Examining the Poetic Form of Masnavi in Persian Tazkeres

Despite the importance of the masnavi as a poetic form in Persian literature, many authors of tazkeres (compendiums of poets’ biographies) have not paid adequate attention to this form. They have been parsimonious in mentioning masnavi poems in their tazkeres. Notwithstanding the fame of some poets in composing masnavi, other forms of their lyrics are mentioned in tazkeres. This article examines masnavi form in Persian tazkeres and the reasons for the negligence mentioned above. To this purpose, the existence and development of the masnavi form are studied in twenty Persian tazkeres. The main reasons for excluding masnavi poems are their length, the unwillingness of the authors to summarize verses for its difficulty, the limits in the size of the tazkeres, the dominance of other forms, and the unavailability of the poems. In the early tazkeres (Lobab ol-albab and Tazkerat al-shoʻara), there is no reference to the lyrics, or if they are, the verses are not cited. From late 9th AH/ 15th century, restricting poems to their significant verses and the increase in poems led to noting one or some limited verses in tazkeres, and during the following centuries, the number of masnavi poems increased. The compilers of exclusive tazkeres and some later public tazkeres, such as Majmaʻ ol-Fosaha, included masnavi poems without any restrictions. Despite some verses mentioned in sources such as dictionaries, ignoring the masnavi form has caused ambiguities about the works and the correctness of their attribution, their topics, and the time they disappeared. Therefore, the two categories of sources (tazkeres and secondary sources such as dictionaries) are non-complementary.