The Appendix of Tazkerat-ol Olyaa

Tazkerat-ol Olyaa, the only prose work of Attar, is a collection of quotes and biographies from seventy two great mystical figures. He starts the book by narrating the biography and famous quotes of Imam Jafar Sadeq (the sixth Shiite Imam) and finishes it by the accounts of Hossein Mansoor-e Hallaj’s life. An appendix was added to Tazkerat-ol Olyaa which includes twenty biographies from Ibrahim-e Khavaas to Imam Mohammad Bagher (the fifth Shiite Imam). Some researchers believe that this appendix was added by a person or some persons after Attar and base their argument on the differences in the writing styles and lack of this appendix in the earlier hand-written versions of Tazkerat-ol Olyaa. However, to prove this claim some more proofs are essential. An intertextual comparison between Tazkerat-ol Olyaa and some other old works is a way to identify the writing style used in the first section of Tazkerat-ol Olyaa better and, by the same token, we can then declare whether or not the second section of the work was added later. Tazkerat-ol Olyaa has a deep relationship with its preceding mystical works because Attar has made it clear that he has used some different sources and has used a combinational method to author the biographies. The intertextual study of Tazkerat-ol Olyaa with its predecessors shows that Attar has had a unique and special style in narrating the life of characters in Tazkerat-ol Olyaa. This style which is carefully used in the first section of the book is not observed in the second section. This strengthens the idea that second section was added later by some other person or persons. In this paper, we study the intertextual relations between Tazkerat-ol Olyaa and its sources and provide some examples of these relations. Then, after an analysis of Attar’s method in using the earlier works, we focus on some differences between the first section and the appended section of Tazkerat-ol Olyaa from the intertextual relations’ perspective.