuscript that await discovery by future scholars who read the manuscript in its entirety.) Even when a location is given, the exact provenance can be ambiguous. We are told, for instance, that one commentary was copied on June 22, 1890 CE, in Sharifabad. But, in early modern times and even today, there were many towns referred to by the name of "Sharifabad." Because this manuscript is currently located in a library in Sargodha near Okara, Punjab---just over a hundred miles from one of these Sharifabads---we can assume that's where it was created. But this goes to show the degree of detective work that is needed to place these manuscripts accurately.
 
 {{<pullquote right `The existence of a single manuscript reveals an entire world of knowledge production and transmission in this small village of Hesarak.` >}}
 
@@ -100,7 +100,7 @@ Historians can also increase the accuracy of their claims by collating their dat
 
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-On May 24, 1877, Muhammad Sharif "Nangarhari" inscribed a *Gulistan* commentary in Hisarak, a village in Nangarhar province in Western Afghanistan (the westernmost pin on our map). Its population in 2002 was estimated to be just thirty thousand. The fact that a *Gulistan* commentary was copied there implies a few facts about this village in the nineteenth century: that there was at least one professionally-trained scribe (Muhammad Sharif) who could copy Persian books; that there was at least one other manuscript of the same commentary from which Sharif produced his copy; that there were copies of the *Gulistan*, for the teaching of which someone felt the need to have a copy of a commentary; that there was a patron who could pay for the production of the copy; that there was parchment and ink with which the copy could be produced. In other words, the existence of a single manuscript reveals an entire world of knowledge production and transmission in this small village of Hesarak. The fact that our map features a number of such small towns and villages suggests a remarkable reach of Persian literacy beyond courtly elites.
+On May 24, 1877, Muhammad Sharif "Nangarhari" inscribed a *Gulistan* commentary in Hisarak, a village in Nangarhar province in Western Afghanistan (the westernmost pin on our map). Its population in 2002 was estimated to be just thirty thousand. The fact that a *Gulistan* commentary was copied there implies a few facts about this village in the nineteenth century: that there was at least one professionally trained scribe (Muhammad Sharif) who could copy Persian books; that there was at least one other manuscript of the same commentary from which Sharif produced his copy; that there were copies of the *Gulistan*, for the teaching of which someone felt the need to have a copy of a commentary; that there was a patron who could pay for the production of the copy; that there were parchment and ink with which the copy could be produced. In other words, the existence of a single manuscript reveals an entire world of knowledge production and transmission in this small village of Hesarak. The fact that our map features a number of such small towns and villages suggests a remarkable reach of Persian literacy beyond courtly elites.
 
 {{< wrap class="interlude" >}}
 
@@ -141,9 +141,9 @@ The content of the *Gulistan* and its commentaries can also shed broader light o
 > "Inasmuch as I, who am old, have no inclination for old women, what love could a young woman have for me?"\
 > \[verse\] Potency is necessary, not gold / a woman prefers a hard carrot to ten maunds of meat.[^7]
 
-How did early modern readers engage with such stories? Did they find them unsuitable to be included in a textbook of Islam, as many modern Muslims undoubtedly feel? The commentaries on the *Gulistan* here provide clues. We see that the commentators, unlike later European and Muslim readers, far from displaying any consternation or criticism of such passages, found it important to explicate the passages so that Saʿdi's message is clear. In this case, for instance, the commentators clarified the anatomical reference in the verse. In fact, many commentators stressed the importance of a wife's sexual satisfaction to a healthy marriage. My ongoing dissertation research delves further into the content of the commentaries, especially on how the commentators interpret stories pertaining to same-sex desire in ways that disrupt contemporary understandings of the links between desire and selfhood. Here, my point is just to indicate the ways in which tracing the circulation of *Gulistan* manuscripts can shed light on wider historiographical questions.
+How did early modern readers engage with such stories? Did they find them unsuitable to be included in a textbook of Islam, as many modern Muslims undoubtedly feel? The commentaries on the *Gulistan* here provide clues. We see that the commentators, unlike later European and Muslim readers, far from displaying any consternation or criticism of such passages, found it important to explicate the passages so that Saʿdi's message is clear. In this case, for instance, the commentators clarified the anatomical reference in the verse. In fact, many commentators stressed the importance of a wife's sexual satisfaction to a healthy marriage. My ongoing dissertation research delves further into the content of the commentaries, especially how the commentators interpret stories pertaining to same-sex desire in ways that disrupt contemporary understandings of the links between desire and selfhood. Here, my point is just to indicate the ways in which tracing the circulation of *Gulistan* manuscripts can shed light on wider historiographical questions.
 
