Criticism and Correction of Twelve Verses of Hafez Based on Textual Documentation and Rhetorical Techniques

The previous custom in correcting the texts was that the most archaic manuscript was absolutely the basis, and except for gross errors in the oldest manuscript, they did not consider it permissible to deviate from the oldest recording. Although this method was correct in most of the revised texts, the nature of Hafez’ poems and the variety of his sonnets were such that in the work of correcting his poetry, relying only on the oldest manuscript does not lead to a superior recording. On the one hand, Hafez was constantly in the process of completing various aspects of his poetry and possibly changing and modifying them, and on the other hand, he did not collect his poems himself, and the oldest written copy of Hafez’ Divan is dated after his death, which is said to have been collected by Mohammad Golandâm. It is possible that other people have been assigned to collect and edit Hafez’ sonnets. Based on this, in addition to the fact that we are faced with several original copies, the existence of numerous secondary manuscripts as well as the distortions of the scribes in his Divan, and the number of recordings in some verses and disagreements about them have caused that only referring to the older manuscripts will not cause these disagreements to disappear. In such a case, one of the ways is to examine disputed verses based on textual/semantic documents and rhetorical techniques