Cosmopolitanism, Poetry, and Kingship: The Ideal Ruler in Sanāʾī’s (d. 1131 or 1135 CE) Poetry

This dissertation examines the vision of ideal rulership expressed in the works of the court poet Sanāʾī (d. 1131 or 1135) by highlighting the dialogue of his works with various genres of medieval literature: Sunni and Shiʿite metaphysics, mystical writings, mirrors for princes, pious maqāmāt, and court poetry. This dissertation highlights how the politicization of Islamic mysticism that occurred during the eleventh and twelfth centuries was manifested in that era’s court poetry. In doing so, it calls for scholarly attention to the intersection of Islamic mysticism and political theory in court-patronized works composed by non-Sufi authors.This dissertation investigates Sanāʾī’s engagement with the literary and intellectual milieu of his time through the lens of his portrayal of an ideal ruler. This engagement, first, informs Sanāʾī’s interdisciplinary approach to Islamic theories of governance; second, it enables him to cross-fertilize the substance, language, and rhetorical features of other literary genres with Persian court poetry; third, it defines the politics of his poetry. After contextualizing Sanāʾī in his literary and intellectual milieu, this dissertation will analyze his Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqah (‘The Garden of Truth’), the Sayr al-ʿibād (‘The Journey of [God’s] Servants’), and poems from his Dīvān (‘Collection of Poems’). It argues that Sanāʾī’s poetry had two roles: it served as propaganda for his patron, the Ghaznavid ruler Bahrāmshāh (r. 1117-1157) and was used by Sanāʾī as a podium from which he promoted himself as a sage-poet endowed with knowledge of the divine. This analysis leads to a discussion of the nature of knowledge and the two foundations of perfect kingship in Sanāʾī’s poetry, intellect and justice. It argues that the metaphysical framework of Sanāʾī’s works binds the political and the mystical aspects of his poems together. Through a description of the soul’s journey to God Sanāʾī explains that drawing near God, experiencing divine love, and becoming a valī (in its mystical sense) is a prerequisite for being a perfect ruler. This mystical theory of rulership recurs in later political texts and plays a significant role in shaping Perso-Islamic political ethics during the twelfth through sixteenth centuries.

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