The Laments of Baba Taher

S$118.00

The Laments of Baba Taher

S$118.00

Title: The Laments of Baba Taher / Les Quatrains de Baba Taher / Die Rubaiyat des Baba Taher
Author: Baba Taher Oryan Hamadani
Publisher: Padideh Publishing, Tehran, Iran. Exact date entirely unknown. Very scarce book.
Condition: In good condition, with some wear to tall cloth hardcover. Interior is very good. With several full-page illustrations.

In the original Persian with English, French and German translation.

Published in Tehran, this scarce book contains the poems of one of the Sufi Muslim world’s most revered lyricists from the 11th century, whose words have become songs in Iran and the Persian-speaking world, but about whom very little is known.

About the author:

Baba Tahir (Persian: باباطاهر‎) was an 11th-century poet in Persian literature and an Iranian mystic.

Baba Tahir is known as one of the most revered and respectable early poets in Iranian literature. Most of his life is clouded in mystery.

He was born and lived in Hamadan, the capital city of the Hamedan Province in Iran. He was known by the name of Baba Taher-e Oryan (The Naked), which suggests that he may have been a wandering dervish. Legend tells that the poet, an illiterate woodcutter, attended lectures at a religious school, where he was not welcomed by his fellow-students. The dates of his birth and death are unknown. One source indicates that he died in 1019. If this is accurate, it would make Baba Tahir a contemporary of Ferdowsi and Pour Sina (Avicenna) and an immediate precursor of Omar Khayyam.

According to L. P. Elwell-Sutton: He could be described as the first great poet of Sufi love in Persian literature. In the last two decades his do-baytis have often been put to music.

Many stories are told of his miracles and magical powers. One of the best-known relates how, stung by the mockery of students at a college in Hamadān, he spent the night in a frozen tank, and emerged in the morning filled with divine knowledge.

More at wikipedia and Encyclopædia Iranica.