Wilhelm Baum. Schirin: Christin-Königin-Liebesmythos. Eine spätantike Frauengestalt - historische Realität und literarische Wirkung. Einführungen in das orientalische Christentum 3. Klagenfurt & Wien: kitab Verlag, 2003. ISBN 3-902005-14-9. € 25.00.
Cornelia B.
Horn
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2004
Vol. 7, No. 2
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https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv7n2prhorn
Cornelia B. Horn
Wilhelm Baum. Schirin: Christin-Königin-Liebesmythos. Eine spätantike Frauengestalt - historische Realität und literarische Wirkung. Einführungen in das orientalische Christentum 3. Klagenfurt & Wien: kitab Verlag, 2003. ISBN 3-902005-14-9. € 25.00.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol7/HV7N2PRHorn.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute,
vol 7
issue 2
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
Syriac Studies
Wilhem Baum
Shirin
Sassanid
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[1] In four
chapters of varying length and in just above one hundred pages,
the Austrian historian, theologian, and philosopher Wilhelm
Baum presents the first ever monographic study of the story of
Shirin, a fascinating tale of the life and love of an
influential Christian Persian queen at the end of Sassanid
rule. Baum, who recently co-authored a brief introduction to
the theology and history of the Apostolic Church of the East
together with Dietmar Winkler, also brings his formidable
knowledge of the Christian Church in Asia to bear on the
subject matter in this work.
[2] A story
situated at the intersection of erotic attraction, faithful
married love, and the exercise of political power, the life of
Shirin, Christian wife of the Persian king of kings Chosroe II
(590-628) kept the interest of writers, East and West, ancient
and modern. Baum traces precisely that interest and
distinguishes four periods in the reception history of
literature dealing with Shirin. A first period consists of
comments in Byzantine, Syrian, Armenian, and Frankish church
historians and chroniclers from the seventh through the ninth
century. Literary witnesses now only from within the Apostolic
Church of the East in the form of the eleventh-century
Chronicle of Seert and the twelfth-century biographies
of the patriarchs by the Syrian Mari ibn Suleiman constitute
the second period. Poets and artists discovered Shirin for the
Islamic world, increasingly leaving behind the religious and
political factors of her historical story, and instead seeing
in her the ideal of the (female) lover, who dedicated herself
wholeheartedly to her beloved, even beyond death. Realizations
of this level of reception history are to be found in
Firdausi's Persian national poem Shahname, the epic
Chosroe and Shirin of the twelfth-century Azerbaijani
poet Nizami, and the highly imaginative epic Ferhad and
Shirin by Ali Shir Navai, a 15th-century
Turkish poet. It is the Shirin of this third level, with a view
of Shirin as a remarkably attractive and committed lover, that
has circulated most widely; no wonder, since miniatures of
respective, sometimes explicit scenes of her (love) life
illustrated numerous manuscripts in Afghanistan, Persia,
throughout the Ottoman Empire, and India (see Baum,
Schirin, color plates III-VI and IX-XVI). The
Enlightenment with its growing interest in exotic stories from
the East also brought Shirin more fully to the attention of the
European audience. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's West-East
Divan received inspiration from the Orientalist Josef von
Hammer-Purgstall's Schirin, a work published in 1809
as a free paraphrase of excerpts of Persian and Arabic
poetry.
[3] The
first chapter of Baum's study offers a brief overview of
Christian history in Sassanid Persia, from the persecutions of
Christians at the time of the Zoroastrian Mobed Kartir around
A.D. 280, to the reign of the Islamic Caliph Ali (†
661), who is to be regarded as the cornerstone of Shi'ite
self-definition. In a style and manner that is accessible to
specialists and non-specialists alike, Baum presents the basic
data of the developments of post-Constantinian Christian
theology and hierarchy formation of the first ecumenical
councils, and identifies main differences between the Christian
Church within the Roman Empire and the Church in Persia,
customarily identified as the Apostolic Church of the East and
eventually headed by the metropolitan of the Persian capital,
Seleucia-Ctesiphon, as Catholicos.
