Dastan Books

[Julia Kozub]

DisclosureMany publishers, literary agents, and/or authors provide free copies of their books in exchange for an honest review without requiring a positive opinion. Any books donated to Home School Book Review for review purposes are in turn donated to a library. No other compensation has been received for the reviews posted on Home School Book Review.

The first, a graphic novel entitled The Chronicle of Young Dastan, usually identified as Book 0 of the series, follows the story of Dastan prior to his rise to royalty and the events in the Sands of Time film, telling how Dastan, a street urchin, becomes embroiled in the quest by the Huns to find the mystical Torch of Atar and loses his best friend Javed to the evil White Huns seeking the magic torch. Walls of Babylon picks up the story from there; it is well written and quite exciting to read. In volume two, The Search for Cyra, after Dastan escapes Babylon, he must make a journey across the Empire in order to save his old friend Cyra, the girl who assisted him and Vindarna in saving the Torch of Atar.

In the bazaar chowk, Kallan Mirza, a skilled dastango, spins a hauntingly familiar tale of a despotic sorcerer, Tareek Jaan, and his grand illusory city, the Tilism-e-Azam, where women are confined in underground basements. As Kallan descends deeper into an opium addiction, the boundaries of fantasy and reality begin to blur.

Dastan features an extensive and multi-dimensional program, focusing on the full spectrum of Iranian contemporary and modern art. Dastan's program includes Dastan's Basement, +2 and Dastan:Outside. In addition to hosting exhibitions, Dastan publishes artist books as well as monographs on Iranian art, features film screenings, performance projects and other events.

During the Russian conquest of Central Asia, many new dastans were created to protest the Russian occupation. It is possible that they came into contact and influenced each other. According to Turkish historian Hasan Blent Paksoy, the Bolsheviks tried to destroy these symbols of culture by only publishing them in insufficiently large quantities and in a distorted form "in order to weaken the heroic impact".[5]

Lined with grandeur, tragedy and fantasy, Tarana Husain Khan's odyssey maps the social, political and religious contours of 1897 Sherpur with the fascinating and strong-willed Feroza Begum at the centre of the storm.

On an evening not too many evenings ago, the blue-eyed Feroza, flouting her family's orders, attended Nawab Shams Ali Khan's sawani celebrations at the Benazir Palace. Tragedy coloured the night when she found herself kidnapped and withheld in the Nawab's harem - bustling, tantalizing and rife with sinister power play. As tyranny and repression tightened their hold inside the royal walls, at the Bazaar Chowk, dastangoi Kallan Mirza enchanted his listeners with the legend of sorcerer Tareek Jaan and his chimeric city, the Tilism-e-Azam, where women were confined in underground basements.

Misfortune and subjugation link eras when Ameera, Feroza's great-granddaughter, is restricted to her house and finds solace in her Dadi's retelling of Feroza's tragedy. When Ameera's circumstances begin mirroring the strife and indignities pervasive in 1897 Sherpur, she must reflect if society has shifted enough for women and their choices.

Written with careful flamboyance and striking evocativeness, The Begum and the Dastan is a world imbued with love, splendour and heartbreak, only saved by the women who refuse to play by the rule book.

The dastan is a genre of oral and prose narrative that initially developed in Persian but then spread to other languages influenced by the Persian literary tradition. To be sure, oral tale-telling is hardly unique to Persian or Persian-influenced languages, but the dastan has some unique literary features that make it stand out. Dastans often have very long story lines that can be embellished and stretched even further through detailed descriptions of characters, events, and locations. With their dramatic narratives, dastans are primarily meant for oral performances and enjoying the richness of language and literary traditions.

One of the most popular dastans in South Asia was Dastan-i Amir Hamzah (the Dastan of Amir Hamzah). It had its origins in 11th century Iran, but eventually made its way to India where it developed many versions in Persian. Dastan-i Amir Hamzah was popular at the Mughal court where Emperor Akbar was an avid fan.

As luck would have it, before he could wed Mahnigar, Amir Hamzah is wounded in a battle and is rescued by Shahpal, the king of paris (fairies) who requests that Hamzah help him regain his kingdom in the magical world of Qaf that had been overtaken by demons. Consequently, Amir Hamzah spends eighteen years in the supernatural world of Qaf fighting sorcerers and demons, who can cast such potent spells they can create entire worlds of illusion called tilism. Amir Hamzah and his companions can never be sure whether they are operating in a tilism or in the world of Qaf (which itself is magical) and had to resort to all sorts of ways to break the spells, often with help from saintly figures. Incidentally, an alternative title for the dastan, especially its version based on selections from earlier ones is, Tilism-i Hosh Ruba, The Sense-stealing Tilism.

