BADR JĀJARMĪ, MALEK-AL-ŠOʿARĀʾ BADR-AL-DĪN B. ʿOMAR, a 7th/13th-century poet who enjoyed renown in his own time. Born in Jājarm, Khorasan, he received his education in adab in that province and later moved to Isfahan where he entered the service of Ḵᵛāja Bahāʾ-al-Dīn b. Šams-al-Dīn Moḥammad Jovaynī, the governor of Isfahan and ʿErāq-e ʿAjam. At Isfahan he met and made friends with the poets Majd Hamgar and Emāmī Heravī. He learned much from Majd Hamgar, who was his senior in years and standing; this probably explains why compilers of taḏkeras (biographical anthologies) have described him as Majd Hamgar’s pupil.
Jājarmī was Ḵᵛāja Bahāʾ-al-Dīn’s panegyrist and also wrote poems in honor of the latter’s father, the ṣāḥeb-e dīvān, Ḵᵛāja Šams-al-Dīn Moḥammad Jovaynī, and uncle, the historian ʿAṭā-Malek Jovaynī. It seems that he spent almost all his life as a poet in the service of the Jovaynī family. He died on 29 Jomādā II 686/11 August 1287, shortly after Majd Hamgar and Emāmī. A marṯīa (elegy) written by Badr Jājarmī on the death of Saʿd-al-Dīn Ḥamawī in 650/1252 contains expressions of devotion which suggest that he may have been a disciple of that shaikh.
Of Jājarmī’s poetry, estimated by Nafīsī (Naẓm o naṯr I, p. 162) at 4,000 verses, a large number is quoted in various taḏkeras, mostly in the Moʾnes al-aḥrār (comp. 741/1340) of his son Moḥammad b. Badr Jājarmī. Altogether this work contains 1,122 verses by him, including 201 from a treatise on limb spasms (eḵtelājāt-e aʿżāʾ) which he wrote and 32 about powers (eḵtīārāt, i.e., astrological influences) of the moon, the rest being qaṣīdas, ḡazals, qeṭʿas, mosammaṭs and robāʿīs and other quatrains.
In content, Jājarmī’s oeuvre comprises eulogies, elegies, chronograms, oaths, and jests. It is mediocre poetry for the most part, displaying some sort of poetic artifice, such as the question and answer form, the repeated word-play (tajnīs-e mokarrar), the acrostic (tawšīḥ), the divided metaphor (taqsīm), the use of words consisting solely of undotted letters throughout a poem, etc. All these frills attest to his bent for rhetoric, of which he was indeed the foremost contemporary master. Worthy of mention is his Persian verse rendering of a well-known Arabic qaṣīda by Abu’l-Fatḥ Bostī.
Bibliography:
Al-Ḏarīʿa IX/1, p. 128.
Dawlatšāh, ed. Browne, pp. 26, 105, 174, 219-21.
Faḵr-al-Dīn Ṣafī, Laṭāʾef al-ṭawāʾef, ed. A. Goḷčīn-e Maʿānī, Tehran, 1336 Š./1957, p. 288.
Ḵayyāmpūr, Soḵanvarān, p. 80.
Majmaʿ al-foṣaḥāʾ I, pp. 633-34.
Moḥammad b. Badr Jājarmī, Moʾnes al-aḥrār, 2 vols., ed. Mīr Ṣāleḥ Ṭabībī, 1337 Š./1958, and 1350 Š./1971, passim.
Moḥammad-ʿAlī Modarresī, Rayḥānat al-adab, 3rd ed., Tabrīz, 1346 Š./1967, I, p. 376.
Ṣafā, Adabīyāt III/1, 1358 Š./1979, pp. 558-67.
Šams-al-Dīn Sāmī, Qāmūs al-aʿlām (in Turkish), Istanbul, 1316/1898, II, p. 1254.
Search terms:
| بدر جاجرمی | badir jajarmi | badir jaajarmy | badir jajarme |
(M. Dabīrsīāqī)
Originally Published: December 15, 1988
Last Updated: August 22, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. III, Fasc. 4, pp. 382-383
