A comparative Analysis of the Story of "KhalifeKhaliphe and the A’rabi" from Molavi's Masnavi and Attar's Mosibat-Nameh on the Basis of Michael Riffatterre's Semiotics Theory

Semiotics is the science of studying the signs found in society. Historically, semiotics has been associated with constructivism. Michael Riffaterre is one of the pioneering theorists who introduced and promoted structuralism in the field of literary studies in the 1960s. Like other theorists, he believes that one should choose a method derived from literature itself to understand literary works. He does not consider the poetic role to be an emphasis on the message element; rather, it seeks to convey this emphasis to the recipient. Riffaterre believes that some poems have two types of readings: "received reading and non-dynamic reading". As such, he tries to discover ways to achieve this inner reading. According to him, every poem is formed around a core or a central semantic idea - origin or matrix - which is never explicitly mentioned in the text. In Riffaterre’s theory, the text is transformed into poetry by the three principles of over-determination, transformation, and expansion through poetry with minimal mappings.
Minimalism refers to commonly used clichéd propositions or words that evoke conventional meanings in the reader's mind. Over-determination means that the reference of signifiers in poetry is elements within the same poem. It is created with the help of an over-determination of meaning in poetry and seeks to prove that there is a deeper semantic structure behind the superficial appearance of poetry. During the "transformation" a new change is achieved through the meaning of the stereotype phrases and the field of meaning expands. The "expansion" rule also allows the poet to break down the origins of the poem into smaller elements and then improve each of those elements separately.

The story of "Khalife and A’rabi” in the first book of the Masnavi Manavi consists of 690 verses and its source is a narration that Sheikh Farid al-Din Attar Neyshabouri has written in 35 verses in the Mosibat-Nameh. In the first reading of both anecdotes, it seems that the signs mentioned in the poem have real-world meanings. According to this reading, the allegory of the Khalife and the A’rabi in both anecdotes describes the poverty and helplessness of the A’rabi and the generosity of the Khalife. But in the retrospective reading of this anecdote, the reader goes beyond the level of meaning and discovers hidden meanings, and finally reveals the matrix of poetry, which is "the knowledge and obedience of a few human beings" and the basic proposition of poetry both in the Masnavi and in the Mosibat-Nameh.  There are two chains of words, each of which is connected by sharing a semantic element. In the allegory of the Khalife and the Arabs, two concepts can be achieved with the two meanings of "poverty" and "generosity". The concept of "poverty" refers to human limited knowledge while the concept of "generosity" refers to the infinite knowledge of the truth. However, due to the simple plot of the story, the presence of words in the vocabulary chain is less than in Masnavi.By comparing the words accumulated in the chain of "poverty", it is possible to get the majority of Masnavi’s words around the concept of "poverty and need" while the selected words of Attar are around the axis of "famine". Rumi uses consciously these words which make the issue of poverty more tangible. The descriptive system in Masnavi has one more character than the Mosibat-Nameh, and that character is the "A’rabi’s  wife". Rumi has increased the number of characters by using the presence of women. In addition to making the story more attractive and creating new content, he has been able to advance the story according to his own wishes, expand the plot of the story and bring order and unity to the narrative.In the "overdetermination" section, the signs of Khalife and A’rabi poetry refer not to the meanings outside the text of the poem but to other signs of the poem. This creates a closed system of specific signs. For example, an A’rabi is not a person who has never drunk fresh water, but a servant with little knowledge and captive of his little intelligence. Similarly, Khalife is not a holy king, who, according to the Arabs, accepts the “hot dirty water” from him but he is a Lord who accepts the little obedience of his servant in order to connect the servant’s little knowledge to his infinite knowledge. Other signs of poetry such as A’rabi’s wife, ewer, hot dirty water, Baghdad, Dejle and the Khalife's companions also refer to other signs in the closed system as a result of over-determination, not to their conventional meanings.The expansion rule enables the poet to break down the central idea of ​​the poem into smaller elements and then improve each of those elements separately. In the above-mentioned anecdote, using this rule, the contrast created between the two concepts of famine and insignificant A’rabi’s gift and the Khalife's generosity can be divided into smaller or more specific parts, and then each part can be drawn as a separate image. . The main images of this poem in Masnavi are divided into three types: 1) "A’rabi’s poverty and misery" (paragraph 1); 2) the worthless gift of the A’rabi (paragraph 2); and 3) honor and generosity of Ma’mun (paragraph 3). In Mosibat-Nameh, these images are divided into three paragraphs: 1) the struggle of an A’rabi woman with poverty; 2) description of the A’rabi’s gift; and 3) the arrival of the A’rabi to the court of Khalife.