Situational Context and Analysis of Cohesive Relations in the Account of Attar’s Tazkirat al-Awliya from Abu Hazim Makki Based on Halliday’s Theory

The sixth and seventh centuries are important periods of perfection and development in Persian prose and the prosperity era of Sufi prose. This analysis, having in mind the importance of the Sufi prose of Tazkirat al-Awliya, attempts to investigate the cohesive devices used in this work based on the contemporary Functional linguists’ theory, i.e. Micheal Holiday and Ruqaiya Hasan. The purpose of this study is to show the possibility of applying this theory for determining text cohesion and cohesion coordination in Tazkirat al-Awliya and shows the manner of achieving these in this work. This study uses a descriptive-analytic method. The results indicate that the text of Tazkirat al-Awliya does not have a solid narrative texture, but from among the cohesion types, semantic cohesion and then syntactic and phonetic cohesion are more used. Due to quoting mystics miracle and supernaturals, logical cohesion is used less. Certainly, the situation context in logical meanings is founded on elders and disciples’ surrealism mentality, intertextual relations between this text, Quran, and mystics’ works, and in interpersonal relationships based on an obedience and submission pattern. All the seven functional roles of language are used in this study.