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KASSIM AMIRI

Encyclopaedia of Ismailism by Mumtaz Ali Tajddin

Abul Kassim Muhammad Kuhpayai, known as Amiri Shirazi, or Kassim Amiri was a famous Ismaili scholar and poet. He was born possibly in 953/1545 in Kuhpayai, a village in the vicinity of Ispahan. He served Shah Tahmasp in the Safavid court for 30 years, then fell into disfavour. The tradition has it that a court theologian, Hilli Hasan bin Yousuf aroused the king against him. Shah Tahmasp arrested him for alleged impeachment being an infidel, and blinded him in 973/1565. He was imprisoned in Shiraz, and was executed by Shah Abbas in 999/1591. He passed a tragic life and none dared to quote or collect his poetical works. His poems are accessible almost disorderly, in which few historical events are composed, dating around 987/1579. In his Ash'ar-i Amiri, he eulogized Imam Murad Mirza and Imam Nuruddin Ali. It sounds from his poems that being an Ismaili, he had to face troubles, therefore, he had presented his religious feelings very carefully. Abu Baqi Nihawand writes in Ma'athir'i Rahimi (Calcutta, 1931, 3: 1506) that the poems of Kassim Amiri were collected by his nephew Maulana Dakhli, who later on migrated to India.


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