[4]
According to tradition, apostolic succession in the Church of
the East is to be traced back to the Apostle Thomas as well as
to Addai and Mari, the former being one of Jesus' seventy
disciples, the latter being Addai's disciple. Not accepting any
ecumenical councils beyond Nicaea (A.D. 325) and Constantinople
I (A.D. 381), the Apostolic Church of the East also established
its complete independence from the Patriarchate of Antioch, and
thus from the Church of the Byzantine Empire, under Catholicos
Dadisho in 424.
[5] Being
accustomed to using the Syriac and Middle Persian languages in
their liturgies, East Syrian Christian scholars employed Syriac
as the key tool in the transmission history of Greek philosophy
to the new Arab rulers during early Islamic times. Having been
brutally persecuted under Shapur II (341-379), Christians
succeeded in acquiring positions of influence and prestige in
the Sassanid Empire from the fifth century on. King of Kings
Hormizd IV and Catholicos Ishoyahb I of Arzum (582-596)
supported each other's interests. Metropolitan Elias of Merv
may even have converted the Turkish Khan in the seventh
century. The East Syrian missionary monk Alopen brought
Christianity to the court of the Chinese Emperor in Xian in
635. At such a point in time of relative Christian strength and
influence, Shirin met and married Chosroe II.
[6] In the
Persian Empire Christianity never was the religion of the
majority. Rather, it functioned as one religion among many,
being influenced by and exercising influence upon others. Thus
Baum's discussion of potential parallels between Christianity
on the one hand and Zoroastrianism or Manichaeism on the other
is in place. The danger of any summary presentation of such a
topic is to formulate statements in too general or too
provocative a manner. A claim to the effect that Christianity's
adversity to sexuality is an inheritance from Manichaeism (p.
23) is an obvious case in point for the author's falling prey
to that danger. Given that Baum's interest in the present study
is not a general comparison of world religions, but rather the
investigation of a specific female figure, Shirin, his case
would have gained from highlighting more fully the details of
the cult of the goddess Anahit (pp. 21 and 44) in the early
Sassanid Empire. The reader is left to wonder if there might be
more of a connection between her and Shirin, beyond merely the
question of which of the two female figures' image is
represented on the reverse of one of Chosroe's coins.
[7] In
chapter two, by far the longest of the four, Baum carefully
weaves the fragments of historical information on Shirin into a
larger narrative on the couple, Chosroe II and Shirin, aided in
such an effort by the good fortune of having available an
incomparably larger resort of data on the husband and king of
kings than on the wife and queen (of queens). Having come to
power in the context of a revolt of general Bahram Cobin
against his father Hormizd IV, Chosroe II gained the throne in
590, not completely cleared of any doubts concerning his
potential involvement in his father's murder. Chosroe II is
reported to have spoken of himself as "being among the gods the
good and eternal human being, among humans the most respected
of gods, ..., the victorious one, who rises with the sun, ...
[who] would rule over the other worlds, if they existed." Yet
accompanied by two wives, children, and Persian nobles, Chosroe
had to take to flight in the face of his general's troops.
[8] Baum
notes that the wives who accompanied him are not identified by
name. According to Theophylact, who relied upon the historical
work of John of Epiphaneia, a personal acquaintance of Chosroe
II's, the women were still nursing their children when fleeing
to Hierapolis/Mabbug. Some ancient sources supply more details
concerning these wives. Firdausi claims that Chosroe had been
married to the east Syrian Christian Shirin already before his
flight to Byzantium. Pseudo-Sebeos mentions Khuzistan in
south-west Iran as her place of origin. The Syriac
Chronicle speaks of her as "Aramaean," a label used for
inhabitants of the Kufa region in northern Iraq. Later legend
turned her into a servant at the home of a Persian family with
whom Chosroe had visited regularly during his youth. For the
reader interested in the story's value for the reconstruction
of women's history, it is worth mentioning Baum's observation
that according to her early seventh-century Life,
Chosroe II met Saint Golanduch in Hierapolis during the latter
part of 590 or at the latest during the first few days of
591.
[9] While it
is unlikely that Chosroe II ever made it to the court of the
Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, Maurice nevertheless was
to decide to whom of the two Persian opponents he would lend
his support. Despite the smaller offers in the form of land and
money which Chosroe had to give, Maurice favored Chosroe, whom
he adopted as "son." Both parties needed and thus obtained
peace: Maurice in order to handle the pressure he experienced
from the Avars and Slavs from the North, and Chosroe to deal
with internal strife that had arisen in Persia.
