Prophet of Thieves

The book relates the tale of letters written by Mohammad Hassan Qarani Zeidabadi, poet and
humourist of the Qajar era and a Sufi religious leader. As Parizi’s account of the time reveals,
a prophet should come. In a time when thieves roamed the city and village freely; no caravan
would reach the city unscathed; no city would survive the onslaught of thieves and its
governor’s horse would be stolen; in the marketplace (bazaar), the thieves would beguile the
sheriff into sleep and purloin the goods from shops; no rural farmer would be spared from
tyranny of petty stewards in search of their harvest the share of the ruler; no minority’s life,
women and children would scape the violations under any pretext; such a time would call for
a prophet who would speak in the language of the thieves to teach them the language of
brigandage. Bastani Parizi’s humour provides an account of those times in an epistolary
manner addressed by the much-anticipated prophet, to his followers. The lowly riff-raff
appears in the story as different social classes in cities (vagabonds, brigands, and rogues); out
among the tribal regions, they are depicted as the vulgar and uncultured pastoralists, and
other times, as thieves of the roads. The rhetoric the prophet of thieves opts to guide his
followers is the language of the book which is the language Bastani Parizi uses in his other
works. The early and high Qajar era, from late Fathali Shah to Nassereddin Shah of Qajar is
the time when prophet of thieves lived in the attire of a cleric as well as a soldier. The prophet
reproaches the despotic rulers in guiding the nomadic tribes, exposing the deceitful formal
cleric, and the notables tacitly supporting the tyranny of the powerful; cast in their own attire,
he belies their way of conduct as violation of the way of God and His Apostle. His effective
device is his pen; “his arms being his literary humour; espousing the side of the evil, he
perpetuates the divine forces and characters. A tyrannical ruler becomes his follower and
disciple; he eulogizes all vices and depravities from the eyes of his character as a prophet of
thieves. The prophet disproves the despot through proving his despicable manners.”