Discover how the Persian poet Sana’i captured the splendour and scandals of the Ghaznavid Empire. His verses celebrate kings and mystics yet mercilessly lampoon scholars, courtiers, and even the city itself.
By Timur Khan
In the late 10th century AD, a kingdom ruled by a formerly enslaved soldier emerged in the territory of today’s Afghanistan. By the early 11th century, this kingdom was a veritable empire dominating parts of Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, today’s Pakistan, and parts of northern India. Its magnificent capital was the city of Ghazna (modern Ghazni), now a small town in eastern Afghanistan, and so its rulers are known to historians as the Ghaznavids.
Like any medieval kings worth their salt, the Ghaznavid monarchs were violent warlords as well as patrons of art, and one of the most valued arts of that region and that age was poetry. A royal court needed poets, writing verses of praise as well as moral advice for the monarch. While Arabic had been the dominant language of elite culture in the region following the expansion of the Islamic caliphates starting in the 7th century, by the time of the Ghaznavids the Persian language was used extensively at court. This was the case too for poetry.
One of the best-remembered Persian-language poets of the Ghaznavid Empire was ‘Abul Majd Majdud ibn Adam (1080–1131/41), better known by his pen-name Sana’i, and respectfully as Hakim (‘the wise’) Sana’i. Sana’i is famed for his contributions outside the genre of courtly poetry, especially his mystical verses. These deal with a number of complex themes, though one common to much mystic poetry is a rejection of the material world:
Cast yourself into that sea whose waves are of wisdom For its pebble is worth more than the pearl of Oman
Still, Sana’i was at times in his life attached to a royal patron, particularly the Sultan Bahram Shah (r. 1117–52) and before that to other elites of the empire. One fascinating specimen of his surviving works is a part-satirical, part-panegyric description of Ghaznavid imperial society, in verse. It was written seemingly just after the death of Sultan Mas‘ud III (d. 1115), when Sana’i had left Ghazna for some time, making for the ancient city of Balkh (today’s northern Afghanistan), and was probably meant to entertain his friends back home. It is best known as the Kar-nama-yi Balkh (‘Memoir of Balkh’), but also as the Mutayiba-nama (‘Book of Humor’), reflecting its often biting satires of classes and people in Ghazna.
The Imperial Hierarchy
Sana’i addressing the Sultan of Ghazna” Folio from Hadiqat al Haqiqa (The Garden of Truth and The Path to Trek) MS OR. 1651, fol. 1b 2a
Ghaznavid society as outlined by Sana’i in the Kar-nama is deeply hierarchical, and he proceeds through different individuals and classes according to this structure. The text opens with an address to the wind, called to travel to Ghazna, a place likened to paradise. The wind acts as a silent observer whom the author takes past each subject of the different sub-sections. Often the author bids the wind “see” these various people.
Everything begins with the Sultan, in this case the late Mas‘ud III. In line with the paradisiacal metaphors used for Ghazna itself, the Sultan has a thousand stars as his servants. A hundred worlds, including angels and the skies themselves, are under his parasol (an ancient symbol of kingship from India). Thousands of crowned kings are before him and at his threshold, his subordinates as the greatest king of the world. He is the epitome of justice and a fearsome warrior.
Sana’i proceeds in similarly laudatory terms to move down the ladder, with some asides. After the Sultan are the royal princes, who would begin fighting amongst each other soon after their father’s death but whom he describes as unified and harmonious. He goes on to the “lord of the court and people of the pen,” the chief minister Siqat al-Mulk Tahir ibn ‘Ali (who was Sana’i’s own patron), his own father, the commanders, soldiers, and slaves, grand chamberlain, eunuchs of the palace, and a further host of individuals as well as some broader groups like judges and poets.
One group given special praise is that of the “masters of the way,” great mystics in Islam. While outwardly base and lowly, even appearing irreligious – “free of the mark of religion and creed” – they are in fact inwardly pure in faith and knowledge. But the ultimate focus of Sana’i’s admiration seems to be for the community of great poets, what the Dutch scholar J. T. P. de Bruijn calls a “republic of letters” to which he belonged.
Satirical and Critical Sections
Though appropriately effusive about the royal court, its martial and administrative personnel, mystics and others, Sana’i is not shy about criticizing or insulting other segments of Ghazna’s population. It is here where the author takes on a more candid, offensive, and far more entertaining tone, totally at odds with the lofty language of his panegyrics.
