Theatre
سرگذشت اشرفخان
Not translated into English
Mirza Aqa Tabrizi · 1908
Synopsis
Ashraf Khan, governor of Arabestan, goes up to Tehran to have his post confirmed. There he discovers that every favour has its price: from the king down to the groom, everyone has a tariff and an intermediary, and the money he brought passes from hand to hand while he waits, day after day, for the contract that will keep him in his post. He fully intends, once home, to recoup his costs from those he governs.
Context
The plays were written around 1288 of the Hegira, that is 1871, and sent to Akhundzadeh, who judged them made for reading rather than for the stage and wanted one of them burned. The first publication came in 1908, as an anonymous serial in the newspaper Ettehad of Tabriz, and only this play appeared there in full before the newspaper closed. In 1921 or 1922, Kazemzadeh Iranshahr published three of them in Berlin under the name of Mirza Malkom Khan, from a copy by Friedrich Rosen; the error, repeated by the Russian, French, Danish and Italian translations, was cleared up only in 1956 by two Azerbaijani scholars.
Who it is for
A short farce in Persian, in a few scenes. It helps to know that it was written to be read rather than staged, and that it names the offices of the Qajar administration without explaining them.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first Western-style play written in Persian, and long credited to another man.