The Role of Addressing in Quatrains of Afzal al-Din Kashani

More than half of the quatrains attributed to Baba Afzal Kashani, a high rank quatrain-composer among Persian poets, begin with self-addressing, or addressing nonhumans, God, prophet, beloved, opponent, reader and etc. as well as addressing human beings from the promise of the Creator. The audience is sometimes paid attention in the middle of the poem. Besides, to get his purpose, the poet applies imperative and preventive sentences to inform his audience using enthusiasm, avoidance and reproach. Providing exact statistics, the present study is to show what is addressed by the poet, the times, the forms, the reasons for addressing and its benefits in Baba Afzal Kashani's poems, and to compare his quatrains with the works of Khaghani and Zahir, two of his contemporary masters and Abd al-Rahman Jami, of the great quatrain-composers to reveal that his art sometimes overtakes theirs in using most of addressing methods. Also, the profound influence of the poet's teaching role on the influence of this method in his poetry and the effect of this eminent stylistic feature on the prevalence of Afzal's quatrains will be pointed out.