Varaqah va Gulshāh

From the earliest periods of the history of Persian poetry, before Nezami Ganjavi, apart from a few romantic epics: part of "Vāmeq and ‘Azrā" by ‘Onṣori, "Vis and Rāmin" by Fakhr al-Din As‘ad Gorgāni, "Varqa and Golshāh" by ‘Eyūqi, and of course, the romantic elements in Ferdowsi's "Shāhnāmeh" which are interwoven with the epic, almost nothing has reached us. The existence of these epics indicates the significant prevalence and dynamism of lyrical epics, alongside heroic epics in those times.

Based on evidence and reasons, ‘Eyūqi can be identified as Majd al-Din ‘Eyūqi, who was one of the poets of the Seljuk period after the reign of Sultan Sanjar. ‘Eyūqi dedicated "Varqa and Golshāh" to Sultan Ghāzi, Sultan Mahmūd Abū al-Qāsem.

"Varqa and Golshāh" by ‘Eyūqi is one of the oldest Persian epics that has reached us in its entirety. This book tells the story of the love between "Varqa," the son of Hammām, and "Golshāh," the daughter of Helāl, the children of two brothers and two leaders of the Banī-Sheibeh tribe. In addition to a detailed introduction, this book includes a facsimile of the unique, precious, and illustrated manuscript of this epic, which was created in the second half of the seventh century AH. Containing 71 paintings, it is considered a rare example of the art of miniature painting from the Seljuk era.

‘Eyūqi's source material for narrating this strange story included Arabic news, Arabic books, and the books of Jarīr. These Arabic news and books apparently relate to the romantic story of ‘Orwah ibn Ḥezām ‘Oḏrī and ‘Afrā’ bint ‘Eqāl, two cousin lovers whose love story was famous in Arabic literature and history before the third and fourth centuries AH, with accounts recorded in sources such as "al-Shi‘r wa al-Shu‘arā’" by Ibn Qutaybah Dinawari.

The main features of this epic in terms of poetic structure, expression, and language can be summarised as follows: it is composed in the metre of the Shāhnāmeh and influenced by it; it contains 2100 couplets; the narrative intertwines romance and epic; it includes the insertion of ghazals within the masnavi, which is apparently the oldest known example of this; and it contains ancient grammatical and lexical structures.

The original manuscript of this epic, numbered H.841, is preserved in the Topkapi Palace Museum. The manuscript is written in a clear naskh script and consists of seventy folios. The date of the manuscript is not mentioned, but the characteristics of the script suggest it was written in the second half of the seventh century AH. The manuscript contains 71 illustrations, with almost all the images drawn in horizontal rectangular spaces. The spaces are narrow and sometimes the figures extend beyond the frames. In illustration number 61, which has a golden background, we see the signature of the illustrator: "‘Abd al-Mo’men Mohammad al-Khū’i al-Naqqāsh," whose identity is unknown. Some researchers, based on his geographical attribution, consider the origin of the illustrations of "Varqa and Golshāh" to be the Tabriz school and north-western Iran.