[10] Baum
does not consider explicitly, whether the circumstance of
Chosroe's adoption into Maurice's royal family may have given
rise to the myth of Mary, a legendary daughter of Emperor
Maurice, supposedly becoming one of the wives in Chosroe's
harem. Extremely unlikely as the identification of Mary as a
daughter of the Byzantine emperor is, as Baum rightly points
out, it is possible that Chosroe may have had a Greek woman
named Mary among his concubines. The ancient sources explicitly
state that Chosroe's oldest son Shiroe (Kavad) was not the son
of Shirin. Rather, at Chosroe's deposition from his throne,
Shirin maneuvered to have her own son, Merdanshah, win the
throne. Thus it is not clear, as Baum remarks, whether Shirin
was Chosroe's concubine or already his wife on his flight to
Byzantium in 590.
[11]
Later Arabic commentators identified Mary with Shirin. Firdausi
seems to have invented the motif of Shirin poisoning Mary. One
notes that that motif thus is introduced 400 years after the
alleged event took place. Moreover, Chosroe most likely never
reached Constantinople, and thus a marriage to the emperor's
daughter would have been even less likely. With or without
giving his daughter into marriage to Chosroe, Maurice supported
his subsequent military campaign against Bahram. Having brought
his wives to Sanjar for their protection, Chosroe and his loyal
generals fought and won the battle.
[12] The
oldest extant document regarding the history of Shirin is a
letter written by Chosroe in 591 to the sanctuary of the martyr
Sergius of Resafa in Syria. The letter is preserved in Evagrius
Scholasticus's Church History. It does not mention
Shirin, but witnesses to Chosroe's gift of two golden crosses
to the sanctuary in honor of the martyr. Between 591 and 593
Chosroe sent several sets of crosses, golden plates, and money
for liturgical vessels to St. Sergius's martyrion. It
was also during this time that he married the Christian girl
Shirin, against the laws of his own country, but out of great
love for her, as Chosroe himself had stated on an inscription
on one of the golden plates. Shirin became queen of queens.
Some of the gifts to St. Sergius's sanctuary were votive
offerings, requesting that Shirin might become pregnant through
the saint's intercession. Her first child, probably a girl,
seems to have been born before the turn of 593/594. It is to
about that time that the coins referred to above are to be
dated that show Chosroe's image, crowned and with the crescent,
on the recto. The verso shows a woman's head, interpreted
either as Shirin's image or that of the goddess Anahit.
[13] The
royal couple exercised influence upon the affairs of the
Apostolic Church of the East. After the death of Catholics
Ishoyahb I in 596 A.D., the bishops elected the monk Sabrisho,
bishop of Lasum and a favorite of Shirin's and Chosroe's, as
new Catholicos. The bishops seem to have met for the election
in a synod, held in Shirin's palace, and it was her vote that
decided in favor of Sabrisho. One day after the election, and
at the occasion of a visit between Chosroe and the new
Catholicos, the King of Kings is reported to have received the
Eucharist from Sabrisho's hands.
[14] As
Catholicos, Sabrisho continued to live the strict ascetic life
he had become accustomed to. His high standing at Chosroe's
court clearly benefited his Church. Sabrisho frequently visited
Shirin's palace, also because he was her spiritual father. At
those occasions he met Chosroe quite regularly. Yet against the
catholicos's explicit instructions, Shirin suggested
individuals, who practiced polygamy, for public offices under
Chosroe. On the other hand, Shirin supported Sabrisho's efforts
at building monasteries in 598, including one in Ctesiphon that
was to be named after her. Chosroe appears to have financed the
building of churches for his wife's sake, especially three
churches dedicated respectively to the Virgin Mary, to the
Apostles, and to the Martyr Sergius.
