فصلنامه کهن نامه ادب پارسی
سال دوازدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 32، بهار و تابستان 1400)

Gnosis literally means cognition. Gnosticism refers to the cults that believe that liberation from the world depends on attaining knowledge. One the important motifs mentioned in Gnostic texts which have similarities with  Islamic mystics are the estrangement of man in this world, the value of the soul and the worthlessness of the body, the wanderings and neglect of man, the worthlessness of the material world, the degradation of wisdom and achieve cognition or Gnosis. Due to having these similarities, in this study, Attar's Mosibat-nameh selected to examine the similarities and differences between these cases in details. Salek-e Fekrat (The seeker of thought) like the seekers of Gnosticism begins his spiritual journey with the sense of being a stranger in the world where does not belong to it. He achieves cognition through revelation, Self-abandonment and the guidance of Pir who is also the mediator of grace.  Therefore, he will be freed from confusion and placed on the path of cognition. Salek-e Fekrat (The seeker of thought), realizes the value of the soul in the last stage when he encounters with the soul. Like the seekers of Gnosticism who in fact go through the stages of conduct to reach Gnosis or cognition.

There have been many discussions among the historians of religions about the influence of the concepts of Fana and Nirvana, which, despite being fruitful, have been inconclusive and have not led to a definite conclusion. This disagreement seems to have been originated from purely theological interpretations outside the historical framework. In the meantime, there has been a hidden and perhaps unintentional tendency to highlight the semantic differences between the two concepts of Fana and Nirvana, especially by Iranian scholars,  who have used the interpretation of Sufi death and Fana in their virtual meanings. This article is an attempt to show the Buddhist-Sufi religious interactions based on historical evidences and clues and the issue of corpse in Sufi narrations as well as the use of common symbols in Buddhist literature and Persian mystical texts in the common geographical space of the Great Khorasan. Such an investigation has been neglected in the field of interdisciplinary research. The research method in this paper was historical research based on library sources.

Talib Amoli is one of the greatest poets of Hindi style, and his Divan deserves research and inspection. His Complete Divan, corrected by Mohammad Taheri, was published in 1361 and 1391. For the ease of analysis, in the present article, the errors in the correction of Talib Amoli’s Divan were classified into seven parts: (1) misreading and misrepresentation (14 lines); (2) spacing among words (2 lines); (3) missing letter(s) (4 lines); (4) letter additions (1 line); (5) disordering in lexis (1 line); (6) overlooking the co-occurrence principle in correction (1line); and (7) misspelling and typographical errors (53 lines). The corrections of the verses were informed by an investigation of the rhythms, rhymes, meanings, cues and clues from the poet himself or from Hindi style and the tradition in Persian literature, which were compared with and validated by the existent editions. The majority of the corrections include the correction of misreadings and misrepresentations, missed lexis, wrong additions and repetitions, disordering of verses, and misspellings. This analysis revealed the necessity for re-correction of Talib Amoli’s Divan.

Mēnōg-ī-Xerad is a text, written in middle Persian, that contains a series of questions asked by Dana and answered by Mēnōg-ī-Xerad.  Golestan-e-Sa’di is a prosed book that contains an introduction and eight chapters written by Sa’di. Using descriptive-analytical method, the preset study aimed at comparing the frequency of goodness metaphors in these two texts. Goodness was the most frequent virtue in these two texts, with 38 occurrences in Mēnōg-ī-Xerad and 17 occurrences in Golestan-e-Sa’di. Analysis revealed 19 names of mapping, such as “Things”, “Act” and so on. “Thing”, “Act”, “State”, and “Instrument” were the common names of mapping in the two texts but with different frequencies. [Goodness is a Thing] with 44% occurrences in Mēnōg-ī-Xerad and [Goodness is an Act] with 47% in Golestan-e-Sa’di were the most frequent names of mapping. [Goodness is a Thing] in most cases in Mēnōg-ī-Xerad refers to a constantly moving thing from a person to another or from a place to a person. Perhaps the existence of the name of mapping [goodness is a blessing] in Mēnōg-ī-Xerad is due to Zurvanite fatalistic beliefs that were common in the late Sassanid era. Also, the frequent name of mapping [Goodness is an Act] in Golestan indicates the pragmatic views of its writer.

