Introduction

The concept of jawAnmardC has attracted exceedingly limited scholarly attention despite its significant contribution to the creation of Iranian identities. Anyone acquainted with Iran appreciates the complex mixture of identities, ranging from nationalist, Shi‘ite and Sufi, and combinations of all three. The intricacy of these structures is manifested through the shared concept of jawAnmardC, and appears in literature such as the ShAhnAma (considered by many to promote Persian nationalism), in the hagiographies and legends of the Shc‘ite Imams and in Sufi poetry and prose, yet it would be wrong to consider such works as mutually exclusive. In any case, an all-embracing survey of jawAnmardC would of necessity have to focus on these three dimensions of Iranian identity, and such a project would understandably be a lifetime’s project. For this reason, the present monograph focuses only upon jawAnmardC in the Persian Sufi tradition.