The idea that, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Iranian poets “returned” to the simpler styles of the classical masters and Persian poetry was thereby saved from centuries of deleterious foreign influence has been remarkably persistent in modern Persian literary history writing. Kevin Schwartz's monograph, Remapping Persian Literary History, 1700–1900, persuasively challenges the grip this notion has had on Persian literary historiography, through a multiregional account of Persian literary activity in this understudied period. Honing in on an Isfahani circle of poets in the mid-18th century, the production of Afghan war-ballads modeled on the Shahnameh in the 1840s, and Persian literary debates at the court of the last Nawab of Arcot in the mid-19th century, Schwartz recalibrates the concept of “literary return” from one heralding Persian literature's heroic homecoming to one signifying contingent engagements with the literary past across a fracturing but still active Persianate world.

Schwartz traces the idea of the “literary return” (bāzgasht-i adabī) back to Iranian literati during the early decades of the 20th century, crediting Muhammad Taqi Bahar (d.1957) with having coined the phrase and canonized a problematic quadripartite division of Persian literary history. For Bahar, the “literary return” was the fourth and most recent period of Persian literary history, preceded by the periods of the Indian style, the Iraqi style, and the Khorasani style. Despite recognizing that Bahar's classification was more nuanced than many acknowledge, Schwartz suggests this narrative is problematic for two main reasons. First, insofar as it misleadingly “appears to create isolated categories of poetic form and style” which exclusively refer to select periods and regions (p. 37). Second, and more harmful in Schwartz's view, is how Bahar's category of “literary return” “transforms his developmental account of Persian literary history into a narrative of Iranian literary history” (p. 37). He dubs this grafting of an Irano-centric teleology to Persian literary history as a project of “literary nationalism.” Joining a body of recent scholarship invoking the concept of the “Persianate” to explore the cultural reach of Persian beyond the borders of Iran, Schwartz asserts that Persian literary culture in this period should in fact be seen as being “connected and contested” across communities in Iran, Afghanistan, and South Asia (p. 5). Additionally, he sets out to move away from “a primary focus on the stylistics of individual authors” typically found in early literary histories, and towards the study of literary communities (pp. 22–23). These come as timely methodological interventions in the field of Persian literary studies.

In Chapter 1 (“Remembering Iran, Forgetting the Persianate: Persian Literary Historiography of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”), Schwartz surveys the Persian literary historiography of Iran, Afghanistan, and South Asia, bringing into focus how the relationship of scholars and poets to the Persian literary tradition in each of these regions was remade during this period. Reading tazkirihs (biographical anthologies) as a key site in the narrativization of literary history, Schwartz reveals how in Zand and Qajar Iran, litterateurs began to articulate a notion of poetic revival and a return to the styles of classical masters. The Qajar historian Riza Quli Khan Hidayat (d.1871) is shown to have played an important role in concretizing an account of how 18th-century Isfahani poets under the leadership of Mushtaq Isfahani (d.c. 1757–8) broke decisively with styles of the preceding era. Challenging the centrality of Mushtaq to changing literary habits, Schwartz locates Hidayat's characterization of the literary return within broader efforts of the Qajar court to “bolster the dynasty's place in Persian and Iranian historiography” and associate itself with narratives of revival (p. 43). In this first chapter, Schwartz also complicates the common scholarly notions that Afghan literary history in this period can simply be reduced to “Bidilism” (i.e., state-sponsored interest in the Indo-Persian poet, ʿAbd al-Qahir Bidil (d.1721)), and the rise of English and Urdu in South Asia necessitated the decline of Persian in zero-sum terms.

Over the next three chapters, Schwartz develops his intervention by rethinking what “literary return” meant to distinct poetic communities. Chapter 2 (“Reformation and Reconstruction of Poetic Networks: Isfahan c.1722–1801”) retells the birth of the “literary return” movement in Iran not as a historic rupture with the so-called “Indian style” born of proto-nationalist sentiment, but as a phenomenon better explained by the social, political, and literary circumstances facing poets in post-Safavid Isfahan. (A striking fact Schwartz draws attention to is that by 1736, the population of Isfahan had fallen to just 50,000 people, down from over half a million in its Safavid heyday (p. 87).)

In the aftermath of such decline and political instability, Schwartz documents how a poetic community formed in Isfahan, with participants who shared a sense of frustration at the dearth of literary activity and patronage in what was once a proud cultural center. Members of this “Isfahani Circle” wrote many poems in praise of each other, invoking the style and names of the classical masters when making praiseworthy comparisons (p. 96). For Schwartz, the Isfahani Circle turned to the model of the classical praise poem (qaṣīdih) not primarily out of a preference for “simple” style per se, but because it “provided the most fundamental model for re-establishing the role of the poet as an actor bestowing praise and receiving patronage” (p. 191). Eventually securing the patronage of a Zand-era mayor of Isfahan, Mirza ʿAbd al-Wahhab (d. 1770–71), the group's prominence, coherence, and place in literary history were fortified (p. 100). Drawing on poems, biographical anthologies, and letters exchanged between poets, Schwartz offers a persuasive analysis of what a bāzgasht-i adabī project might have meant to these 18th-century figures. The movement was not simply a “literary return” to the style of the ancients (for which there was ample precedent in the Safavid period; see page 89); it also aspired to a return of the literary to its rightful position of social prestige, and a return to a decorous social order more generally.

