Author: Ameneh Gazerani

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

Abstract: This dissertation is concerned with the study of the Sistani Cycle of Epics (SCE), a body of literature produced in its extant form from 11-13th centuries in Iran. It was during the same period that Iran's grand epic, the Shahnameh, was composed. Although Ferdowsi, the composer of the Shahnameh, has included some of the most famous stories of the SCE into his work, most of the Sistani stories were excluded from Ferdowsi's work. Modern scholarship dismissed the SCE as secondary to the Shahnameh, therefore, neglecting to examine it. In this study, first I examine the connection between the epics and the province of Sistan, their birthplace. I postulate that during the pre-Islamic period, especially from the Parthian period onward, the epics played a role in constructing a specifically Sistani identity. Therefore, in the first three chapters I examine the way in which the epics helped shape a distinctly Sistani identity by examining the region's topography, political history, and historiographical production. Arguing that up until the medieval period the epics were regarded as reflecting historical reality, in the following chapter I examine the genre for the ways in which it accommodated the historical narration, whose referents were past events. Instead of separating fact from fiction, I examine the ways in which the heroic discourse, by certain modification of the generic requirements, allows for the recounting of such historical episodes. The two areas, where the reference to past events is apparent, are most prevalent in depictions of Sistan's relationship to the land of India and the reflections of episodes of Parthian history. Next, I shift the focus of the study to medieval literary milieu, which produced the extant form of the epics. I postulate that during the medieval period the epics were used in order to create another identity, i.e. a distinct Iranian identity. As a result of this endeavor to create or to revive the Iranian identity, the two bodies of epics contain divergent stories, and. I scrutinize some of these stories and speculate about the reasons for the existence of such drastically different narrations.