The Necessity of Re-Correcting the Divan of Ghazali Mashhadi

Ghazali Mashhadi is one of the poets who migrated to India in the 10th century for some reason. He has some works in verse and prose, one of which is his Divan of poems known as Asar al-Shabab. This Divan includes an introduction in prose and some poems in the form of Ghasideh (ode), Tarkib-band (poem of several stanzas of equal size), Tarji’-band (strophe poem), Ghazal (sonnet or lyric poem), Mathnavi (couplet poem), Qet’eh (an elegy consisting of only two lines and rhyming in the last hemistiches), and quatrain, which were published with Hossein Qorbanpour Arani’s corrections by Elmi va Farhangi (Scientific and Cultural) Publications in 2009. In this edition, despite the mentioned correcting efforts in the introduction, many errors have found their way into different parts of this Divan. Most of the errors were related to punctuation. These slips could cause the wrong reading of the poems and might even cause misunderstanding of the poet’s intention. Another problem that could make the reader’s job difficult was that the references given to Ghazali's poetry or even to other scholars’ works were incorrect both in the introduction and notes of the Divan in many cases. In addition, the mistakes and carelessness in the steps of typing the poems had sometimes caused (an) extra letter or letters or a sign to enter the words or be omitted from them in the texts. Also, in the section of notes, the honorable editor had only explained the literal meanings of the words or terms, which had nothing to do with the meanings intended by the poet in many cases.