The Religious, Literary, and Artistic Use of Broken Letters of the Quran in Persian Literature

Broken letters include a set of alphabetic letters, among which one or more letters among them have the shape or combination of Alif Lām Rā , Alif Lām Mīm, Alif Lām Mīm Rā, Alif Lām Mīm Ṣād, Ḥā Mīm, Ḥā Mīm ʿAin Sīn Qāf, Ṣād, Ṭā Sīn, Ṭā Sīn Mīm, Ṭā Hā, Qāf, Kāf Hā Yā ʿAin Ṣād, Nūn, Yā Sīn, figuring at the beginning of 29 out of the 114 Surahs of the Quran. Despite the mysterious nature of these letters, interpreters and Quran scholars have explained and interpreted these letters and they suggest different ideas in this field. Persian poets and authors have engaged in the creation of original themes by considering the form and feature of broken letters of the Quran and by relying on religious, didactic, expressive and, rhetorical values of broken letters in Quran, while explaining the virtues, concepts, content, instructions, and stories in Surahs, and by using artistic and literary devices of adaptation, insertion, allusion, and so on. and they have well benefited from the use of external signs of these letters by creating excellent combinations, interpretations, and images. Therefore, by incorporating these images, themes, interpretations, and combinations made of broken letters of the Quran and Persian alphabetic letters with the flavor of equivoque and pun and other fine literary devices, they have added to its grace and elegance. This study has tried to indicate the role of these letters in creation of interpretations and themes of Persian literature by presenting poetic and prose evidences of common and mixed artistic, literary, and religious structures and applications in both categories of letters in Persian literature, while taking a brief look at the interpreters, Quran scholars, and religious researchers’ views of the broken letters of the Quran.