Sa’ib Tabrizi

Sa’ib Tabrizi, Muhammad ‘Ali (1669-1675), son of Mirza ‘Abd al-Rahim. One of the most eminent poets of the Safavid era. His nom de plume was Sa’b. His birth date is unknown and according to some sources he was born in Tabriz, though it is reported as Isfahan in numerous sources. However, his family was certainly from Tabriz. His father was a merchant in Isfahan and it was at the behest of the Safavid Shah ‘Abbas I that he or his father emigrated, along with some merchants and affluent and distinguished people from Tabriz and settled in the ‘Abbasabad neighborhood in Isfahan. Sa’b’s paternal uncle, Shams al-Din Tabrizi Shirin Qalam, well-known as Shams-i Thani, was a master of calligraphy. Sa’ib departed Isfahan for India in 1624 and later traveled to Herat and Kabul. He was welcomed by the governor of Kabul, Khwaja Ahsan Allah, well-known as Zafar Khan, who was a poet and litterateur. After a while, owing to the accession of Shah Jahan to the throne, he departed for Deccan with Sa’b. Sa’ib was well-respected by Shah Jahan and received the title Musta’id Khan. Some also maintain that the title was accorded to him by a Sufi. In 1629 when Sa’ib and Zafar Khan were at the court of Shah Jahan in Burhanpur, they received the intelligence that Sa’ib’s father had reached Akbarabad in India to take his son back to Persia. Sa’ib requested Zafar Khan and his father, Khwaja Abu al-Hasan Turbati to grant him the permission to return, though granting it took two years. Zafar Khan, representing his father, was appointed governor of Kashmir in 1632. Sa’ib went to Kashmir and along with his father, he departed for Persia. He settled in Isfahan and made journeys to Qazwin, Ardabil, Tabriz, and Yazd. He made a name for himself and was awarded the title of ‘Poet Laureate’ by the Safavid Shah ‘Abbas II. He made poetical compositions in Turkish and Persian and his well-known students included Mulla Muhammad Sa’id Ashraf, Juya-yi Tabrizi, Khazi’, and Fitrat. The number of his compositions reportedly ran into 65,000kn 120,000k, 300,000 couplets or even more. His Divan has been published several times in Iran and India. He wrote an elegant hand and also wrote poetry in Turkish. He is the representative par excellence of the Indian Style. His style is marked by his general tendency towards a poetical diction distancing itself from the exalted diction of ‘Iraqi, that of the elite, to an intimate and popular diction embracing colloquial idioms and expressions in its most unadorned form. Significant stylistic features of Sa’ib and other poets of the Indian style include the element of imagination used extensively and diversely in their poetry. Their diction reflects highly frequent and diverse use of imaginative expression, e.g. simile, metaphor, metonymy, allegory, animation, and personification. Facing towards new horizons through the windows of imagination, his poetry is imbued with novel and colorful perspectives and imaginative moments. Brevity (ijaz), i.e. develop a liking for employment of innovative themes, unfamiliar expressions, and embracing them in one single couplet with figurative devices, particularly metaphor, has led to an extraordinary terseness and at times ambiguous in the works of modernist poets of the time, e.g. Sa’ib, Kalim, Ghani, and Bidil. Inclusion of proverbs as attestation of the meanings was accorded attention by Sa’ib and other poets belonging to the Indian style, but it is worthy of note that many a hemistich composed by these poets, particularly Sa’ib are so pleasant and popular that they became proverbial in their time and thereafter. The style is also marked by the use of allegory, i.e. the poet expresses a usually abstract moral or mystical theme in one hemistich and provides illustrations, as tangible imagery, in the second hemistich to substantiate the former. Some of these allegorical expressions are syntactically independent in the two hemistiches without there being any link, protasis, or apodosis. The allegories used by Sa’ib, Kalim, and Bidil are among the most famous allegories in Persian poetry. Ghazal in the Indian style is based on single couplets in that each theme is included with utmost brevity in one single couplet and the poet has to do his best in developing themes in a couplet and thereby compose couplets with different and at times contradictory themes with similar metrical patterns (vazn, radif, qafiya) in one ghazal. Sa’ib’s poetry is also marked by high frequency of nominal radif as a feature of the Indian style. Such radif lead to further imaginativeness in poetry, since the poet has to create certain imagery which is to some extent related to the radif. Those like dance, line, candle, letter, flower, morn, hue, and sun (raqs, khatt, sham’, harf, gul, subh, rang, aftab) are frequently used by him and common radif embrace themes and imagery of a diverse nature. He was one of poets who accorded particular significance to studying the works of his predecessors as well as contemporaries. Studying the works of past eminent poets, besides acquisition of further literary knowledge, provided the reader with insights as to the idiosyncratic styles of poets on the one hand and Persian poetry was accorded a new life beyond its traditional styles and schools on the other. His profound studies of the works of his predecessors and contemporaries are reflected in his Divan. His poetry imparts a particular philosophical system through which he witnesses the circumstances of the world. He has come to the world to derive pleasure from looking at it. He compares scenes of nature with some of the themes and concepts of human life, marking daily, tangible meanings faced by man in his incessant involvement, and it is through his wonderful power of imagination that he establishes a connection between them and tangible imagery. Such connection bears the fruit of wisdom and it has its roots in his artistic taste and hairsplitting perceptiveness. The general reader relates to his poetry to the extent that he thinks that he had reflected on the poet’s ideas, though words had failed him to express them. Sa’ib’s mystical ideas mainly derive from theoretical mysticism. Mystical poets’ and mystics’ intuitive knowledge are reflected in a secret language, like that of Hafiz and Rumi. Nonetheless, the distinctive feature of Sa’ib’s poetic diction is his excessive use of metaphors and allegories. Sa’ib’s works include his Divan, including pieces composed at the behest of the Safavid Shah ‘Abbas II, e.g. Mir’at al-jamal; Arayish-i Nigar; Miykhana; Wajib al-Hifz; Qandiharnama. His further works include his Divan in Turkish and  Safina-yi Bayaz, a collection of the poetry of earlier poets to the time of Sa’ib. He died in Isfahan at the age of 65-71 and was laid to rest at ‘Abbasabad quarter of the city beside a river, Madi-yi Niyasarm, at a place well-known in his time as Tikiyya-yi Mirza. 

Tarikh-i Adabiyyat dar Iran (5, 1271-1284); Farhang-i Sukhanvaran (545-546); Manzumaha-yi Farsi (366-368).