Basiti Samarqandi

Bisati Samarqandi, Mawlana Siraj al-Din (d. 1411), a poet with the nom de plume Bisati, hailing from Samarqand, an ancient city in Transoxiana, flourishing under the Gurkanids. The dates of his birth and death are not attested in any of the early sources, though his death date is mentioned in later sources as 1411 or 1412. The date 1411 is seemingly confused with the death of Sultan Khalil, mentioned by Dawlatshah Samarqandi. Bisati was a mat maker and apparently did not receive any formal education, but his poetic temperment resulted him being attached to Khwaja ‘Ismat Allah Bukhari, a scholar and poet of renown at the time and it was at the suggestion of the latter than he changed his nom de plume from Hasiri to Bisati. Bisati became a disciple of Khwaja from then onwards. Bisati was a devout disciple of Khwaja ‘Abd al-Malik Samarqandi which led Dawlatshah to regard him as one of the students of Khawaja ‘Abd al-Malik. Bisati was a eulogist at the Timurid court and his eulogies composed for Timur substantiates the claim. Reference is made to the completion of an edifice at one of Timur’s palaces, seemingly the Aqsaray Palace in one of such lengthy eulogies in which he states that intellect fails at its depiction. The date of construction of the palace, as mentioned by him, is 1395. It is narrated that once the opening couplet of one of his poems was recited at a circle attended by the Sultan Khalil and the prince was so pleased with it that he dispatched someone to find the poet at the same night and granted him a good reward. From then onwards, particularly after Timur’s death, Bisati became the poet laureate at Sultan Khalil’s court. He paid particular attention to the poetry of Amir Khusraw, Hasan Dihlawi, and Salman Savaji and at times compared his poetry with theirs, but he held debates at times with Kamal Khujandi. Bisati died in Samarqand a short while after Sultan Khalil’s death. Some believed that Bisati died as a consequence of Kamal Khujandi’s execration. He is regarded by some biographers as an uneducated poet, though they have not denied his poetical vigor and artistry. Bisati flourished in a period when poets were inclined to a highly florid and ornate idiom and their poetry was imbued with verbal and semantic defects, multiplicity of similes, and abundance of poetical devices and themes, giving birth to the emergence of the Indian Style. Bisati prided himself on his poetry and termed the collection of his poetry as ‘a beautiful bride with no dowry.’ He employs diverse themes in different genres of poetry. His divan, including his qasidas, ghazals, qit’as, and quatrains, is available with Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris. His divan has yet to be published, though numerous manuscripts of it are to be found in different libraries in Iran and abroad.

Asar-afarinan (2, 57); Da’irat al-Ma’arif-i Buzurg-i Islami (12, 103-105).