The Use of Poetry as a Historical Source: A Comparative Study of Ravadians of Azerbaijan's Historiography in Qatran Tabrizi's Volume of Poetry and Islamic Historical Sources

Abstract

The present study compares the Rawadids' history in the Islamic historical sources and the Divan of Qatran, the poet of the court of this dynasty's rulers. The main issue of this research is to show the importance of Qatran poetic narration for completing, developing, and correcting the reports of historical sources from the period of Rawadids.Due to the distance of Azerbaijan from the center of the Abbasid caliphate and the relative independence of the Rawadids from the Buyids, the narration of historical sources about them is short and cross-sectional and lacks temporal and spatial continuity. This narration does not go beyond the political and military spheres and covers only the times when part of the events of the Rawadids is linked to the Caliphate or the Buyids and the Seljuks. Contrary to historical sources, Qatran provides a narrative report that has a half-century continuum. His report includes characters from this dynasty that do not exist in historical sources. Although Qatran does not refer to the lineage and clan of the Ravadids, his poems deal with a part of their intellectual, cultural, and social history that does not exist in the narration of historical sources. Much of Qatran's narrative of the history of the Ravadids challenges the narrative of historical sources and shows their numerous flaws and shortcomings. This contemporary and direct narrative can to some extent provide the possibility of verifying the narration of historical sources that have been written mainly within a temporal and spatial distance from that period.

Keywords

• rawwadids
• qatran divan
• historical sources
• narration
• azerbaijan