DEHESTĀNĪ, ḤOSAYN

 

DEHESTĀNĪ, ḤOSAYN b. Asʿad b. Ḥosayn Moʾayyadī, Persian translator of the Arabic work al-Faraj baʿd al-šedda by Abū ʿAlī Moḥassen b. ʿAlī b. Dāwūd Tanūḵī (327-84/939-94), a collection of poems, anecdotes, sayings, and didactic remarks arranged in thirteen chapters on the general theme of joy following hardship; the translation, Faraj-e baʿd az šeddat, was dedicated to Dehestānī’s patron ʿEzz-al-Dīn Ṭāher b. Zangī Faryūmadī, governor or vizier of Khorasan under the Il-khanid Abaqa Khan (663-80/1265-82; Spuler, Mongolen3, pp. 342-43). Nothing is known about Dehestānī except for what is contained in his own brief introductory remarks about how he prepared his translation (I, pp. 11-13).

Tanūḵī’s work had already been translated a few decades earlier by Sadīd-al-Dīn Moḥammad ʿAwfī (q.v.); although that translation was lost, ʿAwfī had incorporated most of it into his Jawāmeʿ al-ḥekāyāt (ʿAwfī, 1352 Š./1973, introd., pp. 27-53; idem, Lobāb, I, introd., pp. kj-kd; Ṣafā, Adabīyāt II, p. 1030). As it is not yet possible to distinguish independently which portions of ʿAwfī’s text were taken from Tanūḵī’s original, Dehestānī’s translation can be said to be the earliest available Persian translation.

 

Bibliography:

Sadīd-al-Dīn Moḥammad ʿAwfī, Jawāmeʿ al-ḥekāyāt wa lawāmeʿ al-rewāyāt I, pt. 3, ed. B. Moṣaffā (Karīmī), Tehran, 1352 Š./1973.

Ḥosayn b. Asʿad Dehestānī, Faraj-e baʿd az šeddat, ed. E. Ḥākemī, 3 vols., Tehran, 1363-64 Š./1984-85.

H. Ethé, “Neupersische Literatur,” in Grundriss II, pp. 329-30.

Rieu, Persian Manuscripts II, p. 751. Ṣafā, Adabīyāt III/2, pp. 1234-36.

(Moḥammad Dabīrsīāqī)

Originally Published: December 15, 1994

Last Updated: November 18, 2011

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