Sometimes, Sana’i satirizes individuals. One target is a man called Hakim Sabuni. Given that the author refers to him by the honorific khwaja and given the references to poetry in this section, Sabuni was seemingly a learned upper-class man and perhaps a poet like Sana’i. But Sana’i mocks him with reference to social class, playing on his surname (sabun means “soap”) to write that Sabuni inherited his art from “a thousand fathers […] especially grass-sellers and soap-makers.” Sana’i finds him full of hot air: he puts his thoughts into “loud speeches” that one simply has to mock. And mock Sana’i does, calling Sabuni several words for an idiot, including one meaning literally a fat goose, and using some word-play with Perso-Arabic letters to call him not farrukh (“auspicious, beautiful”) but faraj (“vulva”).
Lithograph by James Rattray depicting Ghazni in 1839-42
At other points, Sana’i satirizes entire groups, such as the “lowly poets” and “bad scholars.” The former he likens to preening peacocks, superficial and shameless. The bearded scholars in their turbans and robes he refers to as “idiots [literally, ‘cow-beards’] of the village” full of deceit. They turn proper religion on its head, counting “ignorance and trickery as faith […] Everything they count as knowledge is unbelief.”
The antinomians (ibahatiyan) are another group in Sana’i’s crosshairs, the reverse of the mystical masters whom he gave glowing praise. While professing to possess similar knowledge, they are mere “counterfeiters” looking to satisfy their arrogance and perverse tastes – they lead men astray and then “squeeze” their wives and children. A hundred of their discourses were worth one dirham (a silver coin), or even worse, worth less than a donkey’s fart.
Immediately after critiquing the antinomians, Sana’i launches a caustic and foul-mouthed attack on women, whom he sees as morally corrupt and promiscuous, opening their clothes to sleep with anyone. He affirms his misogynist worldview with verses proclaiming that:
Spindle, cotton, and beads are a woman’s path A husband’s home is a woman’s khanqah
The khanqah was a lodge for mystics, usually of a particular brotherhood, to gather, live and study together. The word “path” (rah) also has mystical connotations. Here Sana’i contrasts spheres of life acceptable to men, specifically that of life as a learned mystic, with those for women, who are to be relegated to a man’s household and activities like weaving.
17th-century copy of Sini’a’ writings – SOAS Library MS 35342
If Sana’i had harsh words for many groups in Ghazna, he was hardly more impressed by what he found in Balkh. Getting there involved a difficult journey over snowy mountains. He complains:
My companion was the cry of animals The obscenities of donkey-handlers and donkeys’ farts [a recurring feature]
Sometimes he had to make his way “on my belly like a snake, hands over my head like a scorpion.” When Sana’i arrived in his new home things were hardly better. In a short section describing his time in the city, he complains that once there, he had to debase and “prostitute” himself “to everyone […] everywhere.” He was writing poetry to obtain patronage from what he felt were lowly people without grace or decorum, who bought and sold titles. He writes:
I called a bull’s testicle a great lord A donkey’s penis I called the pillar of religion Noisy criers, for just half a copper, I even called nightingales of paradise!
All in all, Sana’i’s Kar-nama is an entertaining and vivid portrayal of society in one of the great empires of medieval Islamic history. Mixing the conventions of court-praise poetry and a candid, biting, and even vulgar style, it takes the reader on a colourful journey. Unfortunately, no full English translation of the text has been made, which would make this work more accessible and widely known, as it deserves.
Timur Khan is a PhD student based in Leiden, the Netherlands. His work focuses on the early modern and colonial history of Afghanistan and South Asia, particularly the 18th and 19th century Durrani empire. His work can be found on his Academia page.
Sources and Further Readings:
The text of the Kar-nama can be found at this link, edited by Muhammad Taqi Mudarris-Razavi.
Otherwise it is included in:
Masnavi-ha-yi Hakim Sana’i, edited by Muhammad Taqi Mudarris-Razavi, Tehran, Intisharat-i Danishgah-i Tehran, 1348/1969.
Kulliyat-i ash‘ar-i Hakim Sana’i-yi Ghaznavi, chap-i ‘aksi, edited by ‘Ali-Asghar Bashir, Kabul, Bayhaqi, 1356/1977.
The couplet of Sana’i cited at the beginning of the article can be read at this link.
J. T. P. de Bruijn, Of Piety and Poetry: The Interaction of Religion and Literature in the Life and Works of Ḥakīm Sanā’ī of Ghazna, Leiden, Brill, 1983.
J. T. P. de Bruijn, “SANĀʾI,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2012.
Michele Bernardini, “The masnavi-shahrashubs as Town Panegyrics: An International Genre in Islamic Mashriq,” in: Erzählter Raum in Literaturen der islamischen Welt / Narrated Space in the Literature of the Islamic World, edited by Haag-Higuchi and Christian Szyska, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001.
