Origins of Bahārestān Stories by Jami

Jami, the well-known poet, author and mystic has various poetry and prose works in Persian. One of his valuable books in prose is Bahārestān which is written in a similar style with Sadi’s Gulistān. Though Jami claims that he did not imitate anyone in writing the anecdotes or at least the poetic anecdotes in Bahārestān, a research into the works of previous authors, especially Arabic sources, reveal the origins of Bahārestān anecdotes. The main issue of this paper is whether Jami is inspired by previous works or not. For this purpose, one rowzeh ('garden') of the octad rowzehs ('gardens') of Bahārestān is selected and the source of its anecdotes is looked up in Arabic texts written before Jami. As a result, the root of 21 stories of 43 anecdotes that is half the stories of this garden is found to be previous sources. In other words, it can be asserted that just as it was the literary tradition of that period, Jami too has considered anecdotes written in previous works and many of his stories are rooted in Arabic sources written before him.