سلمان ساکت

This study introduced an ancient book called Al-Mo'tabar fi Ilm al-Ta’bir, written in Persian and probably in the West of Iran. Ibrahim bin Ismail bin Ibrahim Bakri Zanjani Shirazi (died at 683 AH in Shiraz), the Shafe’i Muhaddith (scholar of hadiths of Shafe’i sect), wrote this dream book in 666 AH and dedicated it to Khajeh Shams al-Din Mohammad Joveini, a renowned Ilkhanate minister. So far, only one copy of this work is known, which, according to the textual evidence, is probably the author's copy produced in 666 AH. This unique copy is kept in Amcazade Hüseyin Pasha Library in Turkey, the microfilm of which is preserved in the Central Library of Tehran University. In addition to introducing the manuscript of the work, this study focused the author and his religion, his sources for writing this book, the structure of the book, and its significance. Some of the author's sources used for compiling this work are Al-Ghaderi fi al-Ta’bir, Al-Tahbir fi Ilm al-Ta’bir, Ta’bir al-Ro’ya by ibn Qutayba, Ta'bir al-Ro'ya by Artemidorus Ephesius (translated by Hunayn ibn Ishaq).

Language-typology research into the works produced in different periods or in certain regions can provide valuable insights if based on two key principles. First is frequency, which refers to the consistent use of a word or phrase in other texts from the same geographical area, substantiated by its presence in multiple texts. The second principle involves identifying words and phrases unique to a particular geographical area and not found in texts from other regions. This paper aims to examine several words from the abridged version of Anis al-Ṭālebin wa ʿUddat al-Sālekin, with a view to establishing a linguistic typology. As this text originates from Transoxiana, it reflects the dialect of that region. By examining these words and comparing them with other texts produced in Transoxiana, we can reveal the importance of understanding linguistic typology for the accurate understnding of words and phrases. Through an analysis of the words used in Anis al-Ṭālebin wa ʿUddat al-Sālekin, it becomes evident that certain words are exclusive to the texts produced in Transoxiana, sometimes inaccurately defined in existing dictionaries.

The discovery of original source materials in ancient texts is highly significant for scholars. Revisers often rely on secondary sources in addition to older and more authoritative text versions when correcting and annotating literary works. These secondary sources encompass a range of materials, including translations, summaries, contemporaneous texts, and works utilized by the original author. One such important secondary source is the Persian text "Kanz al-Ma'āref", which provides insights into the Barmakid dynasty. This work was written by Abd al-Jalil ibn Yaḥyā Yazdi and presented to Shāh Shudja' upon completion in central Iran in the 8th century. Two copies of Kanz al-Ma'āref, numbered 1342 and 1351, are housed in the National Library of France, while another copy is held in the Āref Ḥekmat Library in Medina though currently inaccessible. Beyond its historical significance in enhancing our understanding of the Barmakids, Kanz al-Ma'āref contains valuable textual passages that can be leveraged for analysis and correction of ancient verse and prose texts. The author incorporated various literary sources and quoted verses and phrases, making it a rich resource for scholars. This essay presented examples of such cases categorized into three groups: instances where the Kanz al-Ma'āref recording was more accurate than the corrected version; cases where one or more corrections of the original texts were accurate, while the Kanz al-Ma'āref recording was inaccurate; and situations where both the Kanz al-Ma'āref recording and the published correction(s) were correct, but the Kanz al-Ma'āref version was considered superior.

