L U C I S

C O N F E R E N C E

AN T INOM IAN MOVEME NT S IN ISL AM

Id e a s of Vi o l e n c e an d Non - Vi o l e n c e i n Is l am i c My s t i c i s m

Convened by Asghar Seyed-Gohrab WE DNESDAY 3 & T HURSDAY 4 JUNE 2015 MAIN CONFERENCE ROOM UNIVERSIT Y LIBRARY ( WIT TE SINGEL 27, LEIDEN)

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www.hum.leidenuniv.nl/lucis/activiteiten Registration via [email protected]

LUCIS Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society

Antinomian Movements in Islam Ideas of Violence and Non-Violence in Islamic Mysticism

Programme Day One: Wednesday, 3 June 2015 9:15 9:45

Coffee/tea Welcoming address: Asghar Seyed-Gohrab

Chair: Leonard Lewisohn 10:00-11:00 Alan Williams – Antinomianism as a Mystical Trope in Rumi’s Masnavi 11:00-12:00 Ahmet Karamustafa – The Abdals of Rum in the Mirror of Hagiography 12:00-13:30 Lunch (Only for speakers and invitees) Chair: Asghar Seyed-Gohrab 13:30-14:30 Leonard Lewisohn – The Spiritual Reality, Social Significance and Poetic Topos of the Wildman (Qalandar) in 14-15th Century Persian Poetry 14:30-15:30 Rokus de Groot – Qalandar transformation in Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's performances 15:30-16:00 Break 16:00-17:00 Mohammad-Reza Shafi’i-Kadkani – Qalandar: a Definition Dinner (Only for speakers and invitees)

Day Two: Thursday, 4 June 2015 9:00-9:30 Coffee/tea Chair: Rokus de Groot 9:30-10:30 Jan Schmidt – From heretic revolutionaries to intriguing courtiers; the role of mystics in Ottoman history 10:30-11:30 Mathew Thomas Miller – The ‘Rogue Lyrics’ of Medieval Persian Poetry: The Qalandariyyat as Heterotopic Countergenre of the Sufi Carnival 11:30-12:00 Break 12:00-13:00 Michiel Leezenberg – Antonomianism among the Kurds: Language, Law, Religion 13:00-14:30 Lunch (Only for speakers and invitees) Chair: Jan Schmidt 14:30-15:30 Alireza Korangi – Qalandar, Qalandarī and ‘Ayyarī in Indo-Persian Literature: A case of Proto-“Indian Style” Bū Alī Qalandar and His Muhammadan Poetics 15:30-16:30 Asghar Seyed-Gohrab – The Reception of the Qalandars in the Caucasus? Nizami Ganjavi and Other Poets of the Region

16:30-17:00 Final remarks

Titles, Abstracts and Biographies

Alan Williams (University of Manchester and British Academy) ‫ک ثناست کین دلی ِل هستی وهستی خطاست‬ ِ ‫این ثنا گفتن ز من تر‬ Antinomianism as a Mystical Trope in Rumi’s Masnavi Whereas Rumi’s ghazals are full of extravagances of expression that often appear to be antinomian and anti-shariʿa, they are in fact extended shaṭḥhā, ecstatic utterances. The Masnavi on the other hand is known as a more sober text, extravagant perhaps only in its great size and depth. However there are indeed passages in the Masnavi that seem to extol unreason, unbelief and antinomian ideas as preferable to mundane wisdom, conventional belief and everyday morality. In this paper I explore the notion that antinomianism for Rumi is a mystical (ʿerfāni) trope. It is one of the major weapons in his arsenal of combat in the greater struggle against the double entrapment of sensualist conformity and dualistic thinking. The shackles of religious literalism enable the nafs to continue to dominate the ruḥ and dogmatism to triumph over true piety. Rumi’s antinomian tropes resemble explosives that de-centre conventional forms of thought: neither practical , nor theoretical nor purely literary in type, his antinomianism is didactic of a mystical understanding. Evasive of intellectual formulation, they thrive in the live environment of poetry, fed by metaphor, hyperbole and imagination. But they become desiccated and shrivelled when prised out onto the cold ground of prose philosophy and theology. Alan Williams (b.1953, Windsor, England) was educated at the universities of Oxford and SOAS, London. He is Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester and concurrently British Academy Wolfson Research Professor. His research interests span the literatures and cultures of preIslamic and Islamic Iran, with published studies of Pahlavi, Classical and Modern Persian texts. His most recent books are Spiritual Verses (Masnavi I), Penguin Classics, 2006 and The Zoroastrian Myth of Migration … Qeṣṣe-ye Sanjān, Brill, 2009. He is currently working on a new study and complete translation of Rumi’s Masnavi. *** Ahmet T. Karamustafa (University of Maryland)