All translations in the quotations given are my own, but some translated lines including from some of the same sections can be found in de Bruijn, Seyed-Gohrab, and Bernardini.
Discover how the Persian poet Sana’i captured the splendour and scandals of the Ghaznavid Empire. His verses celebrate kings and mystics yet mercilessly lampoon scholars, courtiers, and even the city itself.
By Timur Khan
In the late 10th century AD, a kingdom ruled by a formerly enslaved soldier emerged in the territory of today’s Afghanistan. By the early 11th century, this kingdom was a veritable empire dominating parts of Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, today’s Pakistan, and parts of northern India. Its magnificent capital was the city of Ghazna (modern Ghazni), now a small town in eastern Afghanistan, and so its rulers are known to historians as the Ghaznavids.
Like any medieval kings worth their salt, the Ghaznavid monarchs were violent warlords as well as patrons of art, and one of the most valued arts of that region and that age was poetry. A royal court needed poets, writing verses of praise as well as moral advice for the monarch. While Arabic had been the dominant language of elite culture in the region following the expansion of the Islamic caliphates starting in the 7th century, by the time of the Ghaznavids the Persian language was used extensively at court. This was the case too for poetry.
One of the best-remembered Persian-language poets of the Ghaznavid Empire was ‘Abul Majd Majdud ibn Adam (1080–1131/41), better known by his pen-name Sana’i, and respectfully as Hakim (‘the wise’) Sana’i. Sana’i is famed for his contributions outside the genre of courtly poetry, especially his mystical verses. These deal with a number of complex themes, though one common to much mystic poetry is a rejection of the material world:
Cast yourself into that sea whose waves are of wisdom
For its pebble is worth more than the pearl of Oman
Still, Sana’i was at times in his life attached to a royal patron, particularly the Sultan Bahram Shah (r. 1117–52) and before that to other elites of the empire. One fascinating specimen of his surviving works is a part-satirical, part-panegyric description of Ghaznavid imperial society, in verse. It was written seemingly just after the death of Sultan Mas‘ud III (d. 1115), when Sana’i had left Ghazna for some time, making for the ancient city of Balkh (today’s northern Afghanistan), and was probably meant to entertain his friends back home. It is best known as the Kar-nama-yi Balkh (‘Memoir of Balkh’), but also as the Mutayiba-nama (‘Book of Humor’), reflecting its often biting satires of classes and people in Ghazna.
The Imperial Hierarchy
Ghaznavid society as outlined by Sana’i in the Kar-nama is deeply hierarchical, and he proceeds through different individuals and classes according to this structure. The text opens with an address to the wind, called to travel to Ghazna, a place likened to paradise. The wind acts as a silent observer whom the author takes past each subject of the different sub-sections. Often the author bids the wind “see” these various people.
Everything begins with the Sultan, in this case the late Mas‘ud III. In line with the paradisiacal metaphors used for Ghazna itself, the Sultan has a thousand stars as his servants. A hundred worlds, including angels and the skies themselves, are under his parasol (an ancient symbol of kingship from India). Thousands of crowned kings are before him and at his threshold, his subordinates as the greatest king of the world. He is the epitome of justice and a fearsome warrior.
Sana’i proceeds in similarly laudatory terms to move down the ladder, with some asides. After the Sultan are the royal princes, who would begin fighting amongst each other soon after their father’s death but whom he describes as unified and harmonious. He goes on to the “lord of the court and people of the pen,” the chief minister Siqat al-Mulk Tahir ibn ‘Ali (who was Sana’i’s own patron), his own father, the commanders, soldiers, and slaves, grand chamberlain, eunuchs of the palace, and a further host of individuals as well as some broader groups like judges and poets.
One group given special praise is that of the “masters of the way,” great mystics in Islam. While outwardly base and lowly, even appearing irreligious – “free of the mark of religion and creed” – they are in fact inwardly pure in faith and knowledge. But the ultimate focus of Sana’i’s admiration seems to be for the community of great poets, what the Dutch scholar J. T. P. de Bruijn calls a “republic of letters” to which he belonged.
Satirical and Critical Sections
Though appropriately effusive about the royal court, its martial and administrative personnel, mystics and others, Sana’i is not shy about criticizing or insulting other segments of Ghazna’s population. It is here where the author takes on a more candid, offensive, and far more entertaining tone, totally at odds with the lofty language of his panegyrics.
