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To say that “The Adventures of Amir Hamza” or “Hamzanama” is a text of critical importance to Indo-Islamic and global culture would still be an underestimation. Generations of children marveled at the epos; generation of researchers picked the text to pieces. A signature work of the dastan genre, the text features adventure, bawdiness, magic, love, war, and above all, a multitude of characters.
The eponymous character stands out as an epitome of everything elegized in epos – and at the same time, a distinct and realistic personality. Indeed, Amir Hamza is a character in which multiple other characters’ attribute is embedded: he is a trickster, a warrior, a hero, a spiritual person, a lover, and a mature man; as his personality evolves, Hamza demonstrates a life of a real person in a fictional setting, which determines his not entirely epic role in the epos. To support this claim, the following paper presents an analysis of the character’s evolution.
Among the analysts and reviewers, there is a general appraisal of the character of Hamza as a charismatic personality that intoxicates the young reader with the spirit of adventure. A possible explanation of such catchiness and charm is the feasibility of the character, the touch of true-to-life authenticity that a reader can relate to. There are some distinct features and traits of Hamza’s personality that make such a relation possible.
Firstly, Amir Hamza’s birth is prophetically marked as that of a man to conquer the world and achieve unsurpassed greatness. The prophecy sets the tone to the whole text and gives a clear understanding that Hamza is going to be involved in heroic acts. Upon further analysis, one can distinguish some traits that are typical and atypical for an epic hero. Hamza establishes himself firmly as the man alluded in the prophecy: he is a courageous fighter, he is fantastically strong, faithful, and handsome. His lovability and, consequently, multiple relationships with women, deserve a special space.
The heroic looks and charm get Hamza into various love affairs and marriages – as per the rules of the genre. According to the same rules, there must be a single true love for life, which the hero finds embodied by the woman par excellence, Mehr Nigar (Lakhnavi and Bilgrami 105-109). That said, Amir Hamza appears to be a compilation of various Eastern stories and legends.
Yet, as the text evolves, Amir acts strange at times; the reader gets the impression that Hamza might not always be explicitly and essentially good. Such behavior, atypical for an epic hero, is featured in the episodes where Amir and his allies engage in cruel and not entirely moral actions; besides, Hamza sometimes comes across as a self-interested and egoistic personality. At times like these, he is an unheroic hero – which is, arguably, what makes him so real. More plausibly, the main reason for Amir’s tangibility is the evolution of the personality that is visible in the episodes discussed further.
Amir Hamza does not, in fact, start his life as a hero. Nor is he the actual trickster – Amar Ayyar is. The episodes of Amar’s trickery take up the best part of Book 1 where he messes up with people’s minds and pranks them quite cruelly at times. Such episodes are the bawdiest, as a rule: they feature quite an amount of irritated bowels and purgatives (47). At that, Hamza does not appear to be a hero.
Despite his urge to protect Amar from due punishment, he is a young happy-go-lucky who is just as pleased with Amar’s tricks as the trickster himself. On the other hand, the episodes with Hamza repeatedly defending Amar speaks of him as a person willing to help the needy. This feature is at the embryonic stage as yet, but it is visible: Hamza rescues their Mulla from the destructive effect of the purgative by sending for the buttermilk that heals him (47).
Despite the nobility, his disagreeable features – expressed through his deeds – are also worth considering. The episode with the fight where Amir sends out his son Amar is not entirely attributable to a hero (363).
Another episode it that of Aadi raping a twelve-year-old from the foes’ camp. Hamza appears to be outraged at first, but somehow the matter is dropped, leaving a nagging sensation of blatant cruelty not punished as the epic genre would. In relation to this, the matter worth discussing is that the traits demonstrated by Hamza are not heroic – rather, they are human. Every human has their dark sides, lame excuses, and forbidden thoughts. At that, Hamza is no exception. As a result, even before his 18-year-long quest to the mount Qaf, Amir Hamza is depicted as a complex personality, rather than a trite compilation of heroic features.
After leaving the human world, Amir was put to fight in the prophetic war on the mount Qaf. His heroism is evident in his battles; apart from that, he evolves to finally become a complete person. The realm of the supernatural, at that, makes Hamza the instrument to fulfil the prophecy – and make him the conqueror of worlds, the absolute hero. Helping King Shahpal regain his kingdom, Amir Hamza becomes the ideal of manhood (336).
There are, however, two more dimensions of the quest. Firstly, Hamza’s contradictory nature is revealed, at times powerful – at times, lame. Helping the weak and wronged (the old and frail, the enslaved, the impoverished, etc.), he represents the ethics and values of “a good person,” not “a good warrior.” At the same time, his personality becomes more realistic in that he demonstrates human traits, which are not always agreeable.
The impression Hamza produces is exactly the opposite of the villain Afrasiyab – who, despite being the villain in the dastan, is capable of kind gestures. It is possible to say that an archetype of an amiable villain (and a despicable hero) is rooted within the dastan in these two characters. Thirdly, and more importantly still, Amir’s quest in the realm of spirituality hints his evolution as a faithful, god-abiding person. The epos, therefore, depicts Amir Hamza as a hero – but as a humanized hero, a real person in a fictionalized historical setting. Hamza’s role, therefore, is to demonstrate the extraordinary capabilities of a real person: a hero, a lover, a person helping those in need, a sinner, a believer – and above all, a human.
To conclude, Amir Hamza has come a long way to evolve. His changing personality renders a life of a person, which can be seen through his virtues and sins. Propelled by his entirely human charm, the epic value of Hamza as a hero is hard to overestimate.
Works Cited
Lakhnavi, Ghalib, and Abdullah Bilgrami. The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Special abridged edition. Trans. Musharraf Ali Farooqi. New York, NY: Modern Library, 2012. Print.
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