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Zusatztext “The Iliad and Odyssey of medieval Persia! a rollicking! magic-filled heroic saga . . . in an interpretation so fluent that it is a pleasure to sit down and lose oneself in it.”— The New York Times Book Review “A marvelous dovetailing of fantasy! history and religion . . . filled with lyrical resonance . . . [Readers] will love losing themselves in this complex yet ancient world of the imagination.”— The Washington Post Book World “It’s hard to think of an epic more dazzlingly splendid. . . . Farooqi has given world literature a gift.”— Time “It is a testament to the quality of Farooqi’s rendering of the text into English that he both conveys a sense of the art of the ‘sweetlipped historians’ and ‘nimble scribes of fancy!’ and produces a real page-turner.”— The Times Literary Supplement “[A] revelatory translation of a masterpiece of world literature . . . unequivocally an amazing piece of publishing history.”— The Buffalo News Informationen zum Autor Ghalib Lakhnavi was a writer and poet who worked in India in the nineteenth century. His only known work is the one-volume Dastan-e Amir Hamza (1855). Abdullah Bilgrami taught Arabic in Kanpur, India. His only known work besides his enlargement of Ghalib Lakhnavi’s Dastan-e Amir Hamza (1871) is a leaflet on the game of chess written in 1882. Musharraf Ali Farooqi has translated the magical fantasy epic Hoshruba and works of the contemporary Urdu poet Afzal Ahmed Syed. He is currently working on the Urdu Project, an online resource for the study of Urdu language and literature. Klappentext Here is a special abridged English translation of a major Indo-Persian epic: a panoramic tale of magic and passion, a classic hero's odyssey that has captivated much of the world. It is the spellbinding story of Amir Hamza, the adventurer who in the service of the Persian emperor defeats many enemies, loves many women, and converts hundreds of infidels to the True Faith before finding his way back to his first love. In Musharraf Ali Farooqi's remarkable abridged rendition, this masterwork is captured with all its colorful action and fantastic elements intact. Appreciated as the seminal Islamic epic or enjoyed as a sweeping tale as rich and inventive as Homer's epic sagas, The Adventures of Amir Hamza is a true literary treasure.Chapter 1 The florid news writers, the sweet-lipped historians, revivers of old tales and renewers of past legends, relate that there ruled at Ctesiphon1 in Persia (image of Heaven!) Emperor Qubad Kamran, who cherished his subjects and was a succor to the impecunious in their distress. He was unsurpassed in dispensing justice, and so rigorous in this exercise that the best justice appeared an injustice compared to his decree. Prosperity and affluence thrived in his dominions while wrong and inequity slumbered in death, and, rara avis–like, mendicants and the destitute were extinct in his lands. The wealthy were at a loss to find an object for their charity. The weak and the powerful were equals, and the hawk and the sparrow roosted in the same nest. The young and the old sought one another’s pleasure, neither ever deeming himself the sole benefactor. The portals of houses remained open day and night like the eyes of the vigil, for if someone stole even the color of henna from the palm,2 he was ground in the mill of justice. The thief therefore did not even dream of thieving, and if perchance a wayfarer should come upon someone’s property on the road, he took it upon himself to restore it to its owner. Compared with Qubad Kamran’s fearlessness, might, and valor, Rustam was the same as a hag most decrepit and cowardly. This imperious monarch had forty viziers,3 who were the epitomes of learning, wisdom, and prudence; and seven hundred wise men before whom even the likes of Plato ...
