Study of the self-written biographies in the Qajar era by contemplating the definition of modern autobiography

Persian biographies have long been one of the biographical references and important literary, historical and social resources. The Persian biographies flourished after the Safavi era, and the kings specially interested in this. The expansion of the publishing industry and interest of the Qajar princes to the writing of biography, led to a significant increase in the number of biographies in the thirteenth century, toward the previous.  Following the developments of the Qajar period on the eve of Constitutional Revolution, special evolution and transformation were created in different literary forms. In this research, an important chapter of the biographies, namely, the author's own biography has been discussed. In this research, the Self-written biographies in the Qajar era were compared by the definition of modern autobiography. Addition expressing the importance of this type of writing; were studied the Content and motivation, as well as the type of narration and style of writing it. The results indicate that the position of the author's biography in the biography, And manifestations such as, attention to detail, express of emotions and inner desires, and even the author's mistakes, as well as the interest of the authors of this period to the narrative of the first-person and to saying "I"; is Features that have been closer the Self-written biographies in the Qajar era, to the definition of a new autobiography. Place: The position of the self-writing section varies in different directions; the evidence suggests that during the Qajar period some authors who have inserted their biography in to their writing, preferred that this section, like any other biography, is in the text of the biographies (and generally the same alphabetical rows of the biographies). This suggests that there are still compliments and indirect writing in this period; However, the number of people who have devoted a separate part (at the end or at the beginning of the biographies) to own biography, is noteworthy. Attention to details: writing the details, mention the author's inner states, refer to the social and political conditions surrounding the author and the emotional and psychological prose, are from the signs modern autobiography in the self-writings of this period, and have not been common in the past. In the past, reference to the maternal lineage was not so common, and it was also very seldom about the biographies authors. Following the developments in the Qajar period, paying attention to details such as the ratio of the mother was common in the biographies. It is also noteworthy that the Indian authors have focused more on the details in their self-writings. Including that they often explicitly have referred to the name of their professors; whereas, most of the Iranian writer, in their self-writings, had a general refer to their education, and they have seldom mentioned their masters by writing the name. The style of writing: The style of self-writings in the biographies is generally simple. Even in technical writing, the style of author's written is usually simple and without the ornament in his own biography. In such works, the style of writing in the introduction, the text and the self-writing, vary from complexity to simplicity, respectively. Although, when is the writing's style of the self-writings in the biographies the more beautiful and rhetorical (literary), is the literary aspect more than its historical aspect, but the exaggeration of the author in literary art, the arrangement of sentences and exaggeration in Expressions and descriptions, distract him from reality.  The simple and intimate language in the self-writings of the biographies of this period is more sign of the language of today's self-writing (autobiography) not so the language of the biographies of the past. Recording of own poems and own stating: The most important motivations of the authors of the biographies, is their reputation and the recording of their own poems. If we put this together, with the fact that the biography's authors have all their poetry and poetical works in hand, we can accepted the assignment of many pages from each biographies to the insert of the author's poems.  This group usually uses the art of poetry, even in the context of biography; in criticizing, revising and completing the lyrics of others, or recording their own lyrics as a witness in the introduction or their treatises. Thus, they have included many poems in the context of the lyrics of others. Of course, one of the problems of self-writing of biographies (and even autobiography in its new types) is understate and humility, the traits that have always existed in all ages in Persians, and the appearance of this feature in self-writing of biographies of the Qajar era, in particular in the section describing the writer's poetry and his poems, are to some extent seen; But a large number of the author's biographies of this period (especially the princes), have written the own biography with pride.  As in the past, the mention of self-writing is very high from the angle of view of the third person's narrator; thus it is another reason what why their authors are humility and they have deprecated the saying "I". In contrast, the increase in the number of the first person narratives in the self-writing in biographies of the Qajar era is an explicit sign of the transgression from tradition and wish to the modernism. These are cases that differenced the self-writing of this period from the previous.