The Dissolution of the Character of Ayyar in the Story of Hossein Kurd-e Shabestari

The stories about heroes and Ayyars are the most popular oral stories, which have often been written a long time after their emergence and narrating. “Abumuslemnama”, “Hamzaname” and “Samak-e Ayyar” are some of the oldest stories, and “Hossein Kurd-e Shabestari” is almost the newest sample of these stories. “Hossein Kurd-e Shabestari” is one of the stories that has been narrated during the Safavid era, and it has been considered as the continuation of Ayyari tradition and oral narration of stories. However, the analysis of the story of “Hossein Kurd-e Shabestari” shows that the character of Ayyar in this story has significant superficial and behavioral differences with previous stories. Using descriptive and analytical methods, this paper aims to probe these differences. The results of this research shows that “Hossein Kurd” was a common, maverick hero who did not have any heroic behavioral delicacies of Ayyars like Samak, and unlike the previous characters of Ayyars who were examples of conscious, educated, articulate and knowledgeable heroes, he is an illiterate hero who does not possess the privilege of acuteness, prudence and the skills of eloquence. In other words, the results of this paper show that in the popular literature stories, the character of a conscious hero has been replaced with the illiterate hero who has no awareness and rationality.