[15] At
the death of Catholicos Sabrisho in 604, Shirin again
influenced the election of the new catholicos, Gregory of
Phrat, a man who came from Khuzistan, Shirin's likely place of
origin. This time, Shirin succeeded with her chosen candidate
even against Chosroe's will and again against the will of all
the bishops. Shirin rejected the majority candidate because of
his outspoken opposition to the bigamy of her physician Gabriel
of Singar. Under Gabriel's influence Shirin turned to the
West-Syrian Church, i.e., that branch of the Syrian Church
which had refrained from accepting the Council of Chalcedon
(451 A.D.). Her monastic foundation in Ctesiphon followed her
example. Subsequent to 609, the West Syrian Church appears to
have enjoyed increased favor with the Persian government.
[16]
Chosroe's support of the so-called "Synod of the Persians"
reflects attempts on the part of the king of kings to create a
unified Christian Church in his new, significantly enlarged
empire. Shirin's and her physician Gabriel's influence led to
disputes between members of the West-Syrian and East-Syrian
Church. Shirin's growing distance from the Church of the East
can be measured in Chosroe's refusal to appoint any new
Catholicos for the Church of the East until they would agree to
reject the teachings of Nestorius.
[17]
Shirin and Chosroe's turn to the West-Syrian Church also
facilitated the collaboration of Armenia with Persia. Under
Chosroe's rule, Christians seem to have been able to live in
Armenia without restriction on the practice of their faith.
Shirin's change of religious allegiance is also reflected in
the documentation of her influence in ecclesiastical sources.
Texts by authors of the Apostolic Church of the East no longer
mentioned the name of the queen, who formerly had extended her
patronage to them. Anti-Chalcedonian authors, however, like the
Armenian Pseudo-Sebeos, speak of her as the "pious queen." In
the end, Shirin, who had originated from the Apostolic Church
of the East, was to conclude her life as an adherent of the
West-Syrian Church. Long before that, after the Persian
conquest of Jerusalem in May 614, the relic of the True Cross
was brought to Ctesiphon and there was handed over into
Shirin's hands, who seems to have treated it with utmost
respect and veneration.
[18]
Towards the end of Chosroe's reign, a certain estrangement
seems to have developed between Chosroe and the West-Syrian
Church. During the last few years of Chosroe's reign,
Christians like Anastasius the Persian suffered martyrdom. This
circumstance also reflects a wider Christian opposition to
Chosroe at the time. All in all, the Christians seemed to have
welcomed his downfall in the end. The end dawned when Chosroe's
attack against Constantinople was unsuccessful. Baum refers to
the customary dating of the first singing of the famous
Akathistos Hymn at the initiative of Patriarch Sergius of
Constantinople in 626 in celebration of the protection of the
city against the Persians. A recent study of this hymn (Leena
Mari Peltomaa, The Image of the Virgin Mary in the
Akathistos Hymn, The Medieval Mediterranean 35 [Brill
Academic Publishers, 2001]) which situates its origins in the
immediate aftermath of the Council of Ephesus (431 A.D.), would
have to be taken into account.
[19] The
sources which provide plenty of information regarding military
activities between the Byzantine and Persian rulers, do not
report any further details about Shirin or her involvement in
state and church affairs for the time in between her reception
of the True Cross in 614 and the final military campaign of
Emperor Herakleios against Chosroe in 628. She reappears only
at the moment when Herakleios approached Ctesiphon and Chosroe
attempted to find protection for his wife and their three
daughters. Yet at that occasion, Shirin also did not manage to
have her son Merdanshah appointed as his father's successor.
Rather, Chosroe's older son Kavad, upon Herakleios's command,
murdered his half-brothers in front of his father's eyes and
eventually also his father on February 28, 628. As new King of
Kings, Kavad re-established support for the interests of the
Apostolic Church of the East, yet not for long. He died that
same year.
[20]
Eventually, one of Chosroe's daughters, Boran, took over the
rule. Some sources speculate that Shirin may have poisoned
Kavad in revenge for his murder of her son Merdanshah. One
notices with Baum that sources from authors of the Apostolic
Church of the East speculate about Shirin as someone who quite
frequently used deadly potions to rid herself of enemies. Given
her turn to the West-Syrian, anti-Chalcedonian Church, authors
from her former East Syrian Church community no longer showed
any sympathies for her. Other ancient authors thought that
after Chosroe's death Shirin might have been motivated to
commit suicide to avoid having to join Kavad's harem. Persian
and Arabic writers later on were to pick up this motif. The
True Cross, which had been under Shirin's guardianship,
returned to Jerusalem in 630 or 631, and then, sometime between
633 and 635, was brought to Constantinople.
