Sufi's Goftārnevesht as a Genre in Persian Mystical Prose

There are some mystical works which are the written form of Sufis’ teachings, lectures, and popular tales. In other words, these works are nothing but the transference of speech to the field of writing. Thus, some aspects of both forms, that is, speech and writing, can be found in them. Taxonomy of Sufis’ texts according to their formative contexts (speech and writing) shapes a continuum between these two contexts. What we call goftārnevesht (written-speech) in this article, is a coinage for the synthesis of these two contexts which itself consists of subgenres such as amālī, maqāmāt, majālis, maqālāt and sīyar. These subgenres are different from each other due to their location on the continuum. This article attempts to describe the differences between goftārnevesht and other written genres which are mostly represented in phonological, morphological, syntactic, and discursive features of the texts.