Mele Perîşan, also known as Mulla Parishan Dinawari, is an early Kurdish poet associated with the Dinavar region of western Iran. His Parishan-nama survives through later manuscript copies and remains important to the study of Gorani literary and religious writing.

A manuscript introduction in flowing black Persian script on yellow-brown paper, with widely spaced lines and a final scribal note
A scribe’s introduction to a later copy of the Parishan-nama, reproduced from a National Library of Iran scan through Wikimedia Commons. The record dates this copy to 1900; this is a later witness to the text. National Library of Iran scan · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain; manuscript introduction attributed in the record to Muhammad Baqir Qajar.

Dating the poet and locating his work

David Neil MacKenzie describes Mulla Parishan as perhaps the earliest of the named Gorani poets and records a report that he was still alive in 801 AH, or 1398–1399. [1] Manuscript scholar M. Dehqan identifies him as Abu al-Qasim Dinawari, a Kurdish poet and religious figure from the Dinavar district, while emphasising the lack of a detailed biography. [2] The evidence places his literary activity around the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Exact birth and death dates vary in later accounts.

A literary language with several layers

MacKenzie distinguishes literary Gorani from the range of spoken varieties and describes its use in poetry, Ardalan patronage and Ahl-e Haqq scripture. [1] These are features of a wider literary history. Seyyed Arman Hosseini Abbariki’s manuscript-based study argues that Parishan spoke Laki while composing within a Gorani literary framework. Its vocabulary also includes Laki, Kermanshahi Kurdish, Persian and Arabic elements. [3] The language of the poems therefore reflects several interacting traditions of learning and expression.

The age of a poem and the age of a copy

Dehqan examines manuscript 529 at Tehran’s Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia: 104 folios, with blue and white paper in separate parts and a semi-cursive nasta‘liq hand. He describes it as undated and assigns the copy to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Some leaves had been displaced, cut or affected by damp. [2] Shahab Vali’s 2023 study also discusses a Berlin witness copied by Muhammad Quli Harsini and dated in its colophon to Ramadan 1313 AH, in 1896. [4] These are later copies of a text attributed to a medieval author. Their dates and physical condition are part of the evidence for how the poetry was transmitted.

Religious interpretation and disputed attribution

Dehqan interpreted the poem’s letter symbolism and theological vocabulary as evidence of Hurufi interests alongside Shi‘i commitments. [2] Hosseini Abbariki challenges that classification: his 2021 study interprets the abjad letter system and scriptural interpretation within an Imami Shi‘i setting. It also argues that a number of poems previously assigned to Parishan belong to the nineteenth-century Gorani poet Malik Husayn Khan Kulyai. [3] These disagreements affect both the religious reading of the work and the boundaries of the poet’s surviving corpus.

Love and reason in the Parishan-nama

Vali reads the poem as a religious debate between love and reason. In his analysis, love is directed towards the Prophet Muhammad and his family and offers access to their spiritual rank beyond what ordinary reason can grasp. He connects the work with the thought of Rajab Bursi and discusses its syllabic metre, including the five-plus-five pattern of ten-syllable lines. [4] This gives the poem an identifiable intellectual subject and literary form. Its value for Kurdish literary history lies in that writing and its manuscript transmission, which continue to generate new interpretations.

Sources and further reading

  1. D. N. MacKenzie, Gurāni, Encyclopaedia Iranica (2002; updated 2013); literary language, early poets and the reported date 801 AH.
  2. M. Dehqan, The Gôrânî Parîshân-nâma, Manuscripta Orientalia 17/1 (2011), public first-page preview; Tehran manuscript 529 and religious interpretation.
  3. Seyyed Arman Hosseini Abbariki, New Findings about Mulla Parishan’s Biography and Poetry, Journal of Kurdish Literature 7/1 (2021), 1–21, DOI 10.34785/j013.2021.485; journal’s public English abstract consulted.
  4. Shahab Vali, Eşq di Edebiyata Goranî/Hewramî de: Mînaka Perîşannameya Mela Perîşanê Dînewerî, Mukaddime 14, special issue 1 (2023), 127–147; manuscript evidence, love, reason and metre.