ABSTRACT
Kamal al-dcn rusayn b. ‘Alc Wa‘iz Kashifc was among the literati of the illustrious Timurid court based in Herat towards the end of the fifteenth century. The breadth of his scholarly writings is a testimony to the artistic and literary appreciation of his times, as about forty major works are attributed to him.1 His position at the Timurid court indicates the esteem in which he was held, yet his popularity was also posthumous, and is partly based on his narration of the events at Karbala, the RawZat al-shuhAda,2 which served the interests of the nascent Shc‘-ite dynasty in Safavid Iran. Another popular piece of writing (as evidenced by hundreds of manuscripts) is his Persian commentary on the Qur’an, known as MawAhib-i “aliyya.3 Kashifc also rendered popular tales into ornate Persian prose; in particular, he retold the Arabic fable KalCla wa Dimna (which was a series of stories using animals as the main characters, adapted from a Sanskrit text by Ibn Muqaffa (d. c. 756)).4 In addition, Kashifc was deeply interested in the more esoteric dimension of Islam, and this is clear in his commentary on Remc’s mathnawC (SharW-i mathnawC ), an anthology of the same work by Remc (LubAb al-ma“nawC fC intikhAb-i mathnawC ), and an abridged version of the above treatise (Lubb-i lubAb-i mathnawC ). His attachment to Sufism is also clear in his writing on futuwwat which he located squarely within the Sufi tradition. He stated, “Know that the knowledge of futuwwat is an honourable one, and [it is] a branch of the knowledge of Sufism and the Unity of God.”5
Kashifc composed two works on futuwwat: the first was a lengthy treatise, the Futuwwat nAma-yi SulYAnC, which outlined the theoretical, practical and institutional dimensions of futuwwat; the second, the RisAla-yi RAtimiya, is a much shorter work which provides an ideal of the futuwwat ethic through a series of episodes in the life of the pre-Islamic Arab tribal leader, ratim ta’c.