[21]
Sources contemporary to Shirin's own time do not inform about
her death. The Persian expanded translation of at-Tabari's
historical work is the first to introduce the motif of a love
relationship between Shirin and Ferhad, supposedly one of
Chosroe's architects. The only source on Shirin's death is
Firdausi's Shahname, information from which is less
reliable insofar as it cannot be tested against other texts, as
Baum notes. According to this Persian national epic, Shirin
committed suicide directly at Chosroe's tomb.
[22]
European chronicles and romances developed individual ones of
the figures connected with the Shirin-material in the course of
the first half of the second millennium. The Persian king
Chosroe's bloody death was presented as a punishment for his
rejection of Christianity. The Byzantine Emperor Herakleios
turned into the archetype of the Christian ruler and crusader.
Shirin disappeared and crusader. Shirin disappeared Islamic
lore. Here Shirin's myth was developed by authors who
emphasized her as the archetype of pure love, while any
Christian traces of her character were completely omitted.
Motivated by anti-Iranian elements, early Islamic literature
also saw in Chosroe the prototype of the unjust king.
[23] In
chapter three, Baum treats this later reception history of the
Shirin myth in literature and the arts, both of the East and of
the West. Christian authors almost completely forgot about
Shirin. The last one to mention her name was the East Syrian
church historian Amr ibn Matta in the 14th century.
Islamic works, however, began to develop Shirin's story already
one hundred years after her death. Geographers described Kasr-i
Shirin, the palace near Bisotun, Iran, attributed to her. Love
poetry on the walls of this palace appears to have survived for
at least three centuries after Shirin's death. Early reliefs,
depicting scenes with Chosroe's horse Shabdiz, may also picture
Shirin, yet merely in a subordinate role. It is worthy of note
that again here, as on Chosroe's coins mentioned above, Shirin
and the goddess Anahit seem to melt into one.
[24] It
is in the work of the Persian author Abu Ali Muham(m)ad Balami,
who in the tenth century adapted at-Tabari's annals into
Persian, that one finds the beginnings of the story of the love
relationship between Chosroe's legendary architect Ferhad and
Shirin. Nizami's Chosroe and Shirin clearly developed
that part of the story as an etiology that fit the rock relief
of Taq-i Bustan in Kermanshah, Iran. Frankish accounts from the
seventh century, which turned Shirin into a queen who begged
Patriarch John of Constantinople to baptize her and who made
her return to her husband dependent upon his conversion to the
Christian faith and baptism, likely reflect reminiscences of
the Frankish King Clovis's baptism and the role of his
Christian wife, Clothilde.
[25]
Middle Persian literature at the turn of the millennium,
especially Firdausi's Shahname, dealt with Shirin,
without mentioning her affiliation with the Apostolic Church of
the East, while otherwise adhering quite closely to the
historical facts. Firdausi did not have any interest in Shirin
as such, but rather wanted to write a history of Persia. Thus
he felt free to treat her merely as a minor figure at the
margins.
[26] The
Shahname and Nizami's Chosroe and Shirin
became the main sources for all later renditions of the
Shirin-material in the Middle and Far East. Miniature paintings
of individual scenes in manuscripts contributed significantly
to the spread of Shirin's story. Also, the great popularity of
Nizami's rendering in the twelfth century aided the wide
dissemination of the material. Vizier Nezam al-Molk (died in
1092) thought that Chosroe II's excessive sexual contact with
other women in his harem might have driven Shirin into Ferhad's
arms. Yet Nizami, who used parts of al-Molk's works,
reinterpreted the Shirin-myth into an archetypal
love-story.
[27]
Despite the wide popularity of Shirin's story, during the 1001
nights when Shehrazas told her many tales to the king, only
once did she include a story about Shirin: that of Chosroe,
Shirin, and the fisherman, narrated during the 390th
night. Moreover, that tale portrayed Shirin in an unfavourable
light, as a stingy wife whose advice a husband should never
follow. One may ascribe such a poor treatment to the wider
neglect of Persian stories in the work, as Baum explains. Yet a
reader is also left to wonder, whether other selection
criteria, perhaps a motive of envy between female figures or a
reflection of the attitudes of some male members of the
audience who desired not only to be entertained by pleasing
love stories, but also wished their chauvinistic sense of
superiority to be cultivated, may have played a role. A
specialist's gender-focused investigation of this world-famous
collection of tales might bring some clarification to this
question.
