Editing Several Ancient Persian Couplets Based onBakharzisDomyat al-Qasr

IntroductionSome of ancient Persian literature is hidden in texts which were written in Arabic in the early Islamic centuries. This heritage can be an interesting research area about ancient Persian literature.Insome of those Arabic texts, there are traditional Persian poems, proverbs and phrases Persian which are translated into Arabic by some authors.Unfortunately, many editors of these ancient texts were not completely familiar with the Persian language and therefore, they were not able to edit the Persian poems or phrases contained in these books correctly.In this article, I have tried to correct some of the ancient Persian coupletsthat were mistakenlyeditedinDomyat al-Qasr.
MethodologyIn the first stage, all Persian poems were identified and extractedfrom the book of Domyat al-Qasr. Then, we compared two different editions of this book. In the next step, we collated the text of these two editions with two manuscriptsof this book: One of those manuscripts in the French National Library, and the other one in the Library of the Islamic Parliament. In the process of textual criticism, the correct form of the coupletswas obtained. After that, we have tried to find the poets of these anonymous poems and in those cases we succeed, we referred to the Persian sources of these poems and expressed their differences.
ResultWe found that some Persian poems of this book have not come from any other sourcesandpoems from later sources are not immune to distortion. We also found that some of these poems have unique features that can be considered in the field of Persian literature and phonology. Another finding of this research is the emphasis on the fact that Persian poems remaining in ancient Arabic texts have had a greater chance not to be changed bythe scribes.
ConclusionOne of the methods of deeper understanding and studying of Persian literature involves searching for texts that Iranians wrote in Arabic in the early Islamic centuries. Many Persian manuscripts including ancient Persian poetries have disappeared repeatedly during the horrific events, such as the Mongol invasion. One way to rebuild these works is searching and retrieving them from ancient texts, which are generally written in Arabic. This article shows that ancient Persian poems are not necessarily found in ancient Persian texts, but parts of Iranian culture should be sought within ancient Arabic texts.