Muhtasham-e Kāshāni's Rasāyel: an Unknown Genre

Muhtasham-e Kāshani (935-996/ 1528-1588) is called Khāqāni-e sāni because of his well-made and strong odes which resemble Anvari’s and Khāqāni’s, and also Hassān-e al-ajam because of his enthusiastic elegy on Imam Hussein. But the innovative dimension of his style, which is rarely recognized by the stylisticians and literary historians, is mostly manifested in his rasāyel (Jalālieh and Naql-e oshāq) not in his sonnets and odes. These two essays or rasāyel, which are unique because of their lyrical-narrative structure and their explanation of realistic and vāsookhti experiments, are not even referred to in the studies of Voqu' and Vāsookht schools. Muhtasham has combined a prose narration of realistic love with extemporaneous sonnets (and sometimes with other poetic forms) and has created a different literary genre. The present article tries to introduce this unknown genre and to explain the structural and stylistic features of this kind of lyrical narration in Muhtasham’s rasāyel.