مجله آینه میراث
سال بیست و یکم شماره 2 (پیاپی 73، پاییز و زمستان 1402)

One of the ways in Middle Persian to express possession is “(h)ān + izāfa particle + [possessor] + [possessee]”, a construction hitherto considered unattested in New Persian. This article presents two sentences occurrimg in an Early Judeo-Persian text which testify to the survival of this construction in New Persian. Furthermore, we provide additional evidence of the construction's use in Old Shirazi and attempt to determine its potential area of usage. Additionally, we discuss the use of “kʾ” to mean “when; if”, again previously thought to be unique to Middle Persian in previous literature, in several dialects and languages, including Persian.

One of the social considerations concerning slavery is the issue of masters naming their slaves. A master [sahib] was not only in absolute possession of his servant’s body and life but also had full authority over their name and nickname. The master generally changed his servant’s name to his own wish and taste. However, this naming often followed a certain pattern. As a result, such names as Mobārak, Moqbel, Banafsheh, Yāsaman, Kāfoor, Beshārat and Shādi gained more currency. The matter of slaves as an issue intertwined with all levels od daily affairs are vastly reflected in Persian literature including this very topic of giving names to slave boys and girls, which has provided men of letters, especially poets, with a good source for creating poetical themes and double entendres. In this article, based on historical and literary sources as well as biographies, a large number of popular names of slaves and servants have been enumerated and certain details about their number and nature are given with several examples presented of their use by poets.

In this article, by enumerating the various kinds of rare lexical items in the old Persian texts, attempts are made to examine the causes and motivations for the use of such items and thus offer some criteria for identifying them. These criteria must, on the one hand, discourage editors from removing rare words and syntactic forms from texts, and, on the other, prevent them from fabricating inauthentic words simply on account of obscurities in the old texts. The author claims that the use of rarities in texts is basically entailed by certain conditions and necessities which must be discovered by editors. To this end, they are required to deem the principles of correcting texts and old manuscripts as the most credible sources and avoid subjective arbitrary judgement as much as possible.

One of the sources for studying the Persian literature are safinas, anthologies of poetry and literary and historical collections from different periods, from which sometimes first-hand and unique information are obtained. In an exceptional literary and historical compendium from the Ilkhānid time, preserved in the Mar’ashi Library at Qom, referred to, in the present study, as “Mar’ashi Ilkhāni Jong”, contains the verses of a poet, with the nom de plume “Ghiāsi”, who worked at office of the vizier Ghiās al-Din Mohammad, son of Khwaja Rashid al-Din Fazl al-Allah of Hamadan. However, no mention of him and his poetry has been made as yet in the studies on the history of literature and poetics. Ghiāsi had apparently adopted his pen name from this vizier and eulogized him. So, when the vizier was murdered the poet wrote an elegy lamenting his death. The scribe or one of the scribes of the Mar’ashi Ilkhāni Jong, who seems to have been present in Tabriz at the time and close to the incident, recorded Ghiāsi’s poetry in his personal jong adduced in this article where, in addition to tracing this early-8th century H./14 poet in other sources, his poetry in the above-mentioned jong has been reread and corrected.

The Nūr al-ʿuyūn is the oldest Persian book on ophthalmology written in 480 AH /1087 AD by Abū Rūh Mohammad b. Manṣūr Jurjānī-e Yamānī, known as Zarrīndast (golden hand) for those interested in primary ophthalmology. Because the manuscripts of the Nūr al-ʿuyūn, quite a few in number, originate in a lost MS, which appears to have contained a lot of unjustifiable alterations, a proper critical editing of it is impossible without benefitting by its “parallel texts.” It had already been revealed that the Nūr al-ʿuyūn had been prepared based on ʿAlī b. ʿIsā al-Kaḥḥāl’s Taḍkira al- Kahhālīn , but “ by applying therein significant changes in its structure”, also including certain additions taken from ʿAlī b. ʿIsā’s two important sources consulted by Zarrīndast, namely Al-ʿašr maqālāt fī al-ʿAyn, and Rhazes’ al-Ḥāwi fī al-Ṭibb. In addition to presenting many more accurate examples gleaned from the three parallel works mentioned above, the present study has identified a fourth text, Ḥunayn’s al-Masāʾil fī al-ʿAyn. Of course, the question – and - answer method used in the latter is followed by the Nūr al-ʿuyūn.

Amongst the Arabic texts translated into Persian, the old translations of the Nahj al-Balāgheh hold a remarkable place, unknown though. As the original Arabic text is in certain places too heavy and hard to comprehend, the pre-Safavid scholars, mostly unidentified, who engaged in translating this work were faced with a difficult task. However, they had no model to follow, this being exactly contrary to the old translations of the Qur’an for which translators had ample examples, requiring easier work. Among the unpublished translations of the Nahj al-Balāgheh the highly renowned manuscript kept in Yazd’s Vaziri Library (dated 882 H/ 1477 is examined in the present article for the first time and some if its linguistic values are shown. The translator of this work is also, like other old texts, unknown, but considering that a number of rare words also occur in several old texts, it is possible that one can make some conjectures as to the origin of the book.

