Judeo-Persian Elegies on the Death of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh (r. 1848–1896)

Abstract

Judeo-Persian manuscripts include many surprising and hitherto unstudied texts. Among them are a number of anonymous elegies on the death of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh (r. 1848–1896). This study focuses on the question of their authorship. Based on internal evidence, these poems, replete with textual problems and variants probably caused by oral transmission, were most likely penned by Muslim writers and copied into Judeo-Persian by Jews. For despite this monarch’s uneven and ineffective protection of Iran’s Jewish minority during his reign, some Jews had obviously been deeply moved by his assassination to the point of copying dirges likely in circulation after the Shāh’s death.