Undoubtedly, Gisu-drāz (1322/1323-1424 AH), the mystic scientist of Chashtieh dynasty in the subcontinent, has used some sources in his Maktubāt. The recognition of these sources, on the one hand, reveals Gisu-drāz's intellectual treasures to us; on the other hand, introduces the works attracting the attention of the elders of Cheshtiyyeh at that time. In the only stoneprint of Gisu-drāz's Maktubāt, there is a letter adopted from the Seven Letters, existing in Sadi of Sharaf al-Din-e Manyari's Maktubāt (1263?-1381 AH). In this paper, the full text of this letter (i.e. the third letter of Gisu-drāz's Maktubāt) has been analyzed and, in the end, it has been shown that this letter is a combination of the twelfth, fourth, second, fifteenth, nineteenth, tenth, and sixteenth letters of Sadi's Maktubāt. It is also possible that Gisu-drāz has combined Sheikh-e Manyari's Seven Letters with direct quotations and his own additions due to their common area of life, simultaneity with Sharaf al-din-e Manyari, and the study of Sadi's Maktubāt. Then, he has sent it to one of his disciples in his own name. Through this research, one may regard Maktubāt-e Sadi as one of the sources of Gisu-drāz's Maktubāt, where this human has made the most of it without mentioning this name. In addition, this influence can be considered as a proof of the popularity of Maktubāt-e Sadi a short while after its writing.

Jalaloddin Davani's Persian treatises, which have influenced the mystical literature after him, are among the most important works of the Timurid period. Therefore having documentary, revised and complete print of them is essential. So far, most of Davani's treatises have been published at least once in Iran, but there are methodological defects in the corrections provided. Defects in the printed texts are mainly due to neglecting the stage of scientific codicology. To perform scientific text correction, it is necessary that the editor, in addition to following the criteria of "editing the text" and "researching the work", conducts historical and comparative codicology of the text. If the editor obtains the oldest manuscript of a work based on historical codicology and then identifies the most correct and complete manuscripts of the text based on comparative codicology, his codicology can be considered scientific. A review of the Davani's printed Persian treatises shows that all of them lack historical codicology and without complete comparative codicology and are often based on low-quality versions, so that following stages of their text correction have been defected. In fact, the selection of subsequent (or undated) and incorrect and incomplete copies has led to various problems and imperfections in the procedure editing of treatises. So the author of this article points out the necessity of the critical correction of printed treatises by explaining methodological defects and codicological shortcomings of them, in addition to introducing Davani's new contemporary manuscripts.

Jalaloddin Davani who has written many books, treatises, and letters, is one of the great scholars of the Shiraz school of thought during the Timurid period. Considering his influential attitude in the dynamics and excellence of Persian mystical literature, it is important to know about his Persian works which often include mysticism, philosophy, and theology. Obviously, before judging his opinions and beliefs, one should investigate the authenticity of his works. Therefore, the present research aims at the critical codicology of Persian works attributed to Davani to determine their authenticity. Reviewing the catalogue of manuscripts in the libraries shows that, in most catalogues, there are many mistakes in the title of Davani's Persian works. These bibliographic mistakes have been repeated in the works of many subsequent authors. To write the paper First, based on the Union Catalogue of Iran Manuscripts (Fankha), the titles of all Persian works attributed to Davani were identified. Then, using his Persian manuscripts and other sources, the authenticity of his Persian works in the catalogue of manuscripts was examined. In this study, through the comparative investigation of Davani's Persian manuscripts in Iran, some of our codicological and bibliographic information about Davani's Persian works have been corrected, especially the title and number of his authentic and non-authentic works. The result of the current critical codicology showed that Davani has written at least twenty original Persian works. In addition, according to the entries of Davani's Persian works in Fankha, at least nine non-original Persian works have been attributed to him. Thus, at least nine entries of Davani's Persian works in Iran seem incorrect.

The present article attempts to introduce a lesser-known work called Kanz al-Maʿārif, written in Persian and in central Iran, and highlight its significance in a better and deeper understanding of the Barmakīd Dynasty. The book is entirely dedicated to ʾĀl-i Barmak (The Barmak family) and the biographies of the most important figures in this dynasty, and is authored by ʿAbd al-Jalīl ʾibn Yaḥyā ʾibn ʿAbdul Jalīl ʾibn Muḥammed ʾibn ʿAbdulbāqī Yazdī. He began writing the book in 762 A.H./1360 A.D. and dedicated it to Shāh Shujāʿ Dīn Muẓaffarī once it was finished. Three copies of this book are known to exist, with the two older copies numbered 1342 and 1351 being kept in the national library of France. The latter was transcribed in 926 A.H./1520 A.D., while the former’s transcription date remains unknown. The third copy belongs to the ʿĀrif-i Ḥikmat Library in Medina and was transcribed in the 12th century A.H./18th century A.D. In this article, in addition to introducing the author and the copies of the work, its connections with other books particularly written about the Barmakīds and with the narratives mentioned in historical and literary accounts regarding this family are analyzed. Through this analysis, the merits and significances of the work compared with others in understanding the Barmakīds is revealed.