[28]
Nizami's Chosroe and Shirin was one of the most widely
read works of medieval Islamic literature. Completed around
1200, this verse epic incorporated at-Tabari's and Firdausi's
works and folk traditions about Shirin. In it, Nizami also
projected features of his first wife, Apak, who died at a young
age, onto the figure of Shirin. Nizami, it is worthy of note,
presented Shirin as a Christian. In his work, moreover, Shirin
is the niece of an Armenian queen named Mahin Banu. Her aunt
warned the young girl of Chosroe's excessive sexual appetite,
for the satiation of which he kept a harem of 10,000 women.
Thus Shirin heeded to her aunt's advice and insisted upon
marriage when Chosroe pursued her. The wedding, however, only
took place after escapades on Chosroe's part, including one
with the girl Shakkar ("Sugar") in Isfahan, Iran. Chosroe's
son, Shiroe, desiring to marry Shirin as well, murdered his
father and Shirin committed suicide, while bending herself over
Chosroe's corpse. Nizami concluded his poem on a proselytising
motif, telling of a dream appearance of Muhammed to Chosroe in
which the prophet advised the king to convert to Islam.
[29] As
the Muslims expanded into Northern India, Shirin's story
travelled along with them as part of Persian culture being
cultivated at the ruler's court. Amir Chosroe Dihlavi retold
the story, based on Nizami, but modified details. The architect
Ferhad, who became an integral part of the narrative, was
introduced as a son of the emperor of China. Chosroe was killed
in a revolt at his palace and Shirin, again, committed suicide.
Nizami, however, had had both Chosroe and Shirin die in
prison.
[30] In
the course of the 14th century, Nizami's work found
reception also among the Turks, whose upper classes used the
Persian language in Asia Minor. Nizami's work was translated
several times into Turkish, with some translations adapting the
story to motifs of Turkish popular poetry. Individual
translators, like Fahreddin Yakub ben Muhammed, called Fahri,
expanded Nizami's work by incorporating significant portions of
Firdausi's Shahname, without always integrating the
narrative and smoothly adjusting transitions. The translator
Sinaneddin Yusuf, known as Seyhi, shortened Nizami's
Vorlage in places and polished his integration of
material from the Shahname more appropriately. His was
a widely read translation.
[31] The
reception history of the Shirin-material in the
Turkish-speaking realm evinces its own contributions. Ali Shir
Navai, who died in 1501, worked out a new recension of the myth
in 1483/85, entitled Ferhad and Shirin, in which now
Ferhad holds center stage. Again Ferhad is introduced as the
son of the Chinese emperor and Shirin is the niece of the
Armenian queen, yet newly introduced additional motives include
a journey to Greece with a visit to Socrates, a miraculous
mirror, love between Ferhad and Shirin that renders both
unconscious, love letters between the two, Shirin's death now
next to Ferhad's corpse, and two hermits spending their lives
next to the tomb of the two tragic lovers. Ali Shir Navai thus
created the prototype of a love story which remained popular
into the twentieth century in Usbekistan, and in translation
even among speakers of Russian.
[32]
Towards the end of the Middle Ages and under the successors of
Tamerlane the city of Herat turned into a center of new
versions of the myth surrounding Shirin both in literature and
the arts. After 1506, the center of the Shirin reception
definitively moved to India. Among some poets, the contours of
the figures of the Shirin story dissolved and Shirin at times
existed merely as a lyric expression, representing the
archetype of love in words, and nothing else.
[33] The
Shirin-motif eventually also found entrance into Turkish shadow
plays and reentered Christian literature in Georgia, e.g., in
the form of the Khosrovshiriniani, a popular Georgian
version of Amir Chosroe Dihlavi's Shirin and Chosroe.
Nizami's work finally came to the attention of the European
audience in 1697 in Paris.
