An Unknown Work on Persian Prosody in the Ottoman Territory Šâfiye fi Ma‘refat al-‘Aruz va al-Qâfiye

Prosody is one of the technical discussions in literature, including Persian literature. Various books have been written on this area during the course of centuries, some of which are famous and some others are less known. Among them an edition of a work may be found that has remained unknown for centuries. These kinds of works generally reveal major part of the history of our culture and literature. One example of such works is ‘Šâfiye fi Ma‘refat al-‘Aruz va al-Qâfiye’ which was compiled in the 9th century (AH) in Ottoman territory. This book is in Arabic, but on Persian prosody and the entire extant evidences have been selected from the lexicons, hemistiches and poems of Persian composers. The current study first explores the author’s identity, then describes both general and particular characteristics of the work as well as investigates its place in the history of Persian literature. Thereafter, introduces in detail the unique edition of the work which has been briefly introduced in the list of manuscripts of Nurusmaniye library together with its pictures.