Anis al-Talebin and Oddah al-Salekin is a precious book written in Persian, but has not been corrected so far. Its value lies in the fact that its writer was a direct student of Khajeh Baha’ al-Din, the establisher of Naqshbandiyeh dynasty. This study examined this book in detail and the concise book of Khajeh Mohammad Parsa. It compared the linguistic and literary features of the two books. This study examined the differenced under four titles: 1. Deletion; 2. Addition; 3. Transposition; 4. Changes and differences in recording words. It showed that the significance of the concise text and examining on is plural: 1) The text is the first one that deals with the life of Khajeh Baha al-Din, the founder of the Naqshbandiyeh, and the author himself closely and directly saw the life of Khajeh Baha al-Din; 2) This work is important in terms of linguistic, literary, historical and social values; 3) The concise version is an independent of the detailed version, so it deserves to be examined as an independent work and be corrected.

Immutability or slight immutability is one of the characteristics mentioned in researchers' definitions of parables. This feature has been expressed by researchers in two ways. Some do not allow any change in proverbs And some have set limits to change proverbs. This article intends to study the category of changing proverbs by examining the proverbs of selected prose texts up to the eighth century AH. In this research, 27 Persian prose texts have been studied in order to extract proverbs. Then, similar proverbs have been studied verbatim and content to examine the patterns of change in the historical course of the texts. The results of this study show that proverbs in the historical course of texts have undergone changes, contrary to the definitions of scholars. Among the proverbs extracted from the studied texts, 74 proverbs have more or less changed. The methods of change in these proverbs in order of frequency are: Changes in grammatical construction, rhetorical changes, changes in words, increase or decrease of words and syntactic shifts.

One of current method between authors of Persian prose texts is the use proverb in their works. These proverbs not only have a rhetorical function, but also play an important role in cohesion. This article intends to show the role of proverbs in the coherence of different texts by study Persian prose texts up to the 8th century A.H. Thus After reading 25 Persian prose texts, their proverbs were collected, then was studied based on the Halliday and Hasan's theory from the perspective of grammatical, lexical, connective and semantic coherence. Results show that among grammatical elements, substitution, among the lexical elements, repetition, among conjunctives, additional conjunct, among semantic elements, confirmation of meaning have a higher frequency than other elements. Also semantic elements have a greater role in text coherence than other factors. Furthermore study of cohesive elements in various texts of different centuries suggests that the frequency and impact of each of these elements in different centuries is almost equal or there is a slight difference. This matter reflects the inherent characteristics of proverbs in text cohesion.

One of the less recognized heritages of Sufi order Kubrawiyya Ferdowsiyeh is a work which was published using lithography in Agra in 1321 A.H. including three short epistles named Rāhat Al-Gholoub, Vafāt Nāmeh and Vasiat Nāmeh. Two first epistles are directly related to Sharafoddin-e Manyari (661?-782 A.H.), because Rāhat Al-Gholoub is one of the utterances left by Sharafoddin that his thoughts, Sufi order Kubrawiyya Ferdowsiyeh and the teachings of its spiritual guides can be found in. Vafāt Nāmeh is also a report of the last day of Sheykh-e Manyari’s life, written by one of the particular novice of Sheykh called Zeyn-e Badr-e Arabi (death: After 782 A.H.) and in some aspects is one of the most valuable Persian Sufi texts in the subcontinent. Third epistle is also indirectly related to Sharafoddin-e Manyari, because it is Najiboddin-e Ferdowsi’s (death: 732 A.H.) testament who was the master of Sheykh-e Manyari and it is very important for the scientific study of the opinions and thoughts of Sharafoddin and the identification of his intellectual sources and influences. This research tried to introduce this lithography and three epistle published and show their importance recognizing better Sharafoddin-e Manyari and Sufi order Kubrawiyya Ferdowsiyeh.

