Welcome to the Brown History Newsletter. If you’re enjoying this labour of love, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your contribution would help pay the writers and illustrators and support this weekly publication. If you like to submit a writing piece, please send me a pitch by email at brownhistory1947@gmail.com. Check out our Shop and our Podcast. You can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter.
A Brief History of Afghan Poetry by Soria Hamidi
Afghanistan, a place where words flow freely during the most difficult times. Poetry is the historic cradle of Afghanistan’s literary scene. When I visited Afghanistan in 2012, my grandmother would often answer my questions with verses from Rumi’s Masnawi-ye Manawi. But having lived in Europe my whole life means that my Farsi is good but not good enough to understand centuries-old Persian poetry. My cousins would translate it for me. Afghan children grow up playing a game called sheer jangi, poetry play. Words are used in a creative and playful manner. Knowing this, I wanted to hear my grandmother speak for as long as possible. Questions flew from my mouth, just so I could hear the rhythmic verses masterfully crafted by the Afghan poets of the past.
Persian or Parsi was the language of the Persian Empire. Over the centuries, Parsi changed to the Farsi dialect due to extensive Arabic influence. While modern Farsi has been influenced by Arabic, Dari was able to maintain a purer form of the Persian language. Dari and Farsi are essentially the same language, but Dari comes from the Farsi word dar-bari (“courtly”): it is the language of the court. During the mid 20th-century, the Farsi-speaking Afghan elite wanted to form their own national identity, moving away from ‘Persian Farsi’ to ‘Afghan Dari’. Nowadays, most rural Afghan areas and diasporic Afghans still use the common term ‘Farsi’.
The Mystic Poets Searching for Truths
The Persian poets of the medieval period were scattered across Iran and Afghanistan, or at least would often travel between the lands of the Persian-speaking world. The medieval poets are characterized by a search for spiritual reality focused on following the Sufi path or by writing about wine, women and leisure. Sometimes, they combined both in one story.