Jahan Khatun

Jahan Malek Khatun (often called Jahān Khātūn) was a 14th-century Persian princess and poet from Shiraz. She lived during the Inju and early Muzaffarid periods and was connected to the same cultural world that produced Hafez.

She is remarkable for several reasons:

• She was a royal woman writing at a very high literary level in a male-dominated tradition.

• Her Divān reportedly contains around 2,000 ghazals, which would indeed make it several times larger than Hafez’s collected ghazals (Hafez has about 500).

• Stylistically, she writes within the classical ghazal tradition—love, longing, mystical imagery—but with a distinctive female voice.

Paul Smith’s claim about the size is plausible: manuscript traditions vary, but scholars generally agree her output is exceptionally large for a medieval Persian poet, especially a woman.

Who Was She Historically?

She was the daughter of Masʿud Shah Inju, a ruler of Shiraz. After political upheavals and the fall of her family, she lived through turbulent times yet continued writing poetry.

Unlike some women poets whose works survive only fragmentarily, a substantial corpus of her ghazals survives, which is rare and significant.

How Can You Read Her in English?

Here’s the difficulty:

• There is no widely available, complete scholarly English translation of her entire Divān.

• Most English readers encounter her only in:

  
  

  • Academic articles

  • Anthologies of Persian women poets

  • Selected translations (sometimes partial or privately published)

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Realistic Options

1. Anthologies of Persian Women Poets

   
   

   Some academic collections include selections of her ghazals in translation.

2. University Dissertations / Articles

   
   

   A few scholars have translated groups of her poems with commentary.

3. Paul Smith’s Translations

   
   

   Paul Smith has published translations of many Persian poets, including Jahān Khātūn. However, these are often poetic adaptations rather than philologically strict translations.

4. Reading in Persian

   
   

   If you are serious (and given your interest in Rumi and Ibn ʿArabi, this may appeal to you), reading her in Persian is by far the richest route.

   
   

   The ghazal is intensely musical. As with Masnavi, much of the beauty is sonic.

Why Is She Not More Famous?

Several reasons:

• Canon formation favored male poets like Hafez and Saʿdi.

• Manuscripts of women’s poetry were less widely circulated.

• Western Orientalist scholarship focused heavily on a small canon.

Only recently has scholarship begun recovering figures like her.

If You Really Wanted to Read “All That” in English

Realistically, you cannot yet read all ~2000 ghazals in authoritative English translation.

But you could:

• Read selected translations (anthologies or Paul Smith).

• Work through them gradually in Persian with:

  
  

  • A bilingual edition

  • A good Persian dictionary

  • Audio recitations (to capture meter and music)

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Given your interest in meter and sound (as with Rumi’s ramal), you might especially appreciate hearing her ghazals recited in proper classical Persian rhythm.

If you’d like, I can:

• Translate one ghazal (if you provide text),

• Or outline how her ghazal style compares metrically to Hafez’s,

• Or suggest a structured plan to work through her Divān over a year.