[34]
Concluding his work in chapter four, Baum discusses the details
of the rediscovery of the Shirin-motif at the hands of the
Austrian Orientalist Josef von Hammer-Purgstall and its
influence on German literature, especially on Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe. At the end of the 18th century,
Hammer-Purgstall composed a version of Shirin's story and
published early excerpts of it in the journal "Neuer Teutscher
Merkur." Although the publication of his verse recreations of
oriental poetry in book-format was delayed for years,
Hammer-Purgstall is to be credited with having mediated to the
West one of the Orient's most famous love stories. Goethe
studied his writings with great interest. For him, Shirin was
what he called a "Musterbild" (i.e., ideal) of love. Baum
comments that C. G. Jung was to call that type of figure
"archetype" later on.
[35] Even
in the course of the twentieth century, the Shirin motif is
reworked in the arts, including a film-script for "The Shah of
Iran and the Banu of Armenia" by the Iranian author Debih
Behruz; the theater play "Ferhad and Shirin" by the Turkish
poet Nazim Hikmet, written in 1947 and performed in Berlin in
1983; and the orchestra performance of "Songs of Shirin" by the
composer Gerhard Müller-Hornbach (Frankfurt a. M.,
1982).
[36] Baum
is to be applauded for his work which brings to light the
fullest account of details of the life of an Eastern Christian
woman, who in the sources is at times named as an individual,
and who at other times remains merely an unnamed marginal
figure. Modern scholarship in related disciplines has shown the
great value that a more careful reading of the sources such as
Baum's can have, especially when it pays attention to both
named and unnamed women. Recent works in the field of biblical
studies (e.g., Carol Meyers, Toni Craven, and Ross Kraemer,
eds., Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed
Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical
Books, and the New Testament [Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 2001]; or several of the publications by Irmtraud
Fischer, a Biblical scholar from Austria) document and
illustrate the vast amount of data that thus is to be gained
even from foundational, widely studied texts. Baum's work
contributes towards the goal of bringing such concerns to bear
fruit also in the composition of scholarly works in eastern
Church History. He contributes significantly to this larger
project, certainly with regard to Shirin, the main topic of the
study. Whether or not Baum also pursued the goal of
contributing to the reconstruction of women's history in a way
that goes beyond his concern for Shirin is a different
question.
[37] At
times, the reader is startled when she notices that Baum
constructs his historical narrative unnecessarily by reference
primarily to male participants and that he identifies women by
reference to their relationships to male partners or relatives,
both in instances where the historical names of such women is
known and even where the woman in question clearly is the
active subject of the sentence (e.g., p. 26). Attention to such
details of composition also on the level of Baum's own
narrative might have helped to tone down the impression that
remains rather prominent in the reader's mind after having
finished the book, namely that Shirin is merely a thinner layer
onto the life of Chosroe II. The book does not intend to be a
biography of Chosroe II, a work which as Baum rightly notes (p.
10) is still missing. Whoever will undertake such a project in
the future will do well to take Baum's study into account. Yet
while reading chapters one and two, one wonders if a title that
referenced the couple, and not only Shirin, might have been
more appropriate.
[38]
Chapters three and four refocus the reader's attention
significantly. By way of short summaries of the main points of
content of individual authors' treatment of the Shirin
material, Baum manages to have Shirin's name appear more
frequently on the page. Thus she is allowed to claim more space
in the imagination of the reader, certainly helped by the
reader being able to view depictions of her on color plates
almost right at the beginning of chapter three. Thus, in the
end for the reader the balance is tipped again in favor of
seeing the book as one that treats indeed Shirin and her story,
and the reader goes away with a sense of gratitude to Baum for
having brought her back to life.
[39]
Especially in the first two chapters of the work where it is
most relevant, Baum shows a welcome sensitivity to ecumenical
concerns regarding the use of accurate language when speaking
of the various eastern Christian churches. Employing quotation
marks, he often indicates that terms like "Monophysites"
("Monophysiten") or "Nestorians" ("Nestorianer") originated in
and reflect a polemical context and do not represent the
self-understanding of the respective Christian Churches
themselves. Yet his awareness of the problem does not lead him
to draw the full consequence of that insight and discontinue
completely the use of such terms, even if especially marked, in
his text. Also the application of the term "orthodox"
exclusively to members of the Byzantine Orthodox Church
requires a justification, which the volume does not supply.