The Abdals of Rum in the Mirror of Hagiography What is nowadays called the Alevi-Bektaşi tradition in Turkey is definitely not a unitary tradition, and the outlines of its early history, especially before the sixteenth century, are fuzzy at best and obscure at worst. Turkish speakers clearly benefited from multiple sources in fashioning their religious thought and practice, and my aim in this talk is to direct attention to one of those wellsprings they drew from, namely dervish piety as represented by a nebulous group that historians of Anatolia and the Balkans refer to as abdalan-ı Rum, following the example of the chronicler Aşıkpaşazade (d. 889/1484). Whether or not the abdals of Rum may have been interconnected as a loose social grouping through master-disciple relationships, regional attachments, distinctive practices and the like remains a matter of conjecture, but it is likely that what led contemporary observers such as Aşıkpaşazade to subsume them under a single heading was their linguistic practice: as opposed other dervish groups like the Qalandars, Ḥaydarīs, Jāmīs, and Shams-i Tabrīzīs, who most probably spoke Persian (at least during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries), the abdals of Rum spoke Turkish. The richest historical sources for this Turkish dervish piety are, of course, hagiographical texts in Turkish that begin to proliferate during the second half of the fifteenth century, and my talk will be an attempt to tap this sizeable hagiographical corpus for what they can reveal to us about abdal piety, its salient features and its social as well as cultural context. Ahmet T. Karamustafa is Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. His expertise is in the social and intellectual history of Sufism in particular and Islamic piety in general in the medieval and early modern periods. His publications include God’s Unruly Friends (University of Utah Press, 1994) and Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh University Press & University of California Press, 2007). He is currently working on two book projects titled The Flowering of Sufism and Vernacular Islam: Everyday Muslim Religious Life in Medieval Anatolia. *** Leonard Lewisohn (University of Exeter) The Spiritual Reality, Social Significance and Poetic Topos of the Wildman (Qalandar) in 14-15th Century Persian Poetry The type of radical Sufi who could combine the contraries of both faith and infidelity within himself was represented by several pivotal terms in Persian poetic symbolism.

References in Persian poetry to these terms—such as qalandar (‘wildman’ – a roving mystic unattached to religious formalities, the Persian version of the Hindu Saddhu) rind (rogue) and qallāsh (rascal)—as J.T.P. de Bruijn has noted, “were traditionally subsumed under the heading kufriyyāt [‘Songs of Infidelity’].”1 Although the qalandariyyāt genre of poetry (‘Wild-man Poetry’) featured blasphemous poetic images, and was literally antinomian, its authors were usually themselves “pious Muslims who put much emphasis on the obedience to God’s will as it was laid down in the sharī‘at.’2 Typically, the qalandar’s abode was the kharābāt, the Tavern of Ruin which ubiquitously encompassed good, evil, beauty, ugliness, and every kind of faith and infidelity. Consequently, in the literary genre of kufriyyāt and qalandariyyāt, the true ‘infidel’ is beheld as the poet’s (and by extension, the reader’s) own ego. To expound the subtleties of Sufi antinomian theology and elaborate the paradoxical faith sustaining such mystical infidelity, chapters of books and sometimes whole treatises were composed by some of the major Persian Sufi masters from the 13th to 16th centuries. As a quasi-Sufi antinomian movement, the antinomianism of the qalandar dervishes had basically three characteristics:

