ABŪ TAHER ḴOSRAVĀNĪ

 

ABŪ ṬĀHER ṬAYYEB B. MOḤAMMAD ḴOSRAVĀNĪ, a poet of the Samanid period. He was a contemporary of Rūdakī; according to Šams-al-dīn Moḥammad b. Qays (al-Moʿǰam fī maʿāyīr ašʿār al-ʿaǰam, ed. M. Qazvīnī and Modarres Rażawī, Tehran, 1338 Š./1959, p. 470) he took the subject matter of a couplet by Rūdakī describing the dyeing of the beard and moustache and composed two lines on it. Rūdakī imagined that the verses were ridiculing him, and he answered with two more couplets, to explain the reason for the dyeing. In Maǰmaʿ al-foṣaḥāʾ (II, p. 601) Hedāyat states that Ḵosravānī was from Khorasan. Forūzānfar puts his death in 342/953 (Soḵan va soḵanvarān, 2nd ed., Tehran, 1350 Š./1971, p. 27); but the sources he quotes lack the information (Maǰmaʿ al-foṣaḥāʾ II, p. 601, n. 5).

According to Rādūyānī (ca. 4th/10th) Moḥammad ʿAbdoh Kāteb, teacher of Boḡrā Khan of Transoxania (d. 383/993), included a couplet by Ḵosravānī in a piece of poetry which later biography writers such as Hedāyat (ibid.) and ʿAwfī (Lobāb [Tehran], p. 258) have attributed to Ferdowsī. This couplet regrets the dissipation of youth in folly, and it may be imagined that at the time of writing it the poet had attained old age. Only a few pieces of Ḵosravānī’s poetry have survived in biographies (twenty-three couplets). In addition there are scattered verses given as examples of vocabulary in the Loḡat-e fors by Asadī Ṭūsī and other dictionaries, which amount to about sixty couplets.

Bibliography:

See also Ṣafā, Adabīyāt2 I, pp. 398-99, 440-41.

Idem, Ganǰ-e soḵan I, Tehran, 1339 Š./1960, pp. 21-23.

S. Nafīsī, Aḥwāl o ašʿār-e Rūdakī, Tehran, 1309 Š./1930, pp. 626, 628, 854, 878, 913, 1108. Dehḵodā.

(M. Dabīrsīāqī)

Originally Published: December 15, 1983

Last Updated: July 21, 2011

This article is available in print.
Vol. I, Fasc. 4, pp. 387-388

Cite this entry:

M. Dabīrsīāqī, “ABŪ TAHER ḴOSRAVĀNĪ,” Encyclopædia Iranica, I/4, pp. 387-388; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abu-taher-tayyeb-poet-of-the-samanid-period (accessed on 31 January 2014).