نشریه فرهنگ و ادبیات عامه
پیاپی 37 (فروردین و اردیبهشت 1400)

The epic of Khavaran-Nameh, composed by Ibn Hessam Khosfi, is a unique work in the field of literature and painting in the Turkmen era in the 15th century. It is one of the best-known Shi'at books composed in Masnavi style and has been a novelty in Iran’s history of literature and art bearing both epic and religious genres. The first illustrated manuscript of Khavaran-Nameh belongs to the painting school of Shiraz-Turkmen. Along with its literary texts, unique paintings with epic and religious themes were also created and the painter tried to convey the good and evil in different social classes, from the highest attributed to prophets and imams, to the royals, courtiers, ordinary people, and at last, underlings and sinners. The goal of this research, firstly, is studying and identifying the characters existing in the text and illustrations of Khavaran-Nameh, and secondly, it aims to compare their pattern of clothing according to the literary text of the narratives. The research questions are: what is the relationship between the text and the illustration in describing and representing different characters in the paintings and stories of Khavaran-Nameh? What similarities and differences can be observed in diverse clothing of these characters? The results of this study show that the characterizations in the text and the illustrations of Khavaran-Nameh are largely consistent. However, there are certain differences owing to various religious beliefs and artistic tastes. The difference between the text and the illustration is more distinct when the clothing pattern of characters are compared

Religious beliefs are shaped by myth. Mythical heroes and innocent Imams are always considered to be among the recurring themes as the sacred and identifying elements of the Iranian culture. They are in the subconscious, beliefs, and traditions of the people. With common goals and similar destiny, they have been influential in the formation of various literary and artistic works, including Ferdowsichr('39')s Shahnameh and Taziehs. This study focuses on the semantic decoding of repetitive mythical elements, in two texts from the pre - and post- Islamic eras. Employing the Genettechr('39')s hypertextual approach, the study analyzes the story of Siavash in Shahnameh (pre-Islamic) and the Tazieh of Imam Hussein) post-Islamic(. The purpose of the research is to find out how the textual narrative was adapted by the theatrical narrative. After explaining the theoretical issues, the summary of the texts, and the characteristics of the heroes, the results are given in a table. The common or unique elements and symbols of thought and actions of the Iranian hero are sometimes manifested in an earthly-mythical and sometimes religious-historical and celestial personalities. Every year, similar rituals are repeated and reproduced in the mourning. The research method is descriptive-comparative and the analysis is done through content analysis and the use of library documents. The findings showed the following symbolic similarities: the halo of light, intelligent horse, white clothes, the presence of extraterrestrials, among others. The difference between the rituals were: the symbol of the plant god, the passage of fire, the Siavashun feather, Zulfiqar, the magical armor, among others.

Understanding "myth" is very important in understanding society, peoplechr('39')s behaviors, and beliefs. We know that myth usually changes throughout history, but it disappears gradually. "The Story of Fereydoun" is considered as one of the most important stories of Iranian myths and researchers have traced its mythological roots to the Avestan period, Vedic texts, and the myths of birth and battle of the demon of land. The god of rain is mentioned in this story as well. On the other hand, there are myths and stories among people that contain mythical themes, symbols and signs in various forms, and the study and analysis of these myths in tracing the origins of the mythical elements of society plays an important role. One of these popular stories is "The Story of Shahzid", one of the Imamzadehs of Amol city of Mazandaran, which has many similarities with the story of Fereydoun in its narrative structure, semiotic elements, and mythical symbols. In this article, these two stories are examined and analyzed together, and their mythological elements are identified. It was concluded that the two stories, there are some similarities in some events and symbols of the myths such as: cow, tree, forest, snake, healing drink, witchcraft and geographical location. Both stories originate from a source which is the "myth of birth" and the war between the god of rain and the demon of land.

One of the main reasons of building Qadamgāhs (literally meaning the place of foot or the place of stepping) was the dreams a believer had of a saint. There are a large number of such buildings in Iran. In some cases, the dreams are inscribed on tablets in order to preserve the dream for future generations. This paper introduces five lustre ceramic tablets, which contain records of such dreams. The texts of two of them have been preserved completely, and significantly show astonishing similarities. The first is dated back to 1312 AD and belongs to Qadamgāh of Mehrīqābād. Its text mentions that Fakhr alDin Hasan Tabari saw Imam Ali in a dream ordering him to build a shrine. According to the text of the second tile in Qadamgāh-i Khezr in the village of Yazdelan in 1607, someone saw Khezr in a dream who orders to reconstruct a ruined domed building. This article examines the differences and similarities between these two tablets from the Ilkhanid and Safavid periods, and analyzes them in detail. It can be said that these two tablets have a common content that have been written with the aim of documenting the reconstruction of a religious building borrowing the Iranian and Shi'at themes. These two examples show that the tradition of recording dreams on lustre tiles was not only prevalent at the glorious era of lustre production, but also extended to three centuries later.

