How Firdawsi was Embittered by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni

“How else do we live in security if it is not that we help each other by an exchange of good offices? It is only through the interchange of benefits that life becomes in some measure equipped and fortified against sudden disasters.” So writes Seneca, the great Roman statesman and philosopher of the first century. He continues, “Take us singly, and what are we? The prey of all creatures?”[1]  Seneca is describing the system of patron-client relationships, widespread in the ancient and medieval world. However, this is not merely a phenomenon of the past. It is still prevalent in many nations, including Afghanistan, and the cause for much misunderstanding.

In most developing countries only a small percentage of society is sufficiently wealthy to live comfortably and independently. The masses are poor and vulnerable. In order for a deprived person to be able to progress and find sufficient protection, or to get access to, as well as protection from the state, he needs a benefactor or patron, one who will foster him and offer him the securities and provisions of life. In turn, for these benefits the client or protégé offers his patron loyalty, support, and praise.

Not only the very poor, but anyone with lesser power and wealth than others needs someone superior to himself, to provide him with further power, privileges, and provisions. And similarly, the patron seeks for protégés upon whom he can shower material benefits and other securities in order to receive further support and service from them. It is a relationship of reciprocity or mutual exchange between patron and client, each needing and benefiting the other.

In the medieval Persian world, rulers were considered to be great patrons. For example, a thousand years ago, Sultan Mahmud became ruler of the Ghaznawid empire. He set up his royal court near present-day Ghazni. Needing a stronger power base, the sultan gathered poets, philosophers, religious elite, and other intellectuals in his court to develop something like a public relations department. They sang the praises of the ruler and his empire, giving him a semblance of legitimacy and furthering his reputation and honor. Patrons needed clients to enhance their own honor, and clients received honor by virtue of their “renowned” patrons. Legend says that as many as 400 poets were gathered in his court at one time; they, to sing Mahmud’s praises, and he, to shower benefits upon them so they would continue to promote his rule.

There was tremendous obligation on both sides. Although it is the economical base of many societies, this tit-for-tat type of relationship is far from charming, to say the least. The patron was duty bound to constantly and generously foster his protégés, while they, in turn, had always to remain loyal to their patron in order to receive the needed benefits. The story is told of a minister in a royal Arab court who had been rejected by his clients because he had failed to provide sustained patronage. As he was being tortured to death by his embittered servants, one of them said, “It was with a view to this or something like it that we used to urge you to act with kindness, to lay people under obligation by showing generosity, and by doing favors while powerful so that you might reap benefit when in need.”[2]

Firdawsi at the Court of Ghazni

So how did Abul Qasim Firdawsi, who lived during Sultan Mahmud’s reign, fare in this regard?  This great epic poet of the early 11th century, whom we discussed in our chapter on classical poetry, provides us with a classic example of how a patron-client relationship can turn sour.

The story comes to us in different versions, but one thing is clear. When Firdawsi submitted his masterpiece, the Shahnama, to Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, he was bitterly offended because of the meager reward he received from the Sultan. In turn, Firdawsi rewarded his second-rate patron with these insulting lines:

The virtue of the king is of no repute, if it were, he’d have crowned me with honor.

Since in his lineage no greatness stands, how could he bear to hear of greatness?[3]  

The Version of Chahar Maqala (Four Discourses):

The story of how Firdawsi fared at the Ghaznawid court comes not from the Shahnama itself, but from two interesting works of literary history. The earliest and probably the most reliable source on the cultural and literary history of the early Persio-Islamic dynasties is a small work, Chahar Maqala, written by Nizami Aruzi of Samarqand about 100 years after Firdawsi’s death.[4] The Chahar Maqala has recorded the well-known story of Firdawsi’s unsuccessful attempt to receive a generous payment for his years of labor in preparing the Shahnama.

Aruzi describes Firdawsi as a genius in literary skill, who could carry a “word” to the highest heavens and make it taste as pure, sweet honey. He enjoyed noble status as a landowner in Tus (near present-day Mashhad, Iran). Although he was well able to cover his domestic expenses, he needed to fund a dowry for his only daughter. So, he set out to put the ancient “book of kings” to poetry hoping for a generous endowment from a wealthy and noble patron. Probably with some hyperbole, the texts stress how Firdawsi took over 25 years to complete the Shahnama.