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By eschewing ritual obligations, they contravene the Sharī‘a “in spirit if not always in letter, by adopting patently scandalous and antisocial practices.”3

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They were constantly engaged in music-making, using tambourines, drums, dancing and singing in public ceremonies.4

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They were radical dissenters from established religion. “The [qalandar] dervishes negated the existing social structure in all its dimensions…They cheerfully proceeded to replace the prescriptive and proscriptive of the sharī‘ah by another code of behaviour, in which deliberate eschewal of the religious law played a role.”5

“The Qalandariyyāt in Persian Mystical Poetry, from Sanā’ī Onwards,” in Leonard Lewisohn (ed.), The Heritage of Sufism, vol. 2: The Legacy of Mediæval Persian Sufism (1150-1500), (Oxford: Oneworld 1999), p. 85. 2 J.T.P. de Bruijn, Persian Sufi Poetry: an Introduction to the Mystical Use of Classical Poems (London: Curzon 1997), p. 75. 3 Ahmet Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1994), p. 18. 4 Ibid, p. 19. 5 Ibid, p. 22.

In this lecture, I will explore the spiritual reality, social significance and poetic topos of the wildman (qalandar) in classical Persian poetry in general, focusing in particular on the lyrical poems (ghazal) of six less-known Persian poets of the fifteenth century: Luṭfu’llāh Nīshabūrī (d. 812/1409), Shāh Ni‘matullāh Walī (d. 835/1431), Kamāl Ghiyāth Shīrāzī (d. 847/1443), Khiyālī Bukharā’ī (d. 850/1446), Shāh Dā‘ī Shīrāzī (d. 870/1465), Muḥammad Lāhījī (d. 913/1507). Leonard Lewisohn has written extensively on Persian Sufism. He is the author of Beyond Faith and Infidelity: The Sufi Poetry and Teachings of Mahmud Shabistari (London: Curzon Press 1995), and The Wisdom of Sufism (Oxford: Oneworld 2001). He is the editor of The Heritage of Sufism (Oxford: Oneworld Publications 1999), vol. 1: The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism, vol. 2: Classical Persian Sufism from its Origins to Rumi Classical Persian Sufism from its Origins to Rumi, vol. 3 (with David Morgan): Late Classical Persianate Sufism: the Safavid and Mughal Period covering a millennium of Islamic history. He is also editor (with Christopher Shackle) of The Art of Spiritual Flight: Farid al-Din Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition (London: I.B. Tauris and the Institute of Ismaili Studies, forthcoming 2006) His articles have appeared in the Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd Ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd Ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd Ed., Encyclopedia Iranica, Iran Nameh, Iranian Studies, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Bulletin of the School of Oriental & African Studies, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, British Association for the Study of Religion Bulletin, African Affairs, and Temenos. He was Research Associate in Esotericism in Islam at the Department of Academic Research and Publications of the Institute of Ismaili Studies (London) from 1999-2005. Since 2004 he has been Lecturer in Persian and Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow in Classical Persian and Sufi Literature at the The Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, at the University of Exeter in England. *** Rokus de Groot (University of Amsterdam) Qalandar transformation in Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's performances The figure of the qalandar received worlwide renown in the 1980s and 1990s through the performances of the Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (19481997) on world music stages and in films. His most famous song was Dam mast

