Networks of Writerly Kinship in Early Qajar Iran

In this paper I will explore the literary landscape of early Qajar Iran (1790s-1830s) through mapping intersecting familial networks of poets and their patrons. Focusing on the son (Sahab Isfahani), daughter (Rashha Isfahani), and grandson (Kushta Natanzi) of the celebrated Zand era poet, Hatif Isfahani, I will show how this family of poets secured the patronage of three of Fath-‘Ali Shah’s more culturally-minded offspring: Mahmud Mirza and Humayun Mirza, the shah’s fourteenth and sixteenth sons, and their full sister, Zia’ al-Saltana, the shah’s seventh and most influential daughter. Through a close reading of the panegyrics written by these poets for the royal siblings, I will tease out the particularities of their overlapping patronage relationships.  This specific matrix of poetry production and consumption is complicated further by the fact that, not only were these three children of the shah connoisseurs of fine verse, they also composed poetry themselves. Moreover, two of these siblings played key roles in the documenting of early Qajar poetry: Mahmud Mirza was the most prolific compiler of tazkiras (biographical poetry anthologies) during his father’s reign, one of which, an anthology of contemporary and historical female poets, was commissioned by Zia’ al-Saltana.