Having inscribed the work in seven volumes, Firdawsi traveled to Ghazni where he presented the masterpiece to Ahmad Hassan Maimandi, the chief minister of Mahmud’s royal court. Maimandi apparently received it positively, and the sultan himself thanked the minister for receiving this great work of art. But the court was rife with envy and intrigue. Some officials despised Maimandi and wanted to defame him. Secretly slithering up to the sultan, they vilified the great poet, accusing him of being a religious heretic. In their view, 50,000 dirhams (silver coins) was too generous a bequest for a poet who did not follow conventional Sunni theology.

Sultan Mahmud heeded their advice, and contrary to his expectations, Firdawsi received only 20,000 dirhams. Firdawsi, bitterly disappointed by Mahmud, went to the local hammam (public bath) where he squandered the grant on beer (literally, barley drink) and distributed the rest to the bath-keeper and a few beggars. Needless to say, this was a stinging insult to Mahmud. Fearing the sultan’s violent wrath, Firdawsi escaped from Ghazni at night and fled to Herat where he remained in hiding. When the Mahmud’s messengers looked for him at Tus, Firdawsi gathered the Shahnama and sought refuge in Tabaristan (western Iran) where he entered the service of the Tabaristan ruler, Shahriyar.

Shahriyar and his family claimed direct descendancy from an ancient Persian noble line and expressed an appreciation for the Shahnama. Firdawsi wrote a new introduction where he ridiculed Mahmud and dedicated the work to Shahriyar. Shahriyar treated Firdawsi well, but defended Mahmud saying the Ghaznawid ruler had been manipulated to act as he had. Shahriyar, not wanting to create a political crisis, urged Firdawsi to keep Mahmud’s good name and reassured him that Mahmud would yet fully reimburse the poet. Shahriyar himself rewarded Firdawsi with 100,000 dirhams on the condition that he remove the satire against Mahmud. Firdawsi obliged, keeping only a few lines (note above).

As the story goes, years later Sultan Mahmud and the chief minister, Maimandi, were returning from a battle in India. On their way, they confronted a certain rebellious chief. Having sent orders for him to submit, the sultan and the minister awaited an answer. Mahmud asked the minister how the chief would respond to which the minister quoted a line from Firdawsi:

Unless the answer comes in my favor, It will be I and the battle-axe and the battlefield of Afrasiyab.

Mahmud was impressed by the verse and asked who had penned such lines. The minister responded that it was the deprived Firdawsi who had worked 25 years to compile the entire Shahnama but had seen little fruit for his labors. Mahmud immediately saw his error. When they returned to the capital, Mahmud ordered 60,000 dinars (gold coins) worth of goods be sent to Tus for Firdawsi, along with an apology saying that the sultan had for years sought to repay him and now he was finally able to do so. As the caravan loaded with rewards was about to enter the Tus city gate, it was met with the funeral procession carrying Firdawsi’s body! The riches were offered to his daughter who refused them, saying she had no need for them. The riches were then ordered to be used to construct resting stations on the road leading out from Nishapur.

Dilemma in patronage systems

Different theories have been given as to why Firdawsi was treated so poorly by the Ghazni monarch. Was it because of Firdawsi’s apparent heretical religious leanings?  If this was the case, why would Mahmud want to foster the famous philosopher, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), whose suspect philosophy stood in stark contrast to Sunni orthodoxy?  Was Mahmud really manipulated by the enemies of the chief minister and the entire episode simply a conspiracy of the court?  Was it because Mahmud, being of Turkish origin, could not genuinely appreciate the Persian heritage of the Shahnama?  Or was Firdawsi expecting too great a reward for his work?  Was Firdawsi’s expectation of support and patronage out of order?

The Iranian scholar, Amin Banani, offers the following conclusion about Firdawsi’s own motivation to submit the Shahnama to the Ghaznavid court:

[Firdawsi] is already afflicted with the material obsessions, if not the greed and avarice that characterize periods of rise and fall. Thus he seeks, and needs, the patronage and the emoluments of the Ghaznavid court, yet he is too proud, too detached, and too dedicated to his “uncommercial art” to secure that patronage in the accepted mode of the day. He is contemptuous of the servility and the parasitic existence of the court poets, of the artificiality of their panegyric verse, of the ignobleness of their self-seeking and mutual enmity. Yet he is not without the artist’s vanity, envy, and acrimony, and occasionally stumbles to the temptation of proving himself in their terms.[5]

Regardless of why and how Firdawsi entered the Ghaznawid court or how he managed to disenfranchise himself from the sultan, the entire episode appears to be stained with avarice. New clients frequently had to “purchase” their way into patronage, and obviously long-term clients tried to prevent others from gaining access to their patron. Dawlatshah’s version of the Firdawsi account relates how the top poets of the Ghaznawid court conspired together to keep Firdawsi at bay while Firdawsi continued to connive his way to gain their favor. Slander and intrigue, then, were effective means to prevent others from gaining patronage or to squeeze one’s way into it.

