Biography

Christine van Ruymbeke (Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Ph.D) is Ali Reza and Muhamed Soudavar Professor of Persian Literature and Culture, as well as co-Chair of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge (UK) and Head of its Middle Eastern Department. Christine is a literary critic working on classical (medieval and pre-modern) Persian literature, with a special focus on its medieval non-mystical narrative production. How can we engage today with these classical Persian texts in a meaningful way? Her forthcoming monograph analyzes Haft Paykar (Seven Images), composed by the poet Nezami of Ganja: a complex twelfth-century poetic narrative about story-telling and its psychological healing effect.

Project Summary

In Venice in 1552, the polygraph Anton Francesco Doni (d. 1574) published La Filosofia Morale del Doni (Venice, 1552) composed in Florentine Italian vernacular. His source was the Latin translation of the Hebrew translation of the eighth-century Arabic Book of Kalila and Dimna. In Persianate Central Asia, at the Herat court of Sultan Hosayn Bayqara (d. 1506, a great-grand-son of the conqueror Timur), a rewriting of the Book of Kalila and Dimna, titled Anvar-e Sohayli (The Lights of Canopus) (ca. late 1490s) gained extraordinary status in the region. It was adapted at the court of the Moghul Akbar (d. 1605) and translated in Ottoman Turkish at the court of Soliman the Legislator (d. 1566). At 50-year intervals, Herat and Florence experienced similar “Renaissance” periods, characterised by a ruling elite’s wealth and vision to revivify knowledge and thought, a willingness to experience and welcome external knowledge, and a desire to challenge stale intellectual traditions. This research considers the literary and psychological tools available to the Christian and Muslim “Renaissance” authors to reveal the text’s value to new readerships. It will establish whether the Florentine author had identified the redoubtable wisdom nestling in the text’s narrative fables and whether, per chance, he developed a style germane to the Timurid version’s extraordinary rhetorical style.