Biographies have been a medium to reflect literary thoughts and ideas. Biographers have presented their ideas and sometimes reacted to their opponents through writing biographies. Therefore, it is expected that two contemporary biographers hold different and even opposite views on the literature of their time. Some of these biographers have defended the literature of their time and have written to confirm and consolidate it, though they have sometimes hardly criticized it. The late ninth century AH - coinciding with the last years of the Timurid government - was a historic turning point in the struggle between defending the literary past and present. In the present paper, we showed that Tadhkira-Al-Shoara and Majales-Al-Nafayes, as two biographies of the aforementioned period, were written to answer the question of “how do you see the literary situation of your time?” to which they provided different answers. Specifically, the present study showed that Tadhkira-Al-Shoara and Majales-Al-Nafayes are two literary works that, despite being written in a common temporal and spatial boundary, are dominated by two different and opposing attitudes towards their contemporary literature. One is written in defense of the currents and literary thoughts of its day, and the other stands against the literature of its day.

Ein- al-Qadat -Hamadani is one of the phenomes of Islamic-Iranian culture and a pre-eminent in Theosophy, Philosophy, Gnosticism, and Literature in his own era. His writings are abundant with elegant mystic theosophical punctiliousness. The present study aimed at investigating Persian poems mentioned throughout his sayings almost without mentioning the name of their poets. This characteristic is due to his specific attitude towards poetry. The major purposes of the current study are to show Quazi’s particular attitude towards poems and the poets’ identity whose couplets were recounted. Library research revealed Quazi’s meticulous attitude towards poetry in that he sees poem as a mirror in which everybody looks his own identity. This attitude is similar to present-day poets’ views about the death of authors and meaninglessness of poems.  Following that, poets such as AbolhassanBosti, YousefAmeri, AhmadHammuyu, and VaezSerakhsi, whose couplets were recited by Quazi, were presented and investigated. Findings displayed that Quazi had an unconventional and innovative attitude toward poem and he vitalized the name, identity, and samples of some mystic poets of the fourth and fifth century who have been anonymous everywhere else.

The syntactic structure of a text is one of the most important indices to determineits style. An artwork is a system in which all of its elements are interconnected. The syntax structure is very effective in reading the text and is closely interrelated with its meaning; as a result, part of our understanding of a text comes from its syntactic clues. The story of Qiran Habashi,  which was written by the Persian narrator Abu Tahir Tarsusi in the sixth century, is a prosed epic on the gallantry and chivalry of the eponymous champion, Qiran Habashi. Using the descriptive-analytic method, this study examined the syntactic layer of the tale and its proportion to the theme. The findings revealed the most important stylistic features of this literary work as the following: high frequency of verbs in sentences, abundance of short sentences, independent and dependent sentences, frequent nominal dependencies, verb thematization,   displacement of sentence parts due to rhetorical motive,  abundance of active and state verbs, use of active voice, use of simple and prefixed verbs, emergence of grammatical mood and indicative mood in verbs, ,  rising and falling intonation in speech, and emotive language. Also, the linkage between the sentences is a blend of disjunctive and conjunctive styles, which is of artistic function in the text.

Denotation of phrases in Saeb’s writings show that his works were greatly influenced by the works of Hafez. However, considering the intertextuality among texts and looking deeper into the works of these two poets, we propose that Saeb is semantically defamiliarizing themes and phrases central to the works of Hafez. In fact, Saeb’s use of Hafiz’s themes and phrases was accompanied by a negative connotation, suggesting that perhaps, Saeb was envious of Hafez’s given title - Lesan ol Gheyb. It appeared that Saeb understood Hafez’s poetic language tricks in utilization of phrases and took a step further to manipulate Hafez’s themes and phrases in a way that is not superficially noticeable, but a deeper analysis can reveal this manipulation of lexical semantics. To substantiate this hypothesis, we used intertextuality method to make a comparative analysis of two sonnets of Hafez adapted by Saeb. Our intertextual analysis revealed that Saeb selectively and purposefully took advantage of Hafez’s phrases to ameliorate his own works. The finding supported our hypothesis, using intertextuality method.

The creation of various sciences in different times has led to the influence of literature. In this regard, the poets, using a variety of sciences, used certain basics to understand their subject matter. One of these foundations was the calculus of mathematics and mathematics that, with the advancement of mathematical science, turned into a new way of expressing intentions. Anvari is one of the poets who combine sentence and mathematical accounting with literature and express their concepts in the form of the discussed topics. His enumeration of mathematical and mathematical accounts led to the understanding of many issues in order to understand the poet's purpose well. He has also combined his wishes and even his admiration for his age with his calculus and mathematical calculus, which has made it difficult to understand many of his abilities In this research, while identifying verses from Anwari Divan in which the subject of mathematical science and arithmetic are discussed, we have analyzed the basics of the mentioned sciences in his poems, and by interpreting each of them, we have explained the meanings of the verses and the poet's intention to the audience.

The study of mysticism and mystical texts forms an important part of Persian literature. However, understanding the meaning of some of these works is not without complexities and difficulties given the considerable distance between the contemporary era and the time of writings of these works. Therefore, writing interpretation of these works is indispensable, which has been of due attention to literary scholars. But sometimes, these interpretations themselves need reform and revision. Among the works on which numerous commentaries have been written, albeit incompletely, is the Hadiqa al-Haqiqa by Sanai, which is a resource for undergraduate course in Persian language and literature. The present study sought to elaborate on some of the verses detailed in the book entitled ‘Explanation of Haqiqa by Dr. Yahaghi and Dr. Zarghani’ with some Arabization & spelling problems, which seemed to require corrections, in order to provide a clearer and more complete view for students and scholars.

One of the narratives of the life story of the Prophet, which is narrated in sources like the Qur’an and quoted by numerous narrators, is his ascension. This narrative has been referred to in Persian and Arabic literature (prose and poem) in various sources. The present study aimed at investigating the process of change in the structural elements of the ascension narratives from Hadith al-Isra' wa’l-Mi'raj, by Ibn Abbas to Ilkhanid Book of Ascension. This study was conducted based on Hadith al-Isra' wa’l-Mi'raj, by Ibn Abbas, the first written ascension, which was probably written around the 10th century AD. The narration of ascension was mentioned after Ibn 'Abbas in exegetical books such as Kitab Al-Mi'raj by Abu l-Qasim al-Qushairî, Tafsir al-Tabari, Taj al-Tarajem, Tafsir-i Surabadi, Kashf al-Asrar, and Rawd al-Jinan wa Ruh al-Janan. In this paper, we examined the process of change in different narratives of the story of ascension via investigating the similarities and differences of these works, in order to determine the extent to which these narratives or interpretations has influenced each other. Finally, the Ilkhanid Book of Ascension, as the only independent narrative of ascension in Persian, was compared with other similar works.

Badi-ul-Zaman Forouzanfar, the editor of Rumi’s Divan-e-Kabir, and other scholars believe that there are common quatrains between Divan Kabir and the early sources. By searching for the quatrains from the early poets in Divan-e Kabir, one can understand the vast range of Rumi’s study references and the sources of his literary thought. One of the valuable sources of quatrains is the collection of Nozhat-al-Majales, which contains 4125 quatrains from 300 Persian poets. In addition to the 40 common quatrains between Divan-e-Kabir and Nozhat-al-Majales, which Riahi mentioned in the footnote of Nozhat-al-Majales, 75 other quatrains from this collection were found in Divan-e-Kabir. These quatrains were then searched in other Divans and earlier literary works, and as a result, other new sources were obtained for some of these common quatrains. Out of a total of 115 quatrains shared by Nozhat-al-Majales and Divan-e Kabir, in 65 cases, the name of the poet of the quatrain is clear, which entered Divan-e-Kabir from 38 poets. Among these poets, Sanai is at the top with six quatrains. Not all of these quatrains appeared in the Divan-e-Kabir without change. The similarity of common quatrains varies from similarity in four shutters to similarity in one shutter.

