Periodizing History of Persian Rhetorics

In historical studies, period is a regulative concept. It helps historians of arts and sciences classify historical information. In most literary histories, periodization is the most essential basis of division. Periodization also was applied in literary studies like rhetorics. For example, Shawqi Zaif has divided the history of Islamic-Arabic rhetorics into periods. In this article, we are to propose a schema for periodization of history of Persian rhetorics. System of Persian rhetorics was originally derived from Arabic rhetorics but the quality and quantity of adaptation in different periods wasn’t the same. In some cases, Persian rhetoricians came up with important innovations in periodization and sometimes they made use of rhetorics of the other civilizations for instance Indian rhetorics in order to study aesthetical aspects of Persian literature. Base on the historical era they were living in and the similarities of their approaches, we can distinguish four different periods: 1. Localization Period: This period, as the first period of Persian rhetorics, includes the most important books of Persian rhetorics: Tarjoman al-balaqa, Hadaeq al-sehr, and Al-mo’jam fi ma’air ash’ar al-ajam; 2. Interpretation and Imitation Period: Most of rhetoric books in this period are interpretations of previous period; 3. Pseudo- Indian Period: In this period, a few rhetoricians try to apply Indian rhetorics to Persian literature; 4. Scholastic Period: The last period is a contemporary one and includes new rhetorical textbooks.