ABU’L-MAṮAL BOḴĀRĪ (or BOḴĀRĀʾĪ), a poet of the Samanid court. He is mentioned earliest in a verse of Šāker Boḵārī (4th/10th cent.; Ṣafā, Adabīyāt I, p. 399). Manūčehrī Dāmḡānī refers to him twice, once by name and again as one of the “five (poets) from Bokhara” (Dīvān, 3rd ed., M. Dabīrsīāqī, Tehran, 1347 Š./1968). Neẓāmī ʿArūżī cites him as belonging to the handful of poets, including Rūdakī, who had been responsible for the survival of the Samanid dynasty’s name (Čahār maqāla, 3rd ed., M. Qazvīnī and M. Moʿīn, Tehran, 1333 Š./1954, p. 44). ʿAwfī records a three-bayt fragment (Lobāb, [Tehran], pp. 263, 656); otherwise only some ten individual lines survive in dictionaries—chiefly in Asadī Ṭūsī’s Loḡat-e fors (ed. Dabīrsīāqī, pp. 13, 23, 25, 78, 90, 134, 151, 155, 170).
Bibliography: Given in the text.
(J. W. Clinton)
Originally Published: December 15, 1983
Last Updated: July 21, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. I, Fasc. 4, p. 340
J. W. Clinton, “ABU’L-MAṮAL BOḴĀRĪ,” Encyclopædia Iranica, I/4, p. 340; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abul-maal-bokari-or-bokarai-a-poet-of-the-samanid-court (accessed on 31 January 2014).
