Raz (راز)

A song inspired by the poetry of Jahan-Malek Khatun (c. 1320–1392)

Who Was Jahan-Malek Khatun?

If you've never heard her name before, you're not alone.

Jahan-Malek Khatun was a Persian princess and poet who lived during the fourteenth century (the 1300s CE), in the era that followed the Mongol invasions of Iran.

She belonged to the Injuid dynasty of Shiraz, a city that would also become home to Hafez only a generation later.

What makes her extraordinary isn't only that she wrote poetry.

It's that so much of it survived.

Her divan contains well over one thousand poems—ghazals, qasidas, rubaiyat and other forms—making her one of the most prolific women poets in the entire Persian literary tradition.

Yet outside Persian-speaking circles, her name is still surprisingly little known.

A Woman Writing Like This in the 1300s

Perhaps the greatest surprise is not that Jahan-Malek Khatun wrote.

It is how she wrote.

Her poetry is intimate.

Passionate.

Fearless.

She speaks openly of longing, separation, desire, grief and love—not as abstract philosophical ideas, but as deeply lived emotions.

Reading her today reminds us that medieval Persian civilization was far richer and more layered than many modern stereotypes suggest.

The existence of a woman whose lyrical voice could flourish, be copied, preserved and eventually reach us across seven centuries tells its own story about the intellectual and artistic world she inhabited.

Every poem like hers expands our picture of Iranian history.

The Lyrics

A Small Mistake I Decided to Keep

There is something I noticed only after the recording was finished.

While preparing the subtitles for this video, I realized that, in the final repetition, I had unconsciously blended two different verses together.

Instead of singing the original line,

دردیست مرا در دل و گفتن نتوانم

I sang

دردیست گرانمایه و گفتن نتوانم

It wasn't intentional.

There was no artistic concept behind it.

I simply became so immersed in the poem that two different images merged into one while I was singing.

By the time I discovered it, the recording was finished.

I thought about recording it again.

Then I decided not to.

Because something unexpected had happened.

The accidental line—

دردیست گرانمایه

"It is a precious pain."

—isn't what Jahan-Malek Khatun wrote.

But it became part of my own encounter with her poetry.

Sometimes mistakes don't erase beauty.

Sometimes they reveal another one.

Why I Called It Raz

The word راز means secret.

In these verses, the poet returns again and again to something that refuses to become language.

A sorrow that cannot be spoken.

A love that cannot be confessed.

A pearl too precious to be threaded into words.

That is the raz.

Not a hidden fact.

A feeling that language cannot fully hold.