Since the end of the Zandian era, with the return of Nematollahi Sufis to Iran, a stream of Sufi criticism was formed. Coinciding with empowering fundamentalist jurists in the field of Shiite jurisprudence, and with the union of Shiite scholars and the Qajar government, especially in the period of Fath Ali Shah, this period creates a serious confrontation between Shiite jurists and Sufis. The prevailing view in this regard is that there is a difference of opinion on epistemological issues, whose cause was the Sufis’ distance from the Shari’a. However, a review of historical sources calls this assumption into question. More specifically, the historical documents indicate the existence of one of the Sufi dynasties, the Dhahabis, with whom the jurists did not have a dispute, while the epistemological foundations of the Dhahabis and the Nematullahs are not particularly different. In the present study, using Foucault’s genealogical theory, we showed that beyond this epistemological conflict lies the presence at the center of the political discourse of the time. In fact, the issue of power has had a very important impact on determining how jurists and Sufis treated each other. Since the Dhahabiyah did not have any inclination to power, they did not face any opposition from the jurists, but the Nemat-Allahs, who claimed power, were quickly suppressed. We explained this issue using Foucault's concept of power .

The description of the late Hassan Vahid Dastgerdi on Nizami’s Khosrow and Shirinis is one of the works that have been used by Persian literature enthusiasts as well as those who have studied the works of Nizami for many years. Vahid Dastgerdi’s description, like other similar works, is not void of mistakes. The author of this article attempted to explain some of these mistakes and made every effort to take a step further in the versatility and refinement of this epopee. In an attempt to criticize these mistakes, first the verse in question was presented. Following that, the commentator’s direct quotation was provided and then his mistakes and the exact meaning of the verse were pointed out. It seems that the mistakes of Vahid Dastgerdi in explaining the verses were made for the following reasons: 1. false reading of some verses,  2. lack of attention to the context in which the verse is located, 3. relying on chimerical analogies in the description of some verses, 4. lack of due attention to the verses similar to the verse discussed in the other Nizami’s Divans, 5.  insufficient sources in explaining some verses, and 6. inaccessibility of our current facilities,  such as the Internet,  search engines, literary softwares, multiple and various articles and the like.

Ashraf Maraghi is one of the unknown poets of the ninth century and is one of the contemporaries of Pirbudaq and Sultan Baysanghar and his son Sultan Mohammad. The name of this poet is Hossein, and his nickname is Abu Ali, and his pseudonym is Ashraf. Many poems of this prolific poet are in different poetic forms. Among these works, we can refer to his Divan, Nasr-al-Leali, and Khamse Ashrafieh, the latter of which includes Manhaj-Al Abrar, Riyad -Al Asheghin, Leyli and Majnun, Haft Awrang, and Zafarnameh. In this paper, it was intended to introduce the existing versions of all his poems using a descriptive-analytical method along with introducing this poet. Examining the list of handwritten editions, it was found that four of Ashraf's manuscripts are available in the libraries of Hatef Effendi, Fateh, Hagia Sophia, and the British Museum. The Hatef version, written by Mahmud Khomari in 846 and which is the basic version of the current correction, includes odes, lyrics, quatrains, and refrains. Another edition, which was written in 846 AH, belongs to Fateh Library and includes the lyrics of this poet. The third edition is from the Hagia Sophia library. The latest version is the one available in the British Museum, edited and published by Yusuf Beg Babapour.