The present article is a comparative study between folk Bakhtiari poetry and classical Persian literature which attempts to trace a number of Bakhtiari poetical items to classical Persian poetry by adopting a historical approach. These common items can be divided as follows: images and depictions, literary collocations, historio-literary allusions, and customs used to create imagery. Although in some cases these are mere accidental similarities, they seem to originate in the shared past of these people, especially due to the isolation of the Lurs from the written tradition of Persian literature that questions the possibility of direct borrowing. However, a number of elements of Luri poetry are undoubtedly taken from Persian literature. The influence of Persian literature is seen more clearly in Bakhtiari allusions to Iranian legends, particularly those of the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. Finally, considering the deep and old relationship of Persian and Arabic literature, a comparison has been carried out between Bakhtiari poetry and the Muʻallaqāt - as an example of the earliest Arabic poems.

Wrestling has been popular since ancient times and it has been associated with many aspects of Iranian culture. In this regard, wrestling has been a physical ritual, and today it is performed at the national, indigenous, and local levels. This study focuses on the myths behind this ritual movement. It is aimed to explain the myths that have been the reason for the meaning, continuity, and the value of this movement as a ritual in Iranian folk culture throughout history via the analytical method. In ancient culture, a person who fought with the destructive forces of nature became the heroic archetype who created livelihood and security in a society and was respected by the people. This challenge with the antagonist also entered the arena of the enemies of Iran, and wrestling was a symbol of the action of the heroes who fought a duel to protect his land and its values; but what was suggested in Iranian culture was that these heroes, whose actions establish the security and order of the society, first, must clear their background as an antagonist, and voluntarily go into the battle with shadows. In Iranian society, this became a value and moral foundation for the heroic archetype and remained in the collective subconscious of the Iranian society, and in the festivals of folk culture where wrestling is held, all these values are projected on the wrestler character. This forms the kind of social identity and cohesion through which viewers receive love and self-fulfillment.

Quatrain is one of the most popular forms of Persian folk poetry. In the early literary works and in different regions in Iran, various names are used to refer to Quatrain: Fahlavi, Tarāne, Hājiyāni, Qaribi, Faryād, Šarve and so forth. The question is if these different names correspond to different genres with distinct characteristics, or they are merely different names that all belong to one autonomous genre, based on the generic and literary criteria. To answer this question, the structure and content of approximately five thousand three hundred Persian Quatrains were studied, including Čārbeiti, Seytak, Šarve, Ferāqi, Faryād, Falaki, Kallegi, Hazāragy, Hoseinā, Najmā, and Šarbe. The results show that, based on the generic and literary criteria, all of the above-mentioned have the same structural and content features and should be classified under the Quatrain genre.

The oral culture of the Iranian people is a mysterious and untapped world, the study of the delicate content of which can open new perspectives to the world of anthropology and human sociology. The present study tries to analyze and use the cultural elements and popular beliefs common among the people of Sarkavir region in the south of Semnan province in the proximity of the desert plain, to explain the concept of taboo among the people of this land. To this aim, the themes of taboo in the folk literature are categorized into two parts: The first one concerns the taboo words and languages, and the second one concerns the behavioral and material taboos in the customs of the people. The study found that the behavioral taboos are related to marriage, the dead and the mourning customs, taboos of the people's names, occupations and other social taboos which are contentanalyzed based on the local narratives.

Proverbs reflect different aspects and angles of people’s lives including social-cultural concepts as if they were linguistic texts being focused by sociolinguistics. The present research is a descriptiveanalytic study investigating the gender-related stereotypes in Turkish and Persian proverbs from the viewpoint of sociology of language. In this essay, 100 Turkish and Persian proverbs having gender-related stereotypes were selected and investigated through purposive sampling. This research intends to answer these questions: what type of gender-related stereotypes have been much more observed in Turkish and Persian proverbs? Which gender is more impressed by the gender-related stereotypes in Turkish and Persian proverbs? From the viewpoint of sociology of language, how does the utilization of the special gender-related stereotypes in Turkish and Persian proverbs represent the social status of each era? The results obtained from this study indicate that the gender-related stereotypes have been more frequently used in the proverbs related to the women than men. Furthermore, the ethical characteristics have been stated and used more than other characteristics in the Turkish and Persian proverbs. The concepts stated in the proverbs indicate the gender bias (gender discrimination), and ignorance of women and women's low social status in popular culture in the past. Besides, there are a lot of similarities between the cultures of Turks and Iranians regarding the utilization of gender-related stereotypes in the society due to the proximity of cultures and the borders of Iran and Turkey

The sounds and songs during work are one of the manifestations and elements of popular culture. So far as anthropology is concerned, studying these identity and cultural elements in the Iranian society for the sake of recognizing the cultural and historical heritage - which have been formed in the economic context and daily life of the Iranian people - is significant. Therefore, Guilan bazaars are important in this regard, because the merchants of the bazaar give a special passion to the market space with the sounds and songs of their work. In this study, the traditional squares and markets in Rasht were visited and the voices of the bazaars were recorded so that the songs of the businessmen from the linguistic and lexical, aesthetic and literary aspects could be analyzed and the content and thematic aspects would be extracted. Local language, simple and popular expression, the use of rhythm and rhyme, humorous language, Neda sentences, description of quality, novelty, cheapness, and religious and social themes are among the most important general, linguistic, aesthetic and thematic features of songs and sounds in the markets. The bazaar merchants, as economic activists, play an important role in reproducing local and national identity and culture by singing these songs while promoting their goods.