Qalandar, relating to Muhammad Uthman Marandi, nicknamed Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (1177-1274), a saint from Sindh. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's renderings of this song were ecstatic, and the public, especially in Pakistan, responded likewise. As the source of his own performances, he referred to the qawwali practice at Sufi dargahs (tombs) in Pakistan and India, at which the praise of saints is sung, This presentation will concentrate on the shift of qawwali practice from the sacred space of the tomb to public halls by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, his justification to do so, while assuming a spiritual role as a singer, and the role of Dam mast Qalandar in this process. Rokus de Groot (*1947 Aalst, Netherlands), musicologist and composer, conducts research on music of the 20th and 21st centuries, especially about aesthetics and systems of composition, about the interaction between different cultural and religious traditions, and about musical concepts as a metaphor (polyphony, counterpoint). He is Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of Amsterdam. Among his publications are: 'Rumi and the Abyss of Longing', in The Mawlana Rumi Review Vol. 2, ed. L. Lewisohn, Cyprus: Rumi Institute, Near East University, and Exeter: the Rumi Studies Group of the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, 2011, p. 60-93; 'Edward Said and Polyphony', in A. Iskandar and H. Rustom (eds.), Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010, p. 204-228; 'Music, Religion and Power: Qawwali as Empowering Disempowerment', in M.B. ter Borg and J.W. van Henten, Powers, Religion as a Social and Spiritual Force, New York: Fordham University Press, 2010, p. 243-264. He composes music theatre for singers, musicians and dancers from different traditions, such as Song of songs: The Love of Mirabai (New Delhi 2005), Layla and Majnun: A Composition about the Night (Amsterdam 2006), ShivaShakti (Chennai, 2009) and Hosgeldin (Ankara and Burdur, 2014). These are examples of mutual learning and intercultural polyphony. *** Mohammad-Reza Shafi’i-Kadkani (Tehran University) Qalandar: a Definition

Mohammad-Reza Shafi’i-Kadkani is a Persian writer, poet, literary critic, editor, and translator. Born in Nishapur in 1939, Shafi’i-Kadkani graduated from Tehran University with a doctorate degree in Persian literature. He was a student of prominent figures as Badi’ al-Zaman Foruzanfar, Mohammad Mo’in, and Parviz Natel-Khanlari. He is currently professor of literature at Tehran University. He is known for his works on history of Sufism, literary criticism and modern Persian poetry. He has published more than hundred articles and many books on a wide range of topics. *** *** Jan Schmidt (Leiden University) From heretic revolutionaries to intriguing courtiers; the role of mystics in Ottoman history The paper discusses some aspects of the all-pervading presence of mystics and mysticism in Ottoman society and literature. From the beginning dervish sheiks also played an important role in Ottoman politics. In early days they sometimes were able to act as local chieftains, in the ‘classical age’ and afterwards they had often a remarkable power over ruling sultans. The suppression even of the Bektashis in the early 19th century or the closure of the tekkes under Atatürk in the 1920s did not end the pervasive influence of the dervish tradition in some circles in Turkish society. Jan Schmidt is lecturer of Turkish studies at Leiden University. His teaching and research is primarily concerned with the history and culture of the Ottoman Empire. He compiled a catalogue of the Turkish manuscripts kept in Dutch public libraries and museums. His latest publication is an edition of the correspondence of the assyriologist Fritz Rudolf Kraus during his exile in Istanbul (1937-1949).

*** Matthew Thomas Miller (University of Maryland) The ‘Rogue Lyrics’ of Medieval Persian Poetry: The Qalandariyyat as Heterotopic Countergenre of the Sufi Carnival

Although scholars of Sufism frequently discuss qalandari poetry in their treatments of antinomian modes of Sufi piety, these “rogue lyrics” (qalandariyyāt) have received little attention to date from literary scholars. Building on J.T.P. de Bruijn’s preliminary study of Sanā’ī’s qalandariyyāt, in this paper I will map the generic contours of the qalandari poetry of Sanā’ī,‘Attār, and ‘Erāqī and adumbrate a new (heuristic) typology of the qalandariyyāt. Moving from the generic to intergeneric level of analysis, I will then position the qalandariyyāt within the broader generic landscape of early medieval Persian poetry and argue that it should be read as a heterotopic countergenre that parodies for spiritual effect medieval panegyric court poetry (madh/madhiyyāt) and religious-homiletic poetry (e.g. zuhdiyyāt, mawe’zeh). Matthew Thomas Miller is currently a Roshan Institute Research Fellow (20142015) at University of Maryland, College Park and consultant for Roshan Institute's Digital Project in Persian Humanities (2014-2015). He is also a PhD student in the Program in Comparative Literature and graduate certificate program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) at Washington University in St. Louis, where he is completing his dissertation entitled “The Poetics of the Sufi Carnival: The ‘Rogue Lyrics’ (Qalandariyyāt) of Sanā’ī, ‘Attār, and ‘Erāqī.” Previously, he was dissertation fellow at Washington University in St. Louis (2013-2014), a Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute Fellow (2012-2013), and a Mellon Sawyer Doctoral Fellow (2011-2012). He is the author of the forthcoming (2015) “Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Irāqī: Poet and Mystic,” in Religious and Mystical Literature (Volume VI of A History of Persian Literature Series). ***

