User talk:Nepaheshgar/On Nizami Ganjavi Article

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Note, I believe that Nizami Ganjavi despite his Iranic background, culture and contribution to Iranian civilization is equally a part of the heritage of Iran, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan (all these I consider people who are part of a common civilization). These are people that are either Iranian or have been greatly affected by Iranian civilization. I have also mentioned this in my article on him:[1][2]

(you can see a non-formatted wiki version here [3])(And everyone agreed to be a man of their word).

Nizami Ganjavi (Nizami Ganjavi, Haft Paykar (translated from the Persian by Julia Meysami), Oxford 1995):

“

همه عالم تن است و ایران دل نیست گوینده زین قیاس خجل چون که ایران دل زمین باشد دل ز تن به بود یقین باشد زان ولایت که مهتران دارند بهترین جای بهتران دارند The world's a body, Iran its heart, No shame to him who says such a word Iran, the world's most precious heart, excels the body, there is no doubt. Among the realms that kings posses, the best domain goes to the best.

”

The current Nizami Ganjavi article is a compromised version and this is the compromised version: [4][5].

Basically everyone agrees his mother was Kurdish. But about his father, there have been different theories (although he was orphaned at an early age and was raised by his Kurdish maternal uncle) and there is no direct reference like he has for his mother.

In a separate article outside of Wikipedia, I believe there is no valid basis in assigning Nizami Ganjavi any relation to Turkic/Oghuz/Turkmen nomads (who started arriving during the Seljuq era while Nizami's ancestry goes back before this era) rather than the sedentary Iranian civilization of that time. In the same article, I also argued that Azeris also have Iranian civilization, but not all the elite in the republic of Azerbaijan accept this fact and this debate goes on. You can see unformatted version of my article here but the .pdf version reads much nicer:

Anyhow we all agreed that Nizami Ganjavi is part of the heritage of the countries of Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran and Tajikistan. Here are some of the compromises I made in Wikipedia, although perhaps I was too compromising (and this was before a more detailed analysis):[6][7].

a)

I put "Persian language poet" instead of "Persian poet". But the correct would be Persian poet irregardless of ethnicity. This is supported by google books: [8] where nothing shows up for "Turkish poet Nizami" [9]. Of course one can argue, that instead of Turkish it should be "Azeri" (give couple of links one from USSR and one from Brenda Shaffer with no expertise), but Azeri as an ethnonym was not used then and actually the area was called Arran. Also Nizami Ganjavi's work are all in Persian and actually draw from Iranian folklore.

b)

There are more than 50+ sources that put Shireen as an Armenian (Before Nizami she was also considered Christian and in Khusraw o Shirin, she is a monotheistic person and her name is actually Persian just like Mahin Banu is a Persian) and I did not put there. I don't think the old source that says she might have been Arranian is really correct, besides the fact that Arranian's identification with Caucasian Albanian is even shakier.

c)

Did not put sources like Diakonov, Kapustin and etc which clearly state he was Iranian not Turkic. See my article with this regard: [10][11].

d) Some verses were mistranslated by the other side, and I have again responded to it here with authentic translation: [12][13].

e)

Didn't mention any effort from USSR to politicize him and de-Iranianize him and to try to separate him from Iranian civilization. Again this is discussed here:[14][15].

Note, due to the politicization, now we have sources that even claim his father might have been Semitic. Anyhow, there is absolutely not a single shred evidence to disassociate him with Iranian civilization as I have shown here:

Nizami Ganjavi despite his Iranic background, culture and contribution to Iranian civilization is equally a part of the heritage of Iran, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. These are people that are either Iranian or have been greatly affected by Iranian civilization There was USSR attempt (Stalin himself agitated it) to de-Iranify him, but that effort is useless (misrepresented verses which I have responded to in my article ) since the man lives through the Persian language, drew upon Iranian folklore (not Oghuz/Turkmen/Turkic), was raised by Kurdish maternal uncle, wrote only in Persian, considered himself a successor of Ferdowsi and advises the sons of the king to read Iran's national book. (All this discussed here:[16][17]. ).

So attempts to de-Iranify him by the former USSR or other circles today will not bear fruit in the long run since any scholar that wants to seriously study him will have to learn Persian, know the characters of the Shahnameh, know about Iranian folklore and from there, the matter of his identity is very obvious. So besides ethnically being Iranian (although there is no pure ethnicity), what matters is that culturally there is no doubt about the Iranian character of his work and language.