The book of Khayyam's quatrains and Persian Khayyamans is the last work that has been published about measuring and evaluating Khayyam's quatrains and recognizing his original quatrains and separating them from the quatrains attributed to him. In this book, after introducing and criticizing various criteria that Iranian and foreign scholars have used in the last one hundred and twenty years to identify Khayyam's original quatrains, new and innovative methods have been presented. This method is based on three methods of identifying and evaluating ancient sources and paying attention to the principle of repetition and frequency, refining Khayyam's quatrains from the quatrains of other poets attributed to him, and the principle of observing the four rhymes in composing a quatrain in Khayyam's time. In the following, based on these three criteria, 20 original quatrains of Khayyam have been identified and introduced. Also, the 49 quatrains that are most likely to be attributed to Khayyam have been included in the category of "probable quatrains" and finally it has been shown that the attribution of 51 quatrains, some of which are very famous and have always been considered as Khayyam's indisputable quatrains, are rejected or at least considered as suspicious. This valuable work, which is the result of three decades of focused and continuous research by Ali Mir Afzali, is briefly introduced in this article.

As researchers of the handwritten versions assume, reader of such texts tend to attach and add their understanding of the stories, statements or poems in the margin of the texts. Later, these attachments are added to the main text by some writers. These additions are either intentional and unintentional; the former is generally introduced either by those who intend to rewrite the manuscript for themselves or by those who were both writers and correctors of the handwritten texts. This has been manifested in stone prints of the Maktubat-e-Sadi as the most important Persian work by Sharaf al-dîn-e Maneri (1263 ? - 1380).  In stone prints of this work, the writers have added some verses to the text which have never been in original handwritten versions. The authors of present research have identified the verses added to the main text and indicated how these verses are linked to Maktubat-e-Sadi. Accordingly, the attached verses can be divided into three classes: first the verses by lecturers who lived prior to Maneri, second, verses of speakers who lived after Sharaf al-dîn and third, verses from some anonymous poets. We assume that irrespective of verses having no links to the main text, other added verses in stone prints are related to the Maktubat-e-Sadi for six reasons: 1) emphasizing and confirming meaning, 2) illuminating the Text, 3) completing and complementing the poems' meanings, 4) rendering the meaning in verse, 5) Meaning interpretation and 6) simile and idiomatic expressions.

This study aims to introduce an ancient literary work known as Zad Al-Moghvin, a book written in the Persian language in the Transoxiana region. The author of this work, on the subject of ethics and sermons and most likely written in the twelfth or thirtieth century, is Mohammad ibn Mohammad Al-Nasr, known as the Ghazi, who lived in Vobkent. Only three manuscripts of this work are available, one of which is kept at the National Archive of Afghanistan and was written in 1485, and the other at the Library, Museum, and Document Center of I.R.Iran's Parliament and written in 1618 and third manuscripts is kept at the the Salar Jung – Museum and Library and was written in 1646. In addition to introducing the manuscripts, the author, his religion, the sources used in the writing of this book, the text structure, and the reasons for its significance are explained in this study. Some of the sources that the author has used in writing this book are Tanbih Al-Ghafilin Samarqandi, Maqazi Mohammad ibn Eshagh, Zad Al-Abedin, Tafseer Anwar, Kitab Al-Anwar, and most likely, Tafsir Miraj.

