Moses and the Shepherd An Structural Approach to the Story of “Moses and the Shepherd” in the Masnavi, including its Story Structure, Sources, and Similar Stories

This article seeks to examine the sources of Moses and the Shepherd and similar stories in both Iranian and foreign literature, particularly two scholastic stories influenced by that story, namely Moses and the Mason, and the Shepherd’s Party. Furthermore it takes a structural approach to investigate the story’s elements such as plot, characters, dialog, point of view, narrative, tone and setting, with a focus on Molavi’s storytelling techniques.    The focus of this paper is the structural aspects rather than the content, as the latter deserves a separate study. However, in order to shed light on the story’s structure, certain symbolic and thematic aspects are discussed as much as necessary. A major part of the paper deals with text and source analysis to serve as an introduction to Foruzanfar’s Sources of the Masnavi Stories as well as new findings in the field of story.