Comparison and Analysis of the Common Sayings Between Tazkirat al-Awliya, Translation of the Qushayriyah Treatise, and Kashf al-Mahjoob based on Genette’s Intertextuality

AbstractAttar Neyshabouri's Tazkirat al-Awliya has a special place among Persian mystical works. Attar has used the mystical works before himself to compile Tazkirat al-Awliya, but he did not act in the same way in using all the sources. The intertextual comparison of Tazkirat al-Awliya with pre-Attar texts is one of the methods through which the main sources of Attar can be accessed. It can be used to analyze Attar's position as the author of a mystical literary text. In the present study, the sayings related to "Reza" from Tazkirat al-Awliya have been intertextually compared with Kashf al-Mahjoob and the translation of the Qushayriyah treatise. The main question of the research is: what is the intertextual relationship of Tazkirat al-Awliya with two mystical works before it? The results of the research show that the intertextual relationships of Reza's sayings in these three works are placed in five categories: direct intertextuality, reductive intertextuality, additive intertextuality, multiple intertextuality, and mixed intertextuality. Most of the intertextual relationships between Tazkirat al-Awliya and the translation of the Qushayriyah treatise are direct intertextuality, and between Tazkirat al-Awliya and Kashf al-Mahjoob are reductive intertextuality. This comparison shows that Attar has quoted the sayings in accordance with the goals he had in writing Tazkirat al-Awliya and also the characteristics of the previous texts. Removal of Arabic phrases, description and interpretation are changes that Attar has made in the sayings taken from Kashf al-Mahjoob.IntroductionWith the emergence of Islamic Sufism in the second century of Hijri, the creation of mystical works gradually began. At first, these works did not have a specialized approach and were mostly written based on Sharia-based topics. But from the 4th century of Hijri, mystical opinions and thoughts were organized and codified so that they could be transferred to others in the form of educational texts (Dehbashi & Mirbagheri Fard, 2004, p. 108). A significant part of the topics of these texts was explained by quoting sayings and anecdotes related to mystics. These sayings and anecdotes that passed from one text to another created an intertextual chain among mystical works. Attar Neyshabouri's Tazkirat al-Awliya is one of the main links in this chain that has transferred the sayings and anecdotes of the previous works, which were mainly Arabic and a few Persian, but with simple and didactic language to the later links with a literary and imaginative expression. Since intertextual studies are considered a suitable platform for analyzing common sayings and anecdotes in mystical texts, in this study, this platform has been used to compare the sayings related to Reza in Tazkirat al-Awliya with two Persian pretexts of this work, in order to explain what method Attar had in quoting the sayings from previous texts and why he chose this method.Materials and MethodsIn the present study, the position of the translation of the Qushayriyah treatise and Hojviri's Kashf al-Mahjoob among Attar's sources (focusing on Reza's sayings) has been explained using a descriptive-analytical method based on the intertextual approach and Genette’s theory of intertextuality.Research FindingsTazkirat al-Awliya has the most direct intertextual relationship with the translation of the Qushayriyah treatise. Also, the most intertextual relationship between Tazkirat al-Awliya and Kashf al-Mahjoob is of a reductive type which includes the removal of description and interpretation and Arabic phrases. The additive intertextuality can be seen only between Tazkirat al-Awliya and the translation of the Qushayriyah treatise where a part has been added to the narration of the pretext to complete the meaning. A quote is also common among all three works and is of multiple intertextuality type. In this type of intertextuality, the narration of Tazkirat al-Awliya has a direct intertextuality with the translation of Qushayriyah treatise, and a reductive intertextuality with Kashf al-Mahjoob in the example found in Reza's sayings.Discussion of Results and ConclusionsConsidering the results of the present study, examples of common sayings with one of the pre-texts can be found in Tazkirat al-Awliya which has been reduced in one part of the narration and increased or changed in another part. This type of intertextuality can be called mixed and according to different examples, sub-categories can be obtained for it. In Reza's common sayings, there are two examples of mixed between Tazkirat al-Awliya and the translation of the Qushayriyah treatise and one example with Kashf al-Mahjoob. This research shows that Attar made changes in Reza's sayings according to his goals. Removal of Arabic phrases and description and interpretation of the pretext, lexical, morphological, and syntactic changes appropriate to the Persian language and the increase of imaginative and emphatic elements are among the changes that Attar has made in quotations.