‘=e’ of Definiteness in Classical Persian Texts

Nowadays, One of the signs of definiteness in Persian language is ‘=e’ which is added to the end of the noun or noun phrase, such as asb=e rā kharidam. All of the grammarians and the linguists believe that it is specific to spoken language, and the examples which they have mentioned belong to today’s spoken language and the oldest of them does not go farther than Sadeq Hedayat’s works. In this article, we have identified the oldest examples of the use of this construction in the poetic and prose texts in Persian literature of the sixth century A.H. and later. Then we have shown that there are examples in the poetry of the poets of Samarkand and Neyshabur, Suzani and Attar, those who lived in the sixth century A.H.