-Among these wider questions is that of Hindu-Muslim relations and the extent to which cultural and social norms were shared amongst them. The *Gulistan* manuscripts provide evidence that the world of Islamic ethics was not restricted to Muslims. For example, on April 6, 1701, Nanakchand, a Hindu scribe, copied a *Gulistan* commentary for a Hindu patron named Nisbat Raʾye (the commentary is now in a library in the small town of Bhalwal in central Punjab). As further evidence of the participation of other religious groups in the world of the *Gulistan*, we find some manuscripts in Monzavi's catalog which---as opposed to the majority of entries that use the Islamic Hijri calendar---give the date in the [Bikrami calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikram_Samvat) that was followed by the Sikh and Hindu communities in the Punjab. These facts are direct evidence that some non-Muslims also patronized Perso-Islamic texts, while others were sufficiently trained in Persian to serve as professional scribes. While it is well established among historians of medieval India that peoples of different faiths served in the Mughal bureaucracy, direct evidence of non-Muslims' participation in the Persian scholarly milieu away from imperial and regional courts is significant.
+Among these wider questions are those of Hindu-Muslim relations and the extent to which cultural and social norms were shared amongst them. The *Gulistan* manuscripts provide evidence that the world of Islamic ethics was not restricted to Muslims. For example, on April 6, 1701, Nanakchand, a Hindu scribe, copied a *Gulistan* commentary for a Hindu patron named Nisbat Raʾye (the commentary is now in a library in the small town of Bhalwal in central Punjab). As further evidence of the participation of other religious groups in the world of the *Gulistan*, we find some manuscripts in Monzavi's catalog which---as opposed to the majority of entries that use the Islamic Hijri calendar---give the date in the [Bikrami calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikram_Samvat) that was followed by the Sikh and Hindu communities in the Punjab. These facts are direct evidence that some non-Muslims also patronized Perso-Islamic texts, while others were sufficiently trained in Persian to serve as professional scribes. While it is well established among historians of medieval India that peoples of different faiths served in the Mughal bureaucracy, direct evidence of non-Muslims' participation in the Persian scholarly milieu away from imperial and regional courts is significant.
 
 Beyond these generic patterns, the visual representation of the data draws our eyes to particularly interesting points. The concentration of points in and around the Lahore region in the Punjab probably reflects the fact that the two largest collections of Persian manuscripts in Pakistan are held by the Punjab University in Lahore and the Ganj Baksh Library in Rawalpindi. But the spread is also illustrative. For instance, a manuscript now in Karachi has traveled all the way from Solapur in Southern India. Not coincidentally, this manuscript is in the [naskh script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naskh_(script)), as opposed to the [nastaʿliq script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nastaliq) that was more common in Northern India. One manuscript, dated to around the 1800s, was produced in a town in Bihar and is currently located in Peshawar. Within a couple of centuries, it has traveled thousands of miles. How, why, and by whom did this movement take place? These are questions that might make for a riveting historical drama, and one hopes that future researchers can pursue them.
 