[40] In
addition to text and endnotes, the volume offers a
chronological table, covering events between 531 (beginning of
the rule of Chosroe I) to 651 (death of Yezdegerd III, the last
Persian King of Kings); a list of references to 93 manuscripts
and individual pages containing illustrations with scenes from
Shirin's life with very helpful identifications of the content
of the scene that is being depicted; a list of additional
manuscripts of the relevant works of Nizami, Firdausi, Amir
Chosroe Dihlavi, Ali Shir Navai, Fahreddin Yakub ben Muhammed
(or "Mehmed"), and Seyhi Yusuf Sinan that apparently do not
contain illustrations of Shirin-scenes; a bibliography of
primary and secondary literature; a postscript; a map; as well
as an incomplete list of people mentioned in the book (e.g.,
Gregory of Phart is not listed), with subsets of lists of
Catholicoi of the East, Popes, Persian Kings of Kings, and
Roman and Byzantine emperors.
[41] The
publisher, kitab Verlag, has produced a well-illustrated
volume. The color reproductions of two pages of Byzantine and
Persian coins, one photo of the Taq-i Bustan rock relief, and
13 plates of miniature paintings, taken from manuscripts now
preserved in London, Berlin, Washington D.C., and Istanbul,
greatly enrich the presentation. Greater accuracy in
proofreading the volume (e.g., p. 10, l. 7: read "Matenadaran"
instead of "Matandaran"; p. 31, last paragraph, first line:
read "Bahram" instead of "Chosrau"; p. 32, line 5: read
"bessere" instead of "besseren"; p. 46, line 6 from the bottom:
pronoun "ihn" is missing before "nicht"; p. 52, line 18: read
"Babai" instead of "Baibai"; p. 54, l. 30: read "Pseudo"
instead of "Pseuo"; p. 58, line 31: read "Gefangene" instead of
"Gefallenen": p. 61, ll. 15-16: read either "hatte er zur
Kenntnis zu nehmen" or "hatte er zur Kenntnis genommen"; p. 65,
l. 11: read "Hymnos" instead of "Hymos"; p. 68, l. 5; read
"zugesagt zu haben" instead of "zugesagt haben"; p. 72, l. 7
from the bottom: read "Exaltatio Sancti Crucis" instead of
"Exaltati Sanctio Crucis"; p. 78, last line: read "Cobin"
instead of "Cobila"; p. 83, l. 9: read "Bilder" instead of
"Bildder"; p. 85, line 5 from the bottom: drop the first "der";
p. 89, l. 4: read "Handlung" instead of "Handlungs"; pp. 86,
89, and 90: a unified transliteration ["Hamse" vs. "Khamsa"]
would be desirable for the benefit of non-specialist readers to
whom this book seems to be pitched in the first place; p. 90,
l. 7 from the bottom: read "Dichter" instead of "Maler";
unified transliteration of foreign names throughout is
desirable, e.g., either "Dihlawi" [e.g., prior to p. 100, as
well as in the "Personenregister"] or "Dihlavi" [e.g., on p.
100 and in ch. 4]) would have been worth the effort.
[42]
Despite the usual scarcity of information available on women in
general and Christian women in particular in late antique and
early Islamic times, and furthermore significantly impeded by
the tremendous loss of source material on Christians in the
East, especially here because of the near extinction of the
records of the Church of the East, Wilhelm Baum has succeeded
in drawing a richly nuanced picture of an impressive and
influential woman, who through her position at the court,
dedicated love to her husband, Christian commitment, and
certainly also through her beauty has influenced affairs in
historic times, inspired writers throughout the centuries, and
moved audiences both in the East and in the West. The lightly
annotated volume will be of interest to students and scholars
in the fields of Oriental Studies, the reception history of
Oriental literature, Religious Studies, Byzantine Studies,
Eastern Church History, Women's Studies, and several other
disciplines, including studies in German literature. The wider
accessibility of the work in English translation (published
recently as Wilhelm Baum, Shirin: Christian-Queen-Myth of
Love. A Woman of Late Antiquity: Historical Reality and
Literary Effect [Gorgias Press, 2004], which could not be
consulted for this review) might even allow one to consider the
book for supplementary reading in advanced undergraduate or
graduate courses.