Mahasti Ganjavi

Mahasiti Ganjawi (12^th century), a poet with the nom de plume Mahasiti (lit. Eminent Lady). According to biographical sources, she reportedly hailed from Ganja, Nishabur, Badakhshan, or Khujand. Her name has been recorded in biographical sources variously as Manizha, Manija, Mah Khatun, and Bibi Mahasiti. Her nom de plume, birth and death dates have been also differently reported in sources. Her father was a jurist and religious scholar who did his best to educate his daughter by sending her to school when she was four years of age. A very talented student, she studied under prominent masters and became a learned scholar in different disciplines of science and belles-lettres at the age of ten. She became a prominent musician, elegantly performing on the chang and the ‘ud. She resided in Ganja for a while, but had to depart for Zanjan and later for Marw where she became a court official and a companion of the Seljuk Sultan Sanjar (1117-1157) and met Hakim ‘Umar Khayyam. According to some biographical sources, she seemingly served as a chancellery secretary as well, since she has been well-known as Mahasiti Dabir as well. Upon the fall of the Seljuk dynasty to the Ghaznavids in 1137, she returned to Ganja and married Ahmad Khatib, son of the chief preacher of the city. She was versed in composing jocular poetry, quatrains, and poetical improvisations. Few of her compositions survive as they were mainly lost at the Uzbek conquest of Herat. Lisani Shirazi composed a collection of 68 lyrical quatrains on the model of Mahasiti’s compositions in the same poetical form. The author of the Mashahir-i Zanan (Notable Women) states that she has been mentioned in the majority of the biographical sources as a contemporary of the Seljuk Sultan Sanjar, and only the authors of Tarikh-i Guzida and Majalis al-Nafa’is who confused Sultan Mahmud, the brother of the Seljuk Sultan Sanjar and the governor of Ganja, with the Ghaznavid Sultan Mahmud have regarded her as a contemporary of the latter.

Asar-afarinan (6/320-1)