Investigating the Processes and their Roles in Suhrawardi’s Ideological Discourse Based on the Functionalist Approach

Being inclusive of various discourses of different practitioners of fotowwat (generosity), Fotowwat-Nameh (the letter of generosity) is of great importance in political, social, moral, mystical, and literary researches on the subject of fotowwat, its history and effects on Islamic societies. In the meantime, the analysis of the discourse of Abu Hafs Omar Suharvardi’s Fotowwat-Nameh becomes doubly important due to the ijtihad and theorizing aspects as the author unifies the concepts of ethics and mysticism on the one hand, and the development of Shiite views in Sufism and fotowwat on the other . Based on the functionalist linguists’ methodology, this study has drawn on process-analysis to analyze the discourse of Soharvardi’s Fotowwat-Nameh, as well as to discover the mechanisms between the author’s language/mind and the cultural-social context of the text. The high frequency of mental, relational (descriptive/subjective), and existential processes suggest that the positivist and explanative acts are dominant which in turn lead to the legislation of the institution of Fotowwat, unification of the institutions of ethics, mystiticism, and politics, as well as legitimization of the Shiite base of Fotowwat under the direct support of caliph Alnaser le Dinellah. The significant frequency of these processes reduces the communicative and interactive actions of discourse in the text, and is a factor for strengthening the monologic discourse purposes, and for upholding the aspects of value, ideology in the empirical structure (legislative, legitimizing, positive and explicit) of the text.