The Diwan of Rahman Baba
View the Diwan in original Pashto language:
About the Diwan (continued)
Literary Influences affecting the Diwan
Poetry has long held a prominence in Pukhtun culture that makes Afghanistan rightlydubbed “a nation of poets.” Part of the reason for this prominence is that poetry gives a voice to non-literates, who learn to recite huge amounts of poetry from memory.
Such unrivalled mastery of these difficult poetic forms suggests a period of apprenticeship, or at the very least a familiarity with earlier poetry. Although there is no certain record of which books or teachings Rahman Baba absorbed, there is some knowledge of four genres of literature that may have been available to him. These included the Persian Sufi classics, a growing corpus of Indian ‘Persianate’ literature, a recent genesis of poetry in Pukhto, and lastly a range of Arabic and Persian mystical and religious texts. Each of these genres was to have an influence on Rahman's own writing.
The first component that influenced Rahmiin Bibi was an abundance of classical Persian poetry. These rhyming, almost musical poems were hugely popular across the medieval world. Particularly influential in Pukhtunkhwa were the works of RUmi (d.1273), Hafiz (d.1390), Iraqi (d.1289), Jami (d.1492), Sidi (d.1292), and a succession of poets from Ghazni that included Sanai (d. 113 1) and HujWiri (d. 1075). So revered was the poetry of these Persian masters, that their diwans were used as auguries and taught in the normal course of studies at the madrassah. Aspiring poets were keen to copy the great Persian masters, and it was customary for them to pray for Nizami’s guidance before writing, in the hope that the work would be an obvious imitation.
Though opinions differ as to which poet influenced Rahman the most, the flavour of the diwan shows a heavy reliance on the favourite symbols of Persianate Sufism as well as the popular folk and religious characters of that genre.
Kamil claims line-for-line similarity between several verses of Hafiz’s and Rahman’s diwan, while Schimmel suggests that Rahman’s verse follows the themes and feelings of Sanai. A particularly interesting similarity can be seen with the works of Sidi.
The numerous imitators of the Persian style were to have less impact on Rahman than their predecessors. Starting from the Ghaznavid era, Persian poetry found a second wind among its mimics. Poets like Abd’ul Faraj Runi and Masiid S h n began to write Persian in a way that “followed the style and also echoed the feelings” 28 of the classical Persian poets. In Kabul, Kahi (d.1577), Abd’ul Faizi Hazrat and Sa’aduddin
The numerous imitators of the Persian style were to have less impact on Rahman than their predecessors. Starting from the Ghaznavid era, Persian poetry found a second wind among its mimics. Poets like Abd’ul Faraj Runi and Masud Salman began to write Persian in a way that “followed the style and also echoed the feelings” of the classical Persian poets. In Kabul, Kahi (d.1577), Abd’ul Faizi Hazrat and Sa’aduddin
Ansari also followed the Persian tradition.” The migration of Persian scholars to the Mughal courts further stimulated imitators, amongst whom a distinctive “Indian style” of Persian poetry developed. Shackle suggests that one of the most popular of these Indo-Persian poets was Ghanimat whose Nayrang-i'ishq (The Charm of Love) was also translated into Pukhto by Abd’ul Hamid (fl c 1700). Although Rahman's poems can be considered Persinate in their use of the Persian ghazal structure, they do not succumb to the stiflingly ornate style of Sabk-i-Hindi which became “extremely embellished and full of rhetorical devices.”
The third influence on Rahman’s work was from Pukhto literature itself. Popular as Persian poetry was, it was still a long way from the everyday lives of the mostly rural Pukhtun population.