Michiel Leezenberg (University of Amsterdam) Antonomianism among the Kurds: Language, Law, Religion The recent, near-genocidal persecution of the Yezidis once again brings home the distinct place of the Kurds in the Middle Eastern religious landscape. Kurdish communities like the Yezidis, the Haqqa, and the Kakais or Yaresan have often been accused of antinomianism or heresy; but these claims generally come from hostile sources. The members of these communities themselves reject such accusations; and some of their apparently most deviant behavior turns out to have a background in Sufi ideas about blame (malâmat), or about the devil (Iblîs) despite appearances being God’s most loyal servant. After a brief discussion of legalism and antinomianism among these heterodox groups, I will turn to a seemingly unrelated phenomenon: the emergence of language-based nationalism among the Kurds. The emergence of nationalism among Middle Eastern peoples is often described as resulting from the import of Western European ideas assumed to be alien to local realities; but it was prepared by local processes of vernacularization that occurred especially in Sufi-inspired medrese circles. These processes, moreover, involved qualitative changes in the perceived relations between language, religion, and law. I will discuss these interrelations, first by discussing Evliya Çelebi’s doctrines of the vernacular languages spoken in the Ottoman empire and, second, on discussing the linguistic and religious dimensions of Kurdish vernacularization. One of the biggest innovations implicit in works like Elî Teremaxî’s eighteenth-century Tesrîfa Kurmancî, the first-ever grammar of Kurdish, turns out to be the belief that any language other than Arabic can have rules or laws of grammar (sarf). Early modern vernacularization thus involved major rearticulations of language, law and religion, and turns out to have significant – if generally tacit – political implications. Michiel Leezenberg teaches in the Philosophy department and in the MA programme "Islam in the Modern World" of the University of Amsterdam. In 2001, he published Islamic Philosophy: A History (in Dutch), which won the Socrates cup for the best Dutch-language philosophy book of the year. His current research interests focus on the intellectual history of the modern Islamic world, the history and philosophy of the humanities, and the Kurdish question. He has given guest

lectures at various universities, at think tanks and at policymaking institutions. He regularly contributes to the Books section of the nationwide daily NRC Handelsblad.

*** Alireza Korangy (University of Virginia) Qalandar, Qalandarī and ‘Ayyarī in Indo-Persian Literature: A case of Proto-“Indian Style” Bū Alī Qalandar and His Muhammadan Poetics In Persian literature, the notions of lover and beloved have gone through a myriad of changes when concerning post-Safavid poetics. Within the poetic paradigm of the lover as prescribed by a long history of Persian verse, the idea of qalandarī has been one of value on so many levels, most important of which being how it creates the poets’ desired ambiguity as concerns malāmatī and Sufi ideas and ideals regarding love and forgoing the self. In what is now post-rationalized as “Indian Style” literature, qalandar and all that is thematically bound to it in terms of poetic and philosophical ethical observances are treated in accordance with a new understanding of the lover and the beloved and the newly found geo-political nuances that necessarily were influential in creating a new understanding. What are missing from the prescribed formula for the “Indian Style” in terms of historicity are the Indian poets who were writing Persian poems long before the Safavids and long before any notion of Bahar’s coinage of the “Indian Style” in the subcontinent. That said, this talk aims to discuss the religious motif of qalandarī and ‘ayyārī (and by extension the time immemorial lover-beloved relationship) in the poetry of Bū Alī Qalandar who is the first to write lionizations of the prophet in the subcontinent and had a very strong element of tafrīd in his other poetry. What is of particular importance is how such a poet treated ‘ayyārī and qalandarī at a time when poets in India who wrote in Persian were hardly ever discussed or even known. Did they deviate from a path already set for them or did they pave a distinct path of individuality when it came to the idea of qalandar or ‘ayyār? How did religion influence the notion of the qalandar and was this influence, if any, lessened in the post-Safavid period? Alireza Korangy received his Ph.D. from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. His field of research is Classical Persian and Arabic philology with a special emphasis on poetics, rhetoric, and

