Unraveling the Ethos of Literary Imagination in the Basātin al-ons of Akhsetān Dehlavi

What is it about?

Basātin al-Ons (The Gardens of Fondness, 1325–26) is the sole surviving work of an erudite courtier named Akhsetān Dehlavi (1301–51), who spent most of his adult life in the service of Sultan Gheyās al-Din Toghloq (reign 1320–24) and his son Sultan Mohammad ben Toghloq Shāh (r. 1324–51). This work exemplifies one of the earliest efforts by an Indian writer to interweave history, autobiography, eulogy and folklore in the Persian genre of stylized prose (nasr). Against this backdrop, my essay examines the preface of Basātin al-Ons to elucidate the factors that motivated Akhsetān Dehlavi to narrate a collection of hendavi tales in Persian prose.

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