@@ -164,20 +164,20 @@ This brief article has attempted to give a sort of extended caption to an intera
 
 ## Acknowledgments
 
-I extend my gratitude to a number of people: Maulana Dr. Sabeeh Hamdani, for his help in deciphering the commentaries; Muhammad Siddique Anjum, for helping me extract data from the catalogs and plotting it onto excel; Arif Noushahi Sahib, for helping me identify obscure places; Wouter Haverals, for revealing the wonders of Leaflet; and Grant Wythoff, for his consistent encouragement and support from the very start of the project through to its present stage. I am also grateful to other fellows and staff at The Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton University, and to many friends and advisers who will be recognized properly in my dissertation acknowledgements. I remain perpetually indebted to Aysha Saeed Hameed, my wife, whose love and care keep me going.
+I extend my gratitude to a number of people: Maulana Dr. Sabeeh Hamdani, for his help in deciphering the commentaries; Muhammad Siddique Anjum, for helping me extract data from the catalogs and plotting it onto Excel; Arif Noushahi Sahib, for helping me identify obscure places; Wouter Haverals, for revealing the wonders of Leaflet; and Grant Wythoff, for his consistent encouragement and support from the very start of the project through to its present stage. I am also grateful to other fellows and staff at The Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton University, and to many friends and advisers who will be recognized properly in my dissertation acknowledgements. I remain perpetually indebted to Aysha Saeed Hameed, my wife, whose love and care keep me going.
 
 [^1]: Before the coming of European colonialism, the main calendar used across the Muslim world from Spain to Southeast Asia was the Hijri calendar. It is based on the lunar cycle, which means that a year given in the Hijri calendar can correspond to two years of the CE calendar. For instance, the year 1446 Hijri will span parts of 2024 and 2025 of the CE calendar.
 
 [^2]: ʿAbdul Rasul bin Shihab al-Din Qurashi, "Sharḥ-i Gulistān-i Sa'dī," 8919, fols. 1--2, Ganj Baksh, Rawalpindi. All translations in this article are my own, unless otherwise noted.
 
-[^3]: For an excellent article on *adab* and the transregional curriculum that fostered it, with special reference to the *Gulistan*, see Mana Kia, "Adab as Ethics of Literary Form and Social Conduct: Reading the *Gulistan* in Late Mughal India," in *No Tapping Around Philology: A Festschrift in Honor of Wheeler McIntosh Thackston Jr.'s 70th Birthday*, eds. Alireza Korangy and Daniel J. Sheffield (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014), 281--308.
+[^3]: For an excellent article on *adab* and the transregional curriculum that fostered it, with special reference to the *Gulistan*, see Mana Kia, "Adab as Ethics of Literary Form and Social Conduct: Reading the *Gulistan* in Late Mughal India," in *No Tapping Around Philology: A Festschrift in Honor of Wheeler McIntosh Thackston Jr.'s 70th Birthday*, eds. Alireza Korangy and Daniel J. Sheffield (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014), 281--308.
 
 [^4]: A good illustration of this view comes from Francis Robinson, for whom "Perso-Islamic culture," as he puts it, was decidedly elite. It was the culture of the Muslim *ashraf* \["the respected"\] who came from outside India. These outsiders were mainly "town-dwellers" in towns that were "islands of international Perso-Islamic civilization set in countrysides dominated by local cultures, some barely Islamic, others not Islamic at all." Francis Robinson, *The 'Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia* (London: Hurst , 2012).
 
 [^5]: Ahmed Monzavi, *Sa'di Through the Manuscripts of Pakistan* (Iran-Pakistan Institute of Persian Studies, 1985).
 
 [^6]: Naeem Abbas, "'Made-in-Sialkot' Adidas Ball Puts Pakistan in the World Cup," Reuters, December 9, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/made-in-sialkot-adidas-ball-puts-pakistan-world-cup-2022-12-09/.
 
-[^7]: With slight modifications, this translation is taken from Wheeler M. Thackston, *The Gulistan (Rose Garden) of Sa'di* (Ibex Publishers, 2008), 129.
+[^7]: With slight modifications, this translation is taken from Wheeler M. Thackston, *The Gulistan (Rose Garden) of Sa'di* (Bethesda: Ibex Publishers, 2008), 129.
 
 [^8]: As this piece was going through the final proofs, I discovered "The Persian Tadhkira Project" which maps *tadhkiras* (biographical anthologies) of Persian poets produced and circulating across the Persianate world, c. 1200-1900. For more, see Kevin L. Schwartz, “A Transregional Persianate Library: The Production and Circulation of tadhkiras of Persian Poets in the 18th and 19th Centuries,” *International Journal of Middle East Studies,* 52.1 (2020): pp. 109-135.