The volume Turks and Iranians: Interactions in Language and History. The Gunnar Jarring Memorial Program at The Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study contains contributions written by an international group of eminent scholars who summoned in 2001 in Uppsala, Sweden, to engage in discussing old and modern Turkic and Iranian languages and their historical and cultural relations. The topics dealt with include how contacts of spoken and written languages from pre-Islamic times until various periods of the Islamic era, have influenced the emergence and development of Iranian and Turkic varieties. The studies contribute to a better understanding of the interrelations between cultural-historical contacts and linguistic processes and directs attention to the necessity of cooperation between experts of Turkic and Iranian studies. The international editorial group represents prominent scholarly traditions in Turkic and Iranian studies.
This work consists of an edition of a hitherto unknown manuscript of the Persian poem Mūš u gurbah (The Cat and the Mice), ascribed to ‘Ubayd-i Zākānī (d. 771–772 A.H.q. [corresponding to Aug. 1369 – July 1371 A.D.]), a facsimile of this manuscript which is preserved in the National Library of Tunis, and translations into English and Swedish of the poem.
‘Ubayd-i Zākānī’s authorship of the poem Mūš u gurbah is discussed and refuted in favour of a more likely theory, namely that Mūš u gurbah was written at the beginning of the Safavid era (9th cent. A.H.q. [16th cent. A.D.]) by an adherent of the Pasikhānī (Nuqṭavī) sect. The Pasikhānīs were strongly opposed to the Safavid kings and were finally subdued during Shāh ‘Abbās I’s reign (996–1038 A.H.q. [1588–1629]).
Bo Utas’ translations into English and Swedish are based on two different editions. The English translation is recent and based on the present edition of the Tunis manuscript with 162 verses. The Swedish translation originates from the late 1980s, and was first published in Karavan 2003:1, 39-41. It is based on a considerably shorter edition of the poem from the 1950s and contains only 90 verses.
In a long series of essays, written during almost half a century, Bo Utas analyses the development of West Iranian languages, particularly Old, Middle, and New Persian, from various perspectives. The focus is placed on the transition from Middle to New Persian and the final essays (hitherto partly unpublished) especially elucidate this process in the light of an interaction between oral and written language.