Zhaleh Qaem-Maqami
ژاله قائممقامیA woman of the old Qajar elite who wrote, in private and in classical forms, about marriage and a woman's lot. Most of it was read only after her death.
- Known for
- Her Divan, published in 1966
- Forms
- Qasida, Ghazal, Masnavi
- Collection
- Contemporary
Alamtaj Qaem-Maqami, who wrote as Zhaleh (dew), came from the family of Qaem-Maqam Farahani, the 19th-century statesman and prose stylist, and was born at Farahan in central Iran. She was educated at home in Persian and Arabic letters, unusually well for a girl of her time.
Married young to a much older Bakhtiari khan, she drew on that unhappy marriage for her most striking poems. Writing in the classical forms, the qasida (long ode), the ghazal (lyric) and the masnavi (poem in rhyming couplets), she gave a woman's view of marriage, the home and her own disappointment with a directness rare in Persian poetry before Parvin E'tesami and Forough Farrokhzad.
She published almost nothing in her lifetime. Her son, the poet Hossein Pezhman Bakhtiari, edited her surviving poems, and their appearance in 1966 brought her a readership she never had in life. She is now read as one of the first modern women's voices in Persian.
Her poems are out of copyright in most countries with a life-plus-70 term, but modern English translations usually are not. We publish only translations we have commissioned or have permission to use.
Booksکتابها
The principal works of Zhaleh Qaem-Maqami.
The Divan of Zhaleh
دیوان ژالهThe collected poems, edited by her son Pezhman Bakhtiari nearly two decades after her death. It gathers qasidas, ghazals and masnavis, many of them about marriage and domestic life seen from inside, and established her as an early woman poet of real originality.
Zhaleh Qaem-Maqami in Iranian history
Iranian historyAfsharids, Zands and Qajarsافشاریان، زندیان و قاجاریان
A soldier-king who sacked Delhi, a regent who rebuilt Shiraz, and a dynasty that made Tehran the capital and lived through Iran's Constitutional Revolution.