linguistics. He has also done extensive research on the contemporary linguistics of Iran and its corresponding folkloric traditions (Sorani Kurdish, Kurmanji Kurdish, Gilaki, Lori, Baluchi, etc.). His first book discussed the development of ghazal poetry in Iran, by highlighting the extensive influences of the pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and Classical Arabic poetry on the birth of ghazal poetry. Currently he is editing numerous volumes of essays dealing with a myriad of subjects such as Persian and Arabic philology, Islamic philosophy, Islamic historiography, the beloved and Urdu poetics. His next two monographs discuss martyrdom in Iran and Gilaki literature respectively. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia where he teaches Classical Persian literature, Iranian languages, and other courses on the Middle East and Near East. Previously he taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is one of the editors in chief (with A.A. Seyed-Gohrab) of International Journal of Persian Literature published by Penn State University Press. *** Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab (Leiden University) The Reception of the Qalandars in the Caucasus? Nizami Ganjavi and Other Poets of the Region The antinomian dervishes became popular in Persia from around the 12th Century. These mystics celebrated wine and gambling, had piercings in their ears, noses and genitals, indulged in the pleasures of homo-erotic love. While criticizing Islam, they praised other religions such as Zoroastrianism and Christianity. Their urge to reject society and outward piety of the clerical class made them choose nudity, rejection of marriage, shaving all facial hair, and using narcotics. While provoking the clergy with their irreligious behaviour, they craved for rejection and criticism, which they used as a shield to protect their piety. They were afraid that admiration of their followers would become a source of hypocrisy, and that they would believe in their own saintly status. In this paper, I will analyse how these mystics and their ideas were received in the Caucasus and Central Asia, investigating why several of their ideas were rejected while certain tenets became popular in a wide area both in literature and arts.

Ali-Asghar Seyed-Gohrab is Associate Professor at Leiden University. His publications include Soefism: Een levende traditie, (Amsterdam: Prometheus / Bert Bakker, 2015); Literature of the Early Twentieth Century: From the Constitutional Period to Reza Shah (ed., Volume XI of A History of Persian Literature, London / New York: I.B. Tauris 2015), Layli and Majnun: Love, Madness and Mystic Longing in Nizami’s Epic Romance, (Leiden / Boston: Brill, 2003), Mirror of Dew: The Poetry of Ālam-Tāj Zhāle Qā'em-Maqāmi, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Ilex Fundation Series 14, 2015), Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry, (Leiden: LUP, 2008, 2010); The Treasury of Tabriz: the Great IlKhanid Compendium, (West Lafayette, Indiana, Purdue University Press, ed. together with S. McGlinn, 2007); (2007) Seyed-Gohrab, A.A. & Gog and Magog: The Clans of Chaos in World Literature, (West Lafayette, Indiana, Purdue University Press, together with F. Doufikar-Aerts & S. McGlinn, 2007); One Word – Yak kaleme: A 19thCentury Persian Treatise Introducing Western Codified Law (Leiden: LUP, 2008, 2010, together with S. McGlinn); Conflict and Development in Iranian Film, ed. together with K. Talattof, (Leiden: LUP, 2013). He has translated several volumes of modern Persian poetry into Dutch, including the poetry of Sohrâb Sepehri, Forugh Farrokhzâd, Mohammad-Rezâ Shafi’i-Kadkani, and (together with J.T.P. de Bruijn) Ahmad Shâmlu, Nâder Nâderpur, and Hushang Ebtehâj. He headed the project Of Poetry and Politics: Classical Poetic Concepts in the New Politics of Twentieth Century Iran, financed by a five-year research grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). He is the founding general editor of the Iranian Studies Series at Leiden University Press and the Modern Persian Poetry Series.