Urdu has been part of language instruction at UC Berkeley since the late 1950s. UC Berkeley also runs the Berkeley Urdu Language Program in Pakistan (BULPIP) in collaboration with the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. In addition, the Institute for South Asia Studies launched the Berkeley Urdu Initiative in 2011 to further promote the study of Urdu at Cal. The leading light for many of the Urdu-related events and activities is Dr. Gregory Maxwell Bruce, the Urdu language instructor, who joined the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies in the Fall of 2016.

The Languages of Berkeley: An Online Exhibition Copyright 2021 by individual contributors of this online library exhibition is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

I am convinced that while writing her book, The Begum and the Dastan (Westland Publications, 2021), Tarana Husain Khan's aim was to leave her readers in a literary stupor, dizzy and yearning for more. A nested tale of love, inheritance, social conflicts, and survival, the novel boasts both real and fantastical themes. The book oscillates between three narratives: the story of the spirited Feroza Begum set in 19th century British India; the story of present-day Ameera, Feroza's great-granddaughter; and that of Mirza Kallan, a dastango (storyteller) who sips opium at the bazaar chowk and weaves tales so magical that the ambits of fantasy and reality become blurred to him and readers alike.

In the present day, Ameera, the great-granddaughter of Feroza Begum, listens with rapt attention to her Dadi recounting Feroza's life story as a cautionary tale about female recklessness. Amidst these overlapping narratives, Mirza Kallan charms his audience with the story of a tyrant sorcerer in his magical city where women are tied with chains and tacit rules.

The lives of Feroza and the other women in the Nawab's harem are a stark contrast to his depraved, lavish life. The wives lead a life of puritanical obedience while the Nawab exercises despotism by punishing people who dare to defy him, usurping property of dissenters and capturing women he desires with or without their consent. As Feroza navigates this maze of 19th century court life thrust upon her, and as Ameera absorbs Dadi's account of Feroza's story, both women, despite the century of time between them, realise with grim clarity the cruel, unspoken rules that govern the lives of women regardless of age.

Both women cautiously tread a fine line between propriety and what society has labeled as female vulgarity. Dreams, aspirations and goals become secondary to gendered expectations. Misinterpreted religious texts and archaic tradition govern their lives.

Tarana Husain Khan is a master of imagery; her writing is imbued with elaborate descriptions of resplendent soirees, gloomy dungeons, and busy bazaars, that sweep you into the glamour and delusion of court life. Just as quickly, she will steer you through time and bring you face-to-face with the subversion of women's empowerment in present times.

The pilgrimages of survival across the pages of The Begum and the Dastan have not yet come to an end. Written in invisible ink, Feroza's story continues on in contemporary women as we try to navigate the toiling maze of age-old patriarchy. Turning the last page of this book does not constitute its ending; it is but a pause. A pause to breathe, to reflect, and to perhaps rethink our choices as individuals and a society.

Sameirah Nasrin Ahsan is a mechanical engineer and aspiring author based in Dhaka. For now, she is content with reading and sharing the stories that make her think beyond herself. Instagram: @booksnher.

Urdu Dastan refers to an extant mode of storytelling where popular fantasies, literary tropes and a hint of history is melded to produce utterly entertaining and absorbing stories. Often about legendary characters, the charm of the dastan rests on its flamboyance, verbal excesses and a fine entanglement of the ordinary and the extraordinary, of the mundane and the marvellous.

In a tradition that lasted hundreds of years, traveling storytellers in the Mughal Empire would narrate the tales of Amir Hamza, the uncle of Prophet Mohammed, and his childhood friend Amar Ayyar, a trickster.

The storytellers would hardly use props, and relied on their linguistic and acting skills to captivate the crowds that would gather around them. But during the 19th century, the art began to die off.

Dastangoi was a peculiar art form because the stories it told were originally intended to praise the glorious tradition of Islam and the adventures undertaken by Islamic heroes. But the Dastan focused instead on Amir Hamza, Mohammed's uncle.

3a8082e126