Although most Afghans will invariably vouch for Firdawsi’s sincerity, we note several dilemmas in the Firdawsi-Mahmud relationship. Such patronage relationships are rarely built on trust and mutual confidence. The patron tends to treat his protégés as slaves, expecting them to comply with his requests and orders. A protégé has little freedom to express his views. From his perspective, he feels he is owned by his patron, and therefore, he dare not veer from the patron’s wishes. In turn, the client, having lent his full support and service to the patron, tends to expect more benefits and guarantees than he actually receives. Consequently, as seen in the Firdawsi story, such relationships often turn sour.

The protégé – patron system is a politics of obligation which continues to this day in many different forms. In rural Afghanistan, the traditional tribal landowners provided guarantees for the entire village working on the land. In certain areas, farmers and landlords developed positive relations. The peasants were content to serve their landlords because of the securities and guarantees they received. For these benefits, they deeply respected their landlords and willingly offered their loyalities to them. And that is one reason the socialist land reforms in the 1980s failed in Afghanistan.

In other situations, however, peasant farmers had little choice but to work under an oppressive khan (landlord), a reality exploited by the former socialist regimes in Afghanistan. Frequently, the only way such farmers could free themselves from their landlord’s tyranny was to up stakes and leave their lands. The landlord was forced to moderate his oppression in order to attract his peasants back to their villages.

Much more recently, warlords have become empowered and have provided protection and stipends for their militias in turn for military services. Young soldiers have had little choice but to fight for their warlords and advocate their cause, so that they could provide for their families. These soldiers, even if they wanted to, could not free themselves from the warlords who readily resort to threats and thuggings in order to keep their soldiers under control.

In today’s NGO culture another form of patron-client relationship, where NGO organizations, work contracts aside, are expected to ensure benefits for their workers. In turn, the workers “sing the NGO tune” – whatever the cause may be – in order to maintain long-term employment. This concern, of course, is not isolated to Afghanistan.

In every one of these scenarios, each is duty bound to the other. When expectations are not met, or when others provide better services, there is an immediate switch of loyalties, much to the chagrin and embitterment of the other side. Although Seneca says that patronage relationships are the only way to survive, they are also a recipe for disappointment and betrayal.

 

[1] Seneca, Des Beneficiis, 1.4.2, in David deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity (Intervarsity Press, 2000), 96. There are extensive anthropological studies on patronage in relation to Muslim societies of the Middle East and South Asia. See, for example, Akbar S Ahmed, Pukhtun Economy and Society – Traditional Structure and Economic Development in Tribal Society (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980) and the somewhat dated work on the Swat Pashtuns of Pakistan, Fredrick Barth’s Political Leadership among Swat Pathans (London: The Athlone Press, University of London, 1959), who suggests that such dyadic relationships were of a voluntary nature, rather than a necessity for survival.
[2] Roy Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 91.

[3] Nizami al-Aruzi Samarqandi, Chahar Maqala, ed. Muhammad ibn Qazwini (Berlin, 1927), 56.

[4] The second version of the story is from Amir Dawlatshah, Tazkirat al-Shuara (Memoirs of Poets), which is one of the earliest biographies of Persian poets and possibly the best medieval manual of Persian literary history. The Memoirs of Poets was written in 1487, some 450 years after Firdawsi’s death. Dawlatshah, writing during the cultural renaissance in Herat, features around 150 Persian poets of the classical period, beginning with Rudaki and ending with Jami. Dawlatshah’s version of Firdawsi’s entrance to the Sultan Mahmud’s royal court is radically different, but the lesson is much the same.

[5] Amin Banani, “Ferdawsi and the Art of the Tragic Epic,” in Persian Literature (The Persian Heritage Foundation, 1988), 114.

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