An important part of Jahrom’s handicrafts has since the remote past been well-known. From early Islamic time on it has been referred to as jahrami jahramiyah in various Persian and Arabic texts. Yet, contrary to what the contemporary sources claim, such handicrafts were not only carpets and rugs. Applying a descriptive-analytical approach, and based on library sources, the present article has examined the reflections of jahrami and jahramiyah in Persian and Arabic works explaining such matters as their currency, make, and kinds. Results indicate that the term jahrami and jahramiyah appearing in Persian texts from the 4th century H. /10th, have been used to denote various sorts of ziloo, prayer-rug, namad (felt), galim (rug), sarāpardeh (stately tent), hasir (straw mat), and clothing. In the Arabic books from the 2nd century H./8th CE on, these terms appear more frequently and rather repeatedly as jahrom (short form for jahromi), and jahramiyah to represent such items as a variety of zalāli, besāt (carpet), mosallā (prayer mat), nekhākh (a long spreadable type), thiyāb (garment), khaimat al-hamrā, tarāz, washi, and bokhāri. The material of these woven articles has been described in some texts as being made of cotton, flax, wool, silk, hair, fabric and date palm leaves, but in other texts the kind of material is not clearly expressed.

The exposition of the Yanābi’ al-Olum, authored by Yusef b. Obaydollah Andakhodi, is one of the most significant old exegeses in Persian. This book, which was brought out in the latter part of the 6th/12 century, is endowed with important characteristics including its value in religious studies, expositional research, and investigations in Persian language and literature. In the present study, in addition to presenting the commentator’ life story, the structural and speculative characteristics of this exegesis are dealt with, its manuscripts examined and some of the linguistic features of the text addressed.

Language-typology research into the works produced in different periods or in certain regions can provide valuable insights if based on two key principles. First is frequency, which refers to the consistent use of a word or phrase in other texts from the same geographical area, substantiated by its presence in multiple texts. The second principle involves identifying words and phrases unique to a particular geographical area and not found in texts from other regions. This paper aims to examine several words from the abridged version of Anis al-Ṭālebin wa ʿUddat al-Sālekin, with a view to establishing a linguistic typology. As this text originates from Transoxiana, it reflects the dialect of that region. By examining these words and comparing them with other texts produced in Transoxiana, we can reveal the importance of understanding linguistic typology for the accurate understnding of words and phrases. Through an analysis of the words used in Anis al-Ṭālebin wa ʿUddat al-Sālekin, it becomes evident that certain words are exclusive to the texts produced in Transoxiana, sometimes inaccurately defined in existing dictionaries.

A number of the old Persian reference books generally known as Da’erat al-Ma’āref (encyclopedia) are little known to Persian speaking researchers. The Zinat al- Majāles is one of such works. Majdoddin Majdi had originally intended to compile a historical-religious book, but as he had a remarkable command of various sciences, he transformed the Zinat al-Majāles into a peripheral source of ancient science of medicine. Based on a descriptive-analytical approach, this article, by classifying and examining the medical observations throughout the Zinat al-Majāles, intends to address the applications of the science of ancient medicine in one of the less recognized works from the Safavid times. In this way, in addition to demonstrating the breadth of the author’s knowledge of different sciences, remarks indicating the presence of medical beliefs and the old methods of treatment in this work are underlined.

The first Arabic wordbook arranged according to the final letters of words for the use of poets in the rhymes of their verses was the Al-Taqfiah fi al-loghat put together by man hailing from an Iranian landed noble family named yaman Bandaniji in the 3rd century H./9th century CE. Timewise, it was composed between the compilation of Khalil b. Ahmad’s Al-‘Ayn and that of The Jamharat al-Loghat assembled by Dorayd Azdi. As Bandaniji was originally Iranian, his wordbook is of great importance. Regrettably, however, this dictionary has not yet received a thorough examination. Bandaniji has sometimes mentioned the Persian origin of the words, but in most cases, he has not acknowledged the Persian origin of the Arabicized words. To take out such Arabicized items, the present author, having gone through the entire wordbook, and making notes, now for the first time sets out a list of those items in alphabetical order along with their Persian roots and their undergoing changes in other wordlists. Further, a short life history of the compiler is given and his wordbook as well as the most important old sources on the subject are introduced.

Fā’-e a’jami is a consonant that was in the past written in the form of an ڤ with three, dots over it. It was at first a voiced fricative, bilabial phoneme (consonant). In the course of time, the fā’-e ajami (β) changed into other phonemes (f, v, b, p). As a result of this linguistic development and following the disappearance of