Introducing Newly Found Couplets in the Manuscript of Rasael al-Oshaq va Vasael al-Moshtaq

The manuscript of Rasael al-Oshaq va Vasael al-Moshtaq by Seyfi-e-Neyshaburi is a prose text of the 6th century A.H. and the oldest surviving text containing love letters in Persian. This single-copy manuscript is considered a valuable source for research, reference, and even editing of Persian poems up to the 7th century A.H. In the manuscript, there are about 1500 couplets written by poets in Arabic and sometimes Persian in different poetic forms, although the quatrain is the most usual form. In the first half of this manuscript, the author of Rasael al-Oshaq mentions the names of the poets of most of the couplets, but in the second half of the book, the names of the poets are rarely mentioned and this is without a clear reason. Among the couplets, 203 new ones were found in this manuscript. Among these 203 couplets, 27 have been introduced in other essays and the remaining 176 couplets are introduced in this article. In addition, some anonymous couplets in prose texts that are mentioned with the names of their poets are introduced in this article. Moreover, the confusion between “Faxri” and “Farroxi” in the manuscript of Rasael al-Oshaq has been mentioned and analyzed. Also, some parts of the research articles on this manuscript, which are mentioned in the research background section, have been revised and improved in this research. Another achievement of this research is introducing some dead words to Persian dictionaries. The couplets that contain these words are sufficient reason for adding them to dictionaries.