The Kujujī Poets: Families, Poetry and Forms of Patronage in Azerbaijan and beyond (Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries)

Tracing the extended Kujujī family unit, originally from Western Azerbaijan, through the fourteenth up to the seventeenth century, I am especially interested in the interplay between members of the Kujujī family, their professional background, and the poetry they composed. Poetry is interpreted as a mode of transmission, understanding panegyric and mystical forms of poetry as a means to shape and reinforce family identities in reciprocal relationships – in our case the relationship between the local Sufi-notable family network of the Kujujīs with the respective ruling families of the Jalayirids and Safavids. The article explores their poetry, the poets as actors of transmission and the links that are created between distant members of the “imagined” family of the Kujujīs as expressed in literary anthologies (taẕkiras). Moving beyond traditional perceptions of one-on-one, client-patron relations in the production of court poetry and emphasizing the role of families creates a long-term perspective and re-evaluates classical Persian poetry as intra-generational cultural bond.