"Mushtari" vs. "Mushtara": A dissertation

For the past week or so I've gotten rather fixated on the matter of
FitzGerald's variant transliterations of the Persian (or Arabic) word
for "Jupiter". So, from page 248 of the book _Edward FitzGerald:
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, A Critical Edition_ (University Press of
Virginia, 1997), here's editor Christopher Decker's take on it:

"Quite a different case is that of 'Mushtara' and 'Mushtari.' The
former spelling appears in the 1859 text only; thereafter the latter
spelling is used. In a letter to Cowell, written in 1867 when
FitzGerald was preparing the second edition, he reveals that Cowell
had suggested the change from 'a' to 'i.' FitzGerald responded
defensively that 'I find it _Mushtara{'}_ in the Dictionary. I
suppose that _{'}_ expresses the _i_ you give instead of _a_. As I
love the _a_ best, could I print it Mushtara{'}, as in Dictionary?'
It is not clear what dictionary FitzGerald is referring to, as neither
Richardson 1806-10, Richardson and Johnson 1829, nor Johnson 1852
reads 'Mushtara{'}.' All three sources spell the word with a final
'i.'"

In the above quote, I have used "{'}" to represent a symbol that to me
suggests a glottal stop or "hamza". It is a bit like an apostrophe
but even closer to the Ancient Greek smooth breathing. Thus, what we
can infer from the letter that Decker quotes, going from FitzGerald to
Edward Byles Cowell, is that FitzGerald saw the word for "Jupiter"
transliterated as "Mushtara" with a hamza sign at the end in some
Persian dictionary, although Decker cannot figure out what dictionary.

Decker further says this:

"The Persian name for the planet Jupiter has two possible
pronunciations, to which 'a single Alif were the clue.' The final
character in the original is called an aleph maksura, or 'broken
aleph.' Normally this letter is pronounced as a long 'i' in Persian.
However, in certain Arabic words (of which this is an example) it is
pronounced 'a.' The folk or uneducated Persian pronunciation would
therefore be 'Mushtari'; the more educated, acknowledging the Arabic
element, would be 'Mushtara.'"

Next to this explanation is a footnote marker, which indicates "I am
indebted to *** Davis for this information." The Acknowledgments
section of the book states that *** Davis "first introduced [Decker]
to the _Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám_ and was later the perfect
correspondent for all [his] inquiries about Persian literature,
language, and culture." I took it that Davis was an expert on the
Persian language. Is the editor wrong when he claims that "Mushtara"
is Arabic and "Mushtari" is Persian? At first that probably seemed
like an interesting idea, but no matter how many additional places I
try to search (mainly on the Internet) for this word, all that I'm
told is that "Jupiter" is "Mushtari", *period*, and there's absolutely
no justification for transliterating it "Mushtara".[1] In fact, I had
initially wondered if the "Mushtara" in the 1859 Quaritch edition was
nothing more than a misprint. Can anyone try to explain the origin of
the transliteration with an "a" at the end? How good was the book's
attempt at an explanation?

[1] I'd have to admit that in my opinion, "Jamshyd" also seems like an
illegitimate transliteration. (And "Jamshýd" is even worse.)

daniel mcgrath
--
Daniel Gerard McGrath, a/k/a "Govende":
for e-mail replace "invalid" with "com"

Developmentally disabled;
has Autism (Pervasive Developmental Disorder),
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder,
& periodic bouts of depression.
[This signature is under construction.]

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