The Importance of the Types of Techniques in Nizami’s Khosrow and Shirin and Plato’s Symposium

. The Symposium by Plato, best known in Persian as Ziāfat, is the scene of dialogue in a banquet held by Agathon, the tragic poet, on the special occasion of celebrating the prize for his first tragedy in 416 B.C. In this symposium, every attendee, including Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, and Socrates, gives a speech about Eros, respectively. Eros is known in Greek culture as Love or desire _ especially sexual and personified as the God of love. Two of Plato’s most famous dialogues focus on understanding Eros, the Symposium and the Phaedrus. (Preus, 2007→Eros)
The cause for comparing Nizami's Khosrow and Shirin and Plato's Symposium in this essay is their shared fictive patterns, except for similar themes that exist in both of them. The title of Hakim for Nizami, the sixth-century well-known poet and storyteller, indicates that he had a good grasp of common sciences of his age of which philosophy and Hekmat (wisdom) were basics. And this interest in philosophy can be seen in Iskendernāme and his other works like Khosrow and Shirin.
 
2.In the article, the perspectives of Plato and Nizami toward the arts in the Symposium and Khosrow and Shirin have been analyzed by library research method and content analysis. At first, the process of creating figures of speech that result from the unity of reason (Logos) and love (Eros), and then the importance of various rhetorical figures were studied in these two works.
 
3.There is a kind of social forces assemblage in Plato’s Symposium and Nizami’s Khosro and Shirin; each has a specific thought method about Eros (love) as well as a romantic relationship. Love brings people of different viewpoints together to communicate with each other. Even Techne or technique is one of the significant issues in the Symposium, including a kind of sense, consciousness, and love, which helps the human to create artworks. On the other hand, even in Khosrow and Shirin, love is observed in all types of arts; music, painting, architecture, poetry, and politics are all manifestations of Eros. So, “Techne” or “technique” and its relation to “Eros” or “love” is one of the subjects to study in both works.
In the present study, Plato and Nizami’s views have been analyzed on the techniques in the Treatise of Symposium and Khosrow and Shirin. First, the process of techniques’ creation, obtained from the association of reason (Logos) and love (Eros), and then the importance  of techniques’types in these two works have been studied.
 
4.
The perspective of Islamic philosophers about arts (different kinds of Techne) can be divided into verbal and non-verbal areas. Indeed, verbal arts are five Arts (five functions of the language in Aristotle’s view) following logic. And non-verbal arts are crafts, following ethics, under the branch of political philosophy.
According to Plato’s Symposium, the perception of rational imageries and the distinction between good and evil are manifested with the advent of Eros. When a human falls into love with someone for the first time, his/her obsession or object of love is perceivable with external senses, concretely and partially. But this love in human beings gives rise to the distinction because a lover always sees the beloved better and superior than others. The distinction of “superlatives,” that comes with love, in higher stages entails recognition of universals and the advent of philosophy by which one distinguishes between the data of estimative faculty and the data of rational faculty and does not get caught in the trap of fancies. Issues expressed in Khosrow and Shirin have a similar pattern to those of Plato’s Symposium examined in this article.
In both the Symposium and Khosrow and Shirin, with the advent of love, the discriminating faculty that is the reason is created in person, and the other arts are manifested following that. Love (Eros) is like a midwife that brings forth the reason (Logos); Thus, the reason is the logos or the rational soul connecting love with the arts because love (Eros) takes the monstrous reason to the actual stage. And the manifestation of various arts is one of the results of love’s advent and the actualism of reason. Nizami in Khosrow and Shirin has entered fiction from the viewpoint of utopias. And it has such priority that at the beginning of the debate between Khosrow and Farhad when Farhad introduces himself as belonging to the state of love and friendship, the first question that Khosrow asks him is about the craft of his fellow citizens.