In the library of the Majlis, there is a Safinah belonging to the tenth century AH, which after the Jung 14456 of Ganjbakhsh Library (probably belonging to the late eighth century AH), is the second collection much similar with the Safinah of Yahyā Tawfiq (dated 754 AH). Through the editing of this Safinah, the authors found out that although Mir Afzali in the book “ Khayyam's quatrains in ancient sources” used the Jung number 14456 of Ganjbakhsh library, but among the quatrains attributed to Khayyam in that Jung, six quatrains are still not found in his book. Also in Yahyā Tawfiq's Safinah, two quatrains of Khayyam or the ones attributed to him, with a different handwriting, but without mentioning his name, are available and are introduced for the first time in this article; In addition, although the Safinah number 534th Library of the Majlis was provided in the tenth century AH, but because this Safinah is also the third compilation of the two ancient Jungs and while preserving their original structure, the validity of the ten quatrains recovered from this Bayaz should also be considered as the same verses mentioned in the previous two Safinah and should pay serious attention to Khayyam or similar to Khayyam's quatrains in this Jung. Therefore, the present article tries to offer the recovered quatrains of these three Safinah as a supplement to the book of Khayyam's quatrains in ancient sources and to check the accuracy of their attribution to Khayyam by using the sources.

This article surveys the evolution of research on Siyasatnama from the beginning to the end of 2019 while analyzing their shortcomings to address these questions: 1. What approaches have been adopted in studies on Siyasatnama from the beginning (1963) until 2019? 2. Which approaches are more frequent and what is the reason behind this popularity? 3. What factors have prompted a shift in research approach to Siyasatnama at different periods? A total of 209 articles in this field were subjected to analysis to investigate their content, sources, approach, strengths and weaknesses. Also, the impact of previous sources and the inclusion of new and original points were taken into account. According to their frequency, they embraced political, comparative, religious, theoretical, descriptive, historical, critical, literary, biographical, and codicological approaches, respectively. Among the factors underlining the evolution of the approach in articles, Abbas Iqbal’s version of Siyasatnama in 1941, the book of Khajeh Nizam al-Mulk Tusi and the discussion of political ideas of Iranshahri in Siyasatnama’s in the 1990s as well as the sociopolitical atmosphere of Iran in the second half of the nineties could be mentioned. In the results section, the frequency of each approach and their analysis, the temporal distribution of approaches in various decades, and the factors associated with the evolution of approaches and their critique are discussed. In the final section, which is dedicated to an analysis of research flaws, the main criticisms leveled against research on Siyasatnama are proposed.

Risaleh Zikryeh is one of the famous works of Mir Seyed Ali Hamedani who is known as Ali Sani and Shah-e Hamedan, one of the most popular mystics in eighth century. Risaleh Zikryeh has been published several times independently or in addition to other his works. Through edition of the Zaad-e Akhirat, the authors have found a manuscript belongs to the Leiden University Library (number 600 from the Warner collection), that consists of several works including Risaleh Zikryeh as the most important one. The date of this manuscript is 811 A.H. which is close to the time of Mir Seyed Ali Hamedani (714-786 A.H.). So, this manuscript is the oldest complete version of this work according to the different catalogues. Two most important corrections of Risaleh Zikryeh are edited by Mohammad Riaz and Fereydoun Taghizadeh. The first one is published in Life and Works of Mir Seyed Ali Hamedani and the other one is published independently. The authors introduced earlier editions and also compared this manuscript with both mentioned editions and indicated the importance of the Leiden's manuscript, especially in the edition of the Risaleh Zikryeh.

Qurrat al ‘Ayn is one of the classical Persian texts which compares Persian proverbs with Arabic proverbs. It also compares these proverbs with the Quran verses. This book has been edited and published based on two manuscripts; namely, the manuscript of the University of Tehran (1462) and the manuscript of Tabriz National Library (1531) by Amin Pasha Ejlali more than forty years ago. This study illustrates the imperfections of the previous edition by showing the differences between the old manuscripts and Ejlali’s edition. It also ascertains the necessity of a new edition of this manuscript. Editors of this new edition have used older handwritten versions of this book, like those of Homaei’s (1253), Fatih Library’s (1322), Mara’shi Library’s (1496), as well as two manuscripts of Ayasofya Library (1492 & 16th century). They have shown that choosing less important manuscripts, not recording the base manuscript’s words and even recording wrong or incomplete recording of the manuscripts used, are the most important drawbacks of the previous edition. Availability of older important manuscripts is another reason for the establishment of a new edition. This new edition proves that some of anecdotes and Persian or Arabic poems were missed in the older edition and also there are way better records to be published.