Jahez and his viewpoints importance to Iranian - Islamic criticism and literature

Undoubtedly, Jahez is a prominent and unique figure among the founders of Islamic culture and literature. His extensive information, deep knowledge and special attitude toward literature and its arts resulted in his prominent personality. In addition to his general knowledge and command of literature and Islamic sciences, he is unique figure in literature criticism, especially in rhetoric criticism. Although much attentions have not been paid to his works and ideas in Islamic civilization and especially in Farsi language environment, most of the theoreticians of the rhetoric and poets and writers interested in rhetoric have been considerably affected by Jahez’s ideas. He has some new and considerable ideas in the areas of the origins of poetry and the reasons of its emergence, the characteristics of good poetry and speeches, the distinction of meaning and speech and the features of structure and content and context, the psychology of poetry and poems, the reasons for nations’ different approaches toward poetry and prose and nonexistence of some in forms of writing. He has some new numerous ideas upon etymology, comparative phonetics, semantics and the likes whose understanding and interpretation give a new life to the Persian literature and Islam theoreticians. Although he has created more than 360 works, his literature related ideas have been stipulated in his two books of “Albayan o Altabyeen” and “Alhayvan” and he also has created some independent literature theses. This article is aimed at revealing two points: first, analyzing, interpreting, classifying and studying Jahez’s literature and criticism works and expressing his status as the founder of rhetoric sciences. Second, the deep and extensive impact of Jahez on Iranian thinkers especially its writers and poets and literature criticism and rhetoric approaches because the writer believes that rhetoric approach has been the most important literature criticism in Persian language and literature and Jahez is the founder of rhetoric sciences in Iran – Islam world.