A Study of ‘God as a King’ as a Major Conceptual Metaphor in Mersād al-‘Ebād

Mersād al-‘Ebād is an important work in the field of Persian literature. Its language and expression are eloquent and sometimes poetic, and it is a wonderful book in terms of visual-rhetoric aspects. Given the recognition of allegory in our rhetorical sciences, the study of the images of Mersād al-‘Ebād has often been directed towards its allegorical aspects and its metaphors have been examined from ancient perspectives. Notwithstanding that this work has metaphorical clusters based on a social and political attitude. Due to the dispersion and extent of these clusters, the present study uses the theory of conceptual metaphor to examine this book from a novel perspective. The research method is analytical-descriptive, and the scope of the research is the text of Mersād al-‘Ebād. The results of this research show that small metaphorical threads that are connected with each other can be recognized in the text and can be called micro-metaphors. These nets of metaphors in the text are as follows: the descent of the soul into the body as the enthronement of a king, God's treasure as the king's treasure, the devil as a criminal and condemned by the sultan, cultivating the soul as raising a bird of prey, and propagation of religion as an organization to inform the king. Each of these five micro-metaphors had its own subcategories, which are explained in the text of the research by mentioning the examples and drawing diagrams. Also, the accuracy of the metaphors shows that their unification can be placed under the grand metaphor of ‘God as a King’.