Sometimes, Sana’i satirizes individuals. One target is a man called Hakim Sabuni. Given that the author refers to him by the honorific khwaja and given the references to poetry in this section, Sabuni was seemingly a learned upper-class man and perhaps a poet like Sana’i. But Sana’i mocks him with reference to social class, playing on his surname (sabun means “soap”) to write that Sabuni inherited his art from “a thousand fathers […] especially grass-sellers and soap-makers.” Sana’i finds him full of hot air: he puts his thoughts into “loud speeches” that one simply has to mock. And mock Sana’i does, calling Sabuni several words for an idiot, including one meaning literally a fat goose, and using some word-play with Perso-Arabic letters to call him not farrukh (“auspicious, beautiful”) but faraj (“vulva”).
At other points, Sana’i satirizes entire groups, such as the “lowly poets” and “bad scholars.” The former he likens to preening peacocks, superficial and shameless. The bearded scholars in their turbans and robes he refers to as “idiots [literally, ‘cow-beards’] of the village” full of deceit. They turn proper religion on its head, counting “ignorance and trickery as faith […] Everything they count as knowledge is unbelief.”
The antinomians (ibahatiyan) are another group in Sana’i’s crosshairs, the reverse of the mystical masters whom he gave glowing praise. While professing to possess similar knowledge, they are mere “counterfeiters” looking to satisfy their arrogance and perverse tastes – they lead men astray and then “squeeze” their wives and children. A hundred of their discourses were worth one dirham (a silver coin), or even worse, worth less than a donkey’s fart.
Immediately after critiquing the antinomians, Sana’i launches a caustic and foul-mouthed attack on women, whom he sees as morally corrupt and promiscuous, opening their clothes to sleep with anyone. He affirms his misogynist worldview with verses proclaiming that:
Spindle, cotton, and beads are a woman’s path
A husband’s home is a woman’s khanqah
The khanqah was a lodge for mystics, usually of a particular brotherhood, to gather, live and study together. The word “path” (rah) also has mystical connotations. Here Sana’i contrasts spheres of life acceptable to men, specifically that of life as a learned mystic, with those for women, who are to be relegated to a man’s household and activities like weaving.
If Sana’i had harsh words for many groups in Ghazna, he was hardly more impressed by what he found in Balkh. Getting there involved a difficult journey over snowy mountains. He complains:
My companion was the cry of animals
The obscenities of donkey-handlers and donkeys’ farts [a recurring feature]
Sometimes he had to make his way “on my belly like a snake, hands over my head like a scorpion.” When Sana’i arrived in his new home things were hardly better. In a short section describing his time in the city, he complains that once there, he had to debase and “prostitute” himself “to everyone […] everywhere.” He was writing poetry to obtain patronage from what he felt were lowly people without grace or decorum, who bought and sold titles. He writes:
I called a bull’s testicle a great lord
A donkey’s penis I called the pillar of religion
Noisy criers, for just half a copper,
I even called nightingales of paradise!
All in all, Sana’i’s Kar-nama is an entertaining and vivid portrayal of society in one of the great empires of medieval Islamic history. Mixing the conventions of court-praise poetry and a candid, biting, and even vulgar style, it takes the reader on a colourful journey. Unfortunately, no full English translation of the text has been made, which would make this work more accessible and widely known, as it deserves.
Timur Khan is a PhD student based in Leiden, the Netherlands. His work focuses on the early modern and colonial history of Afghanistan and South Asia, particularly the 18th and 19th century Durrani empire. His work can be found on his Academia page.
Sources and Further Readings:
The text of the Kar-nama can be found at this link, edited by Muhammad Taqi Mudarris-Razavi.
Otherwise it is included in:
Masnavi-ha-yi Hakim Sana’i, edited by Muhammad Taqi Mudarris-Razavi, Tehran, Intisharat-i Danishgah-i Tehran, 1348/1969.
Kulliyat-i ash‘ar-i Hakim Sana’i-yi Ghaznavi, chap-i ‘aksi, edited by ‘Ali-Asghar Bashir, Kabul, Bayhaqi, 1356/1977.
The couplet of Sana’i cited at the beginning of the article can be read at this link.
Secondary Sources:
Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, Of Piety and Heresy: Abū Ḥamīd Muḥammad Ghazzālī’s Persian Treatises on Antinomians, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2024.
J. T. P. de Bruijn, Of Piety and Poetry: The Interaction of Religion and Literature in the Life and Works of Ḥakīm Sanā’ī of Ghazna, Leiden, Brill, 1983.
J. T. P. de Bruijn, “SANĀʾI,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2012.
Michele Bernardini, “The masnavi-shahrashubs as Town Panegyrics: An International Genre in Islamic Mashriq,” in: Erzählter Raum in Literaturen der islamischen Welt / Narrated Space in the Literature of the Islamic World, edited by Haag-Higuchi and Christian Szyska, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001.
All translations in the quotations given are my own, but some translated lines including from some of the same sections can be found in de Bruijn, Seyed-Gohrab, and Bernardini.
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