Kamal Khujandi

Biography

Kamal Khujandi, Kamal al-Din Mas‘ud (d. 1399/1400/1405), a Sufi, mystic, and poet with the nom de plume Kamal, well-known as Shaykh Kamal. Born in Khujan, in Transoxiana, he went on pilgrimage to Mecca in his youth and upon his return, he settled in Tabriz. He was soon well-respected by Sufis and the laity for his piety, influence, exalted position in treading the Sufi path, and elegant poetry. He had many disciples and willingly stayed in the garden and Sufi spiritual center (khaniqa) constructed for him by the Jalayirid Sultan Husayn (1374-1382) and enjoyed the patronage of the Sultan. Kamal was Well-versed in esoteric and exoteric sciences and enjoyed an exalted rank in Sufism, belles-lettres, and poetry. He associated with Shaykh Zayn al-Din Khwafi and Mawlana Muhammad Shirin Maghribi. Consequent to the unrest in Tabriz, he stayed for four years in the city of Saray, the capital of Qibchaq where many disciples followed him and met and became a companion of Khwaja ‘Ubayd Allah Chachi, renown mystic. Upon his return to Tabriz in 1395, he was patronized by Mirza Miran Shah, Timur’s son, and lived in his own Sufi (khaniqa) till his last days. He was a contemporary of Hafiz Shirazi, but poetry was not his profession and he simply used it to express his sentiments and thoughts and guiding and training others. He was a master of composing mystical ghazals and comparable to Jami, he was the only poet the number of whose ghazals did not exceed seven couplets. His poetry reflects delicacy of expression and themes and precision in presenting innovative themes. Although he mainly lived in the west of Persia, but his diction is affected by eastern dialects of Persia. His ghazals are imbued with delicacy and fluency and in terms of use of difficult rhymes and radifs together with a flowing diction, his poetry resembles that of Hasan Dihlavi. His voluminous divan is mainly comprised of ghazals but his quatrains and qit’as are also included in his divan whose number of couplets run to about 8,000. Numerous manuscripts of his divan exist and it has been published as well. His divan was collected by one of his disciples in 1395 following his return from Saray to Tabriz. Kamal died in Tabriz, according to biographical sources, sometime between 1389 and 1405.

Tarikh-i Adabiyyat dar Iran (3/ 1131-1137); Tarikh-i Nazm wa Nathr (210-211); Farhang-i Sukhanwaran (768).