Hagiography is the literary genre of biographies about holy people. In Islamic Persia, hagiography developed as a genre during the eleventh century CE, in KhurÃÂsÃÂn, a region from which many eastern á¹¢à «fës came. It tended to focus on Sà «fë saints. The tradition declined around the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries CE, but was revived in the nineteenth and still exists today online.
Hagiography in Persian can be seen as going back to biographical writings about Zarathushtra. During the fifth to twelfth centuries CE, a corpus of pious tales about Zarathushtra, joined with relevant parts of the Gathas, was developed. This material formed the basis for the surviving hagiographical material on Zarathustra, which is found in Middle Persian or Pahlavi texts including the DÃÂnkard and the Wizidagiha, and in New Persian texts including the Zaratosht-nama and the Shahnameh.
Using and developing the historiographical methods of the muḥaddithà «n (scholars of the sayings and history of the Prophet), Persian scholars drew on oral tradition and their own observations to write about holy figures. However, many hagiographies also drew on earlier written sources, often adapting those sources to reflect the writers' own view of sainthood. For example, in the twelfth century CE, Muḥammad ibn Munavvar drew on and added to JamÃÂl al-Dën Abà « Rawḥ Luá¹ÂfallÃÂh's ḤÃÂlÃÂt-u sukhanÃÂn-i Shaykh Abà « Saÿëd Abà « l-Khayr to create his own AsrÃÂr al-tawḥid fë maqÃÂmÃÂt al-Shaykh Abà « Saÿëd (âÂÂSecrets of oneness in the spiritual stages of Shaykh Abà « SaÿëdâÂÂ). In doing so, he focused on mystical joys and blessed states.
Traditionally, Islamic scholarship has read Persian saints' lives fairly uncritically as biographical sources for real historical events. More recent work, partly inspired by Western scholarship on medieval Christian hagiography, however, has moved away from seeing hagiographies as repositories of facts, in favour of seeing them as literary creations reflecting the aesthetic, theological, and political agendas of their composers.
Key early works of Persian hagiography included:
Important later Persian hagiographers included:
Production of hagiographies declined during the Safavid period (1501âÂÂ1722) due to their anti-Sà «fë policies. But the dynasties of the Zand (1751âÂÂ51) and Qajar (1779âÂÂ1925) oversaw the partial revival of Sà «fë orders and, correspondingly, hagiography. One example is Abà « l-QÃÂsim RÃÂz ShërÃÂzë's nineteenth-century Tadhkirat al-awliyÃÂ. In the twenty-first century, hagiography continues to be produced and circulated on the Internet, particularly among Baluch or Kurdish Sunnë minorities
The classic hagiographical collection in Persian scholarship, ranging in its subject matter from the Balkans to Central Asia, was Tadhkirat al-awliyÃÂþ (âÂÂBiographies of the saintsâÂÂ), composed by ÿAá¹Âá¹ÂÃÂr (d. 618/1221).
Later, JÃÂmë (d. 898/1492) created a compendium containing 618 biographies, ranging across the Sà «fë traditions: NafaḥÃÂt al-uns (âÂÂBreaths of intimacyâÂÂ).
Muḥammad Samarqandë compiled Tadhkira-yi mazëd (âÂÂThe great collection of biographiesâÂÂ) around the early sixteenth century CE. Although this is now lost, it is widely quoted in other sources, indicating its once influential status.