Stylistically, it sought to express love and the lover in ‘a simple unvarnished poetry, absent of flowery language and hyperbole’. The style situates the topics of love, lovers and amorous relationships in more earthly, rather than ethereal, contexts.
In this regard, poets sought to portray the relationships between ‘all-too-human lovers’ and their ‘mood swings, tantrums, evasions and elations’. Shams-Langarudi aptly refers to the style as the ‘bazaarisation’ of the ʿIraqi style.
In Safavid Isfahan it became a favoured style of the urban classes of poets populating the coffee houses. The recognition that some poets of Safavid Isfahan were producing a simpler poetic style, by imitating classical masters like Saʿdi and Hafez, should give pause to the argument that the ‘literary return’ movement suddenly arose in post-Safavid times.
The argument that the ‘literary return’ movement emerged with a newfound laser focus on imitating the stylistics of the ‘masters’ is further undercut by the diverse forms of poetry produced by its early members, including many participants of Seyyed Ali Mushtaq Isfahani’s literary society. Beyond producing lyrics and odes in imitation of classical styles, they offered praise for religious figures and rulers as well as poetry in commemoration of architectural achievements.
Mushtaq’s oeuvre contains odes for various rulers during the Afsharid period (including Nadir Shah), poems on the occasion of a ruler’s coronation, elegies for historical figures, works in commemoration of victories in Qandahar and India and the history of architectural works. Other early ‘literary return’ poets composed equally diverse types of verse.
This variation in their poetry points to a literary circle in its infancy still searching for its footing, rather than one invariably wedded to a particular poetic form and style. As Matthew Smith has recently shown, early ‘return’ poets like Azar, Hatif and Sabahi could equally ‘draw inspiration from forms and genres popularized under the Safavids and Mughals … rather than from the earlier poets whom they are accused of imitating’.
Isfahan may have been severely destroyed and ravaged in the early to-mid eighteenth century, but it was by no means forgotten. In keeping with Isfahan’s literary centrality during Safavid times, members of the early Isfahani Circle flocked from elsewhere to partake in its literary life.
Azar made his way back to Isfahan, the place of his birth, after much travel around the country. The poet and calligrapher ʿAbd al-Majid Darvish, another member of this early cohort, came to Isfahan from nearby in search of science and learning.
Moreover, he most certainly arrived in Isfahan prior to the establishment of Karim Khan Zand’s rule. Even during this difficult period in the early-to-mid eighteenth century, poets made their way to Isfahan, once again reaffirming that the city maintained its identity as a cultural centre.
Although political conditions changed after the fall of Isfahan, the makeup of the early ‘literary return’ movement as expressed through Mushtaq’s literary society and the larger Isfahani Circle displayed many social and poetic continuities with the late Safavid period. Contrary to later impressions of how and why the ‘literary return’ movement emerged, it was neither disconnected from earlier poetic trends of Safavid Isfahan nor wedded to one particular style of poetry.
The above is a lightly edited version of part of a chapter, ‘Reformation and Reconstruction of Poetic Networks: Isfahan c.1722–1801’, from a book entitled, ‘Remapping Persian Literary History, 1700-1900’, written by Kevin L. Schwartz, published by Edinburgh University Press.