Musical Ambiguity in Amīr Khusrau Dehlavī’s Nine Skies

Amīr Khusrau Dehlavī, the Indian Persian-speaking mystic and musician, is the link between three the rich Iranian, Islamic, and Indian cultures. In order to understand the link between the poetic traditions of Persian language and music properly, it is important to recognize his invaluable contributions to poetry and music and his combining these two for articulation of concepts. Nine Skies, Dehlavī’s masnavi, is among the most reliable works and is replete with musical terms. Musical ambiguity is one of the outstanding rhetorical figures in Nine Skies. Thus, it significantly helps us recognize the effect of music on Dehlavī’s elaboration of poetic concepts. The present study intends to address musical ambiguity as a literary device in this work.