The Role and Position of 'Time' in Making Suspension and Anti-suspension in Persian and Arabic Risālāt al-Tayr

In a general sense, Risālāt al-Tayr (treatises on birds) are often considered short and brief narrative texts. Proponents of this view argue that minimum use of the factors of suspense and maximum use of the anti-suspense factors are the reasons for this shortness and brevity. In this article, by using Genette’s narrative theory and on the basis of the narration time, we aim to prove that not only the suspense and anti-suspense factors play a role in these treatises, but also, the suspense factors are used more than anti-suspense ones.  We also aim to investigate the reason of using the suspense and anti-suspense elements in these works. By using analytical-descriptive method, the research has reached the conclusion that in Risālāt al-Tayr (treatises on birds) the suspense elements with eleven frequencies have more application than the anti-suspense elements with three frequencies. In the elements of suspense, deferment through repetition and for emphasizing the mystical theme, have the highest, and in the anti-suspense elements, the removal of content due to insignificance, have the lowest frequency. This indicates that mystical-didactic topics and the modes of narrative audience play a major role in Risālāt al-Tayr. Whenever the narrator has to repeat a story for training, he/she uses the suspense elements, and whenever the circumstances of the narrative audiences require, he/she omit the training materials and resorts to the anti-suspense elements.