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Professional Storytelling in Iran: Transmission and Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Mary Ellen Page
Mary Ellen Page*
Affiliation:
Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

In this paper I shall describe briefly the background and setting of professional storytelling (naqqāli) in present-day Iran. Then I shall examine some aspects of how the craft of storytelling is transmitted, particularly with respect to how a young man becomes a storyteller and what aspects of storytelling are seen as important. Finally, I shall examine how this transmission relates to the way in which storytellers actually construct their performance.

There are two separate, but related, aims in the paper. Through a comparison of the stories told and the literary works used as their source, I shall demonstrate that the Iranian national legend remains creative today. More generally, I shall demonstrate that the abstract values expressed as important to a craft may disregard those very elements which make a craftsman successful and which breathe life into the craft.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 3-4 , Summer-Autumn 1979 , pp. 195 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1979

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References

Notes

1. This paper is part of a longer study of professional storytelling in Iran. See my Naqqāli and Ferdowsi: Creativity in the Iranian National Tradition, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1977. I would like to thank Profs. William L. Hanaway, Jr. and Renata Holod of the University of Pennsylvania for their comments on an earlier version of the paper which was presented at the Middle East Studies Association Conference in November 1975. The research represented here was conducted in Shiraz and Tehran, Iran in 1974-1975. I would like to thank Prof. Grant M. Farr of Portland State University for his help during the period of field work, and Mr. Khalil Zanuzi and Ms. Haydeh AghaMirzadeh, also of Portland State University for help on difficult transcription passages.

2. The Iranian national legend has been dealt with in several works. Among the most important are Safa, Zabih Allah, Ḥamāsasarā'i dar Irān (Tehran, 1333/1954)Google Scholar, and Nöldeke, Theodor, “Das Iranische Nationalepos,” Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie 2:130–211.Google Scholar Storytellers also narrate stories completely outside the national legend, including short pieces about the Sassanian or Safavid rulers or Safavid prose romances.

3. On these works see Molé, M., “L'epopée iranienne après Firdōsī,” La Nouvelle Clio 5 (1953), pp. 377–93.Google Scholar While storytellers sometimes tell some of these epics as separate accounts, much of their material is commonly included in the Shāhnāma narrative.

4. Sanakhan has since died.

5. See Mohammad Jaᶜfar Mahjub, “Sokhanvari,” Sokhan 9 (1337/1958), pp. 780-86 on general aspects of more formalized levels of training and accomplishment for the Safavid period. I have reconstructed this description of training from the accounts of several storytellers and have not personally witnessed training.

6. My findings with regards to storytellers performing without prompts are contrary to those of Stephen Blum. See “The Concept of the ᶜĀsheq in Northern Khorasan,” Asian Music 4 (1972), pp. 28-29 where he mentions naqqāls. Whether a storyteller uses prompting aids or not is largely a personal preference. I only saw one storyteller in Iran regularly using a text to tell his story.

7. Abu ‘l-Qasem Mansur Ferdowsi, shāhnāma, ed. A. Y. Bertels et al., 9 volumes (Moscow, 1966-71), 6:343-53 (hereafter cited as Shāhnāma) and The Epic of the Kings: Shāh-Nāma, translated by Levy, Reuben (London, 1967), pp. 219–20Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Epic).

8. For a transcription of this section of the ṭumār see my.Ferdowsi and Naqqāli: Creativity in the Iranian National Tradition, pp. 129-30. Some of the textual examples given are taken from a translation of these stories now in preparation. The preparation of this translation was made possible in part by a grant from the Program for Translations of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency.

9. Shāhnāma, 6:352, line 167 and Epic, p. 219.

10. This ending to Bahman is a common one, found in several texts. See for example Malek Shah Hosayn b. Malek Ghiyas al-Din Mohammad b. Shah Mahmud Sistani, Eḥyā’ al-Moluk (Tehran, 1344/1965), pp. 44–45Google Scholar which resembles the story version greatly.

11. Shāhnāma, 6:354, line 1 and Epic, p. 221.

12. The sixth imam is Jaᶜfar al-Sadeq, known as an expert on tradition. He lived in the eighth century. See Tabataba'i, M. H., shiite Islam, ed. and trans, by Nasr, S. H. (Albany, N.Y., 1975), pp. 203–05.Google Scholar

13. See “Nadjaf,” Encyclopaedia of Islam (1st ed.) 3, pp. 815-16. The valley of peace (vādi as-salām) is located in Najaf and contains a famous cemetery. The whole of Najaf is holy to the Shi'ites.

14. On the general problem of the relationship between oral and written literatures see Lord, Albert) The Singer of Tales (New York, 1974), p. 100Google Scholar and the article by Finnegan, Ruth, “How Oral is Oral Literature?” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 37 (1974), pp. 52–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar