What can be said with certainty about Obeyd-e Zakani hardly fills a paragraph. He was born around 1300 near Qazvin, a city in northeastern Iran. Apparently there were two branches of the Zakani clan: one belonging to the minority sect in Islam, Shiism, and the other to the majority Sunni sect. Zakani appears to have been part of the Sunni branch. A contemporary chronicle written in 1330 mentions him as a writer of “good poetry and celebrated works” and, like some of his kinsmen, as a high official or vizier. He wrote poems and prose works dedicated to various patrons including court functionaries and petty dynasts. These poems tell us that he spent time in the Iranian cities Shiraz, Kerman, Esfahan, as well as in Baghdad. Zakani probably died between 1368 and 1372. Almost as if to compensate for the poverty of biographical detail in his writings, Zakani’s works grew during the three or four centuries after his death. These accretions reveal more about the times in which they were added than Zakani himself. From them we know that the name Nizâm al-Din Ubaydallâh Zâkâni (as the Library of Congress styles it) acted like a catch basin in a sewer. Stray bits of off-color humor, scatology, homoeroticism, and genital-revealing insults that Persian-users never allow in mixed company regularly lodge under his name. It is as if the mere act of attributing dirty writing to Zakani somehow excused breaches of verbal decorum that in the works of other Persian writers were unthinkable. For example, many manuscripts of the writings of the great author of the Golestan, Sa‘di (d. 1292), contain obscene poems and stories that, at the present time, have been banished from the canonical works. By allowing off-color jetsam to float to the surface of literary discourse in Persian, Zakani has served as a licensed and licensing fool over the ages. Being Obeydian indemnifies the urge to swear in Persian, to express what is ordinarily suppressed or censored. Over the centuries, when Persian wits have waxed obscene but, at the same time, have wanted to remain anonymous, they could preface their remarks by writing: “As ‘Obeyd-e Zakani says…”. After all, it is only natural to find waste in a sewer. The attribution allowed them to retain their anonymity, but their witticisms—licensed by Obeyd-e Zakani—would become immortal. But not all the material that found its way into Obeyd’s works is off color. Some of it is radiantly ironic and, as such, can be compared to the works of the great satirists of world literature, writers like Aristophanes, Juvenal, Erasmus, Swift, etc. Zakani was unusual also because he lived a long life at a time when the most innocent remark could prove fatal—especially to men of letters, who, like him, orbited close to the centers of power. Given the delicate nature of the positions he held (courtier, court poet/wit), it is remarkable that Zakani wrote so boldly yet appears to have died a natural death. This longevity made his collected works a roomy refuge for any wit that wanted to make fun of the powerful and survive. "Licensed Fool" focuses on the Obeydian. It offers a close reading of Zakani’s works in the context of those of his predecessors and contemporaries. It also examines how his works have swelled or diminished depending on the tolerance and tastes of Persian users. The book ends with a study of how Zakani’s writings have fared in contemporary Iran, where many of the subjects found in them—the beard, corruption, masturbation, pedophilia, etc.—are sensitive religious, political, and social issues.