Equal of the Sun (61 page)
While Jalileh labored to master palace protocol, my work continued at the scribes’ office in a routine fashion until one morning, I overheard a court historian explaining to his young assistant how they would undertake the work of writing the history of Isma‘il Shah’s short reign. He told the assistant to deputize a few men to collect details from his closest advisors about his efforts to deal with national and international problems, as well as to interview other nobles about his patronage of mosques and of the arts. The assistant would organize the material and provide it to his master, who would write the official history.
Once those details had been settled, the assistant lowered his voice.
“What are you going to write about that sister of his?” he asked the historian in a near whisper.
“You mean the one who poisoned him?” the graybeard replied.
“I thought he was poisoned by the qizilbash.” The young man had an offensively bright red mouth and tongue.
“Who knows? The harem is a mystery. There is no way to be certain about what goes on in there.”
“Of course there is,” I said so loudly that the men looked up from their pages. “Why don’t you ask the eunuchs who work there every day?”
“Why bother? The women hardly do anything at all,” said the young man.
I stood up. “Are you a fool? Pari Khan Khanoom did more in a day than you do in a year. Compared to her, you are like an old mule.”
The graybeard looked at me as if I were mad. “Calm down!” he said. “We are only going to write a few pages about her anyway.”
“Then you will be missing one of the most arresting stories of our age.”
“You think that way because you served her,” said the young man dismissively.
Memories of Pari appeared so suddenly that they seemed more real than the men in front of me: her challenges on the first day I had met her, the gleam in her eyes as she dropped the peacock bowl, the ringing sound of her voice when she declaimed the poem that silenced Mirza Shokhrollah, the fearless way she had begged Isma‘il for clemency for the condemned, the strength of her hands against my back pushing me out of the palanquin. I missed her with all my heart. Her great flaws—obstinacy, arrogance, and fervor—had also been her strengths. Why didn’t the historians care enough to find out?
“Illiterate!” I said to the young man. “Don’t you imagine you have a duty to the truth?”
He shrugged. Rasheed Khan motioned the young scribe to the other side of the room and told him to get on with his work. From there the scribe glared at me but kept quiet. I realized that not only would the court historians fail to write enough about Pari, but they would not bring her story to life. How could they? They had never breached the royal harem. The women’s daily affairs, political efforts,
passions, eccentricities, and quarrels would rarely be charted, and if they were, they would be misinterpreted and misunderstood. Worse yet, Mohammad Shah’s court would no doubt portray the princess as a monster to justify her murder.
Then and there I decided I must write Pari’s life story, under cover of responding to court letters. Not only would I tell the truth of events, but I would beat away misconceptions and help her live for all time. That was the least that she was owed.
As the only chronicler who served her closely enough to breathe in her perfume, I knew better than anyone that the princess was not a flawless gem. I never wished to pretend otherwise, in the way that our historians often try to justify the irregular behaviors of our shahs. I knew only too well about Pari’s arrogance, her refusal to compromise, and her temper, but I also understood that her magisterial nature stemmed from the fact that she was more learned and better trained in statecraft than most men. She was right to wish to rule; only the greed and fear of others prevented her from achieving the greatness she deserved.
I began work on my prologue that very afternoon, after most of the scribes had gone home for their afternoon tea. When it became too dark to see, I concealed my pages carefully in a dusty corner of the library. I realized that I had finally begun fulfilling the fate predicted by my astrological chart. My presence at court was ordained so that I could tell the true story of Pari Khan Khanoom, the lieutenant of my life, the khan of angels, the equal of the sun.
P
ari Khan Khanoom lived from 1548 to 1578. Several contemporary court historians suspected her of poisoning her half brother, Isma‘il Shah, although other theories proposed that he overdosed on drugs or was poisoned by a group of nobles who were disaffected with his rule. A few months after he died, Pari was assassinated by order of her half brother Mohammad Shah and his wife, Mahd-e-Olya.
After Pari’s death, Mahd-e-Olya was the de facto ruler of Iran for about a year and a half, until the qizilbash nobles tired of her command and assassinated her. The grand vizier Mirza Salman, ever adept at judging shifts in the wind, changed allegiance just before the nobles decided to remove her. A few years later, he was assassinated in his turn by the qizilbash, who resented his power. Strife raged for years to come as tribal groups struggled to dominate one another.
During Pari’s short life, one of the most powerful empires on earth was that of the Ottomans. Under Suleyman the Magnificent, the Ottomans had conquered territory all the way west to Hungary and had fought frequent battles with Iran and other neighbors on their eastern borders. In 1555, Pari’s father, Tahmasb Shah, brokered the Peace of Amasya, a treaty in which the two powers divided up disputed territories and the Ottomans recognized Safavi Iran for the first time. My novel posits that Pari would have worked tirelessly to maintain this treaty, although I found no specific evidence for this in the sources I used. Not long after Pari’s death, the Ottomans
invaded Iran and hostilities resumed again, with devastating consequences including loss of Iranian territory.
The Safavi dynasty ruled from 1501–1722. The founder of the dynasty, Isma‘il I, declared Shi’a Islam the official religion of Iran, with the result that Iran is now the largest Shi’a country in the world. Despite much political turmoil, the Safavi dynasty was stable and wealthy enough, particularly during its first half, to fund the creation of many of the masterpieces of Iranian architecture, weaving, painting, pottery, and other crafts. Among these is an illustrated
Shahnameh
commissioned by Tahmasb Shah that is regarded as one of the finest examples of bookmaking in the world. Tahmasb gave the book to the Ottoman Empire in 1567, along with other rich gifts loaded on the backs of dozens of camels, an inestimable loss to future generations of Iranians.
After years of internal and external power struggles following Tahmasb’s death, an able ruler finally took charge of Iran. The greatest leader of the Safavis would turn out to be Abbas—the second son of Mohammad Shah and his wife, Mahd-e-Olya—who was crowned in a palace coup in 1587 at the age of sixteen and ruled for more than forty years. Shah Abbas finally quashed the fractious qizilbash by uprooting old power structures and elevating new groups, especially converted Georgians, Circassians, and Armenians, who owed their loyalty only to him. Perhaps his greatest legacy, however, is the city of Isfahan, which he declared his capital in 1598 and refashioned with the help of master architects, engineers, calligraphers, and tile makers. The central square that dominates the town and the bridges that traverse its river are among the true crown jewels of his rule.
The key members of the royal family mentioned in this book were real people. On occasion I made up first names for women whose names were never recorded. The servants of the palace harem, including Javaher, Khadijeh, Balamani, and Maryam, are invented characters.
I
n recent years, several scholars have mined original sources and generated new thinking about the political sophistication of premodern Muslim women like Pari Khan Khanoom. Their work has been invaluable in allowing me to imagine the decisions Pari might have made and the life that she might have lived. In particular, Shohreh Gholsorkhi has written an insightful article about Pari’s role in the politics of her day, and Maria Szuppe has written in detail about the extent of the education, wealth, and power enjoyed by some Safavi court women. Szuppe’s work suggested to me the complicated relationships that Pari might have had with her uncle Shamkhal Cherkes and the grand vizier Mirza Salman, and brought to my attention the conflict that occurred over control of the treasury in Qazveen. In addition, Leslie Peirce’s work on premodern Ottoman women has been extremely helpful in illuminating the organizational structure of a royal harem and the tasks fulfilled by the women residing within it. Despite being sequestered, some Muslim court women had much more power, wealth, and influence than they are usually given credit for.
One of the key primary sources for the historical events mentioned in this novel was a court chronicle written by Eskandar Monshi, who for decades served as historian to Shah Abbas (1571–1629). The first volume of his history sets the stage for Abbas’s reign by recounting the stories of his ancestors. Monshi (which means “scribe”) writes in detail about Tahmasb Shah’s death and about his children’s power struggles: Haydar Mirza’s attempt to take the
throne, Isma‘il Shah’s murder of most of his brothers and cousins, and Pari Khan Khanoom’s participation in politics. However, since Monshi provides little information about what Pari did on a day-to-day basis, I invented many such scenes. And although I followed Monshi in recounting key events (coronations, murders, and power shifts), I changed some details and invented others to suit the needs of my story. Readers interested in Monshi’s telling of the events can consult Roger M. Savory’s translation,
History of Shah Abbas
, vol. 1, pp. 283–342 (see Key Sources).
The italicized stories that begin each chapter of this novel come from a tale made famous by the great Iranian poet Ferdowsi in his
Shahnameh,
which was completed in 1010. For my retelling of the tale, I used as my sources the translations by Dick Davis and by Arthur George Warner and his brother Edmond Warner. The ancient story of the blacksmith Kaveh’s rebellion against a foreign tyrant still retains iconic status in Iranian culture today; the “Kaviani Banner” featuring the blacksmith’s apron is a potent symbol of resistance.
For their helpful comments while this novel was being written, I wish to thank Ahmad Amirrezvani, Ali Amirrezvani, Firoozeh Amirrezvani, Catherine Armsden, Genevieve Conaty, Carolyn Cooke, Laurie Fox, Ed Grant, Tess Uriza Holthe, Marshall Krantz, Katherine Smith, and my agent, Emma Sweeney. Sandra Scofield, my mentor and friend, provided detailed suggestions on an early draft. My heartfelt thanks to Alexis Gargagliano at Scribner for being an old-school editor in the best sense of the term: thorough, thoughtful, and transformative.
A CONVERSATION WITH
ANITA AMIRREZVANI
What is known about the lives of pre-modern Iranian court women?
Not a lot. We know that court women could be as well educated as men. They composed poetry and letters; went horseback riding; provided charitable donations to mosques and other institutions; employed viziers; served as advisors to Shahs to whom they were related; fought for power “behind the curtain”; and worked to advance their sons. But little information survives to tell us what they did on a daily basis or what their thoughts and feelings were. Those who made an impact on Iranian politics, like Pari Khan Khanoom and Khayr al-Nisa Beygom, were chronicled by Iranian historians, but these men would not have had direct access to the women. Therefore, the histories offer only a filtered view.
How has writing this novel changed your understanding about Iran?
It may seem obvious that a woman with wealth and family connections might wish to participate in politics, but stereotypes about women in the harem have made it difficult to see through the veils of obfuscation on this topic. It appears that women who were related by blood to the Shah were considered almost a separate breed because their family ties conferred upon them a special, almost magical status. New scholarship has revealed much about how influential women could be, but more remains to be done. I am hoping that a cache of documents will be discovered one day that will provide new insights.
What made you decide to tell your story through the eyes of a eunuch?
When I first started writing the novel, I tried using six alternating narrators, including Javaher and the dead Tahmasb Shah. As the writing progressed, I faced reality and whittled down the narrators to the three who interested me the most. Eventually, to my surprise, Javaher’s voice emerged as the most compelling. The first time I dreamed about him, I realized that he had become as real to me as a friend, albeit a complicated one.
As a sheltered upper-class young man, Javaher starts out with limited experiences of women outside his family. As a eunuch in the harem, he gets close to power players like Pari, which ultimately challenges his assumptions about society’s rigid gender roles. Additionally, the fact that Javaher no longer possesses one of the essential tools of being male makes him rethink the meaning of masculinity. I settled on Javaher as my narrator when I realized that he could offer a fresh, insider perspective on both sexes.