Chapters 3 and 4 offer two case studies from elsewhere in the Persianate world, chosen by Schwartz to puncture historiographies which declare the “literary return” phenomenon to be uniquely Iranian and Persian to have been in decline in South Asia. Chapter 3 (“A Market for Masters: Afghanistan c.1839–1842”) explores how political, social, and technological developments in mid-19th-century Afghanistan generated a transregional marketplace for texts which engaged with an undisputed classic of Persian literature: Firdawsi's Shahnameh (Book of Kings, 1010). Typically read as formative works in Afghan nationalist historiography, Schwartz re-examines three war-ballads (jangnāmihs) which emerged in the aftermath of the Anglo-Afghan War (1839–42) and circulated quickly in both Afghanistan and South Asia. Each modeled on the Shahnameh, he argues that the production, circulation, and reception of these imitative texts are evidence of a transregional enthusiasm for engagement with canonical masters, and are thus best understood as “Afghan literary products shaped by transregional characteristics” (p. 129). Schwartz also shows how this classical turn was, in part, borne of a frustration with the lack of prestige and patronage for poets, echoing the concerns which galvanized the Isfahani Circle “return” to ancient styles (pp. 142–43). This chapter will be especially interesting for scholars concerned with the multifaceted legacies of the Shahnameh on Persian literary culture.

In Chapter 4 (“Debating Poetry on the Edge of the Persianate World: Arcot c. 1850”), Schwartz complicates the simplistic narrative of Persian's decline in post-Mughal South Asia often found in the historiography of Persian literature and the subcontinent. To this end, he focuses on the flourishing of Persian literary activity in and around the court of the last Nawab of Arcot, Muhammad Ghaws Khan “Aʿzam” (d. 1855). With the rise of Urdu and English as languages of culture and politics, Persian no longer enjoyed the status it once did across South Asia, but Schwartz reads the Arcot court's promotion of Persian as an expression of cultural independence in the face of British suzerainty (p. 171). Under these conditions, Arcot witnessed a sharp spike in tazkirih production; Schwartz demonstrates how these texts functioned as a lively forum for poetic debate and rivalry. The central disagreement observed in this raft of tazkirihs hinges on an attack made by one local poet, Vasif (d. 1873), on poets associated with the court and their elevation of a complex style of poetry, exemplified in the poetry of figures like Nasir ʿAli Sirhindi (d. 1697) and Bidil. The insight this chapter provides into the literary criticism of this community is fascinating: for some critics, the innovative coinage of Persian idioms by Indo-Persians was unacceptable; others saw Iranian idiomatic precedent as less mandatory (pp. 187–8). The Arcot literary community is therefore depicted as deeply immersed in the broader literary disputes of the era, with local protagonists coming down on both sides. Schwartz's creative and historicized reading of these rich sources should serve as an example to all scholars of Persian literary history. The innovative network maps produced to depict individual and patronage connections among literary communities work as an especially effective means of rendering intelligible the dense information found in tazkirihs.

Throughout the book, Schwartz is careful not to imply that “literary return” should be read as a master narrative for the literary history of this period. Rather, his thoughtful analysis of literary communities across the Persianate world demonstrates that sustained engagement with the deep literary past was a common phenomenon in Persian literary history, though not always manifesting for the same reasons or by the same means. His method eschews an extended focus on individual poets, poems, and questions of style and genre, preferring to reconstruct the literary landscape based on biographical anthologies. These sources undoubtedly reveal a great deal about the social and intellectual concerns of literary actors of the period and serve the author's argumentation well, though at times this focus may leave readers wanting for a better sense of the era's poetic flavors.

Given the clear implication that Persian literary communities during the 18th and 19th centuries operated with local, regional, and transregional horizons, readers might also wonder about the impact of another important taste-making demographic: Iranians residing in South Asia. The role of émigré Iranian literary figures such as Hazin Lahiji (d. 1766) and Valih Daghistani (d. 1756) in fortifying literary attitudes along regional lines—and in transregionalizing literary attitudes—may have merited more attention. This, however, is one of the many enticing invitations Remapping Persian Literary History issues to scholars interested in this dynamic but understudied period. Clear, succinct, and engaging closely with up-to-date scholarship in English and Persian, this book is essential reading for scholars and students of Persian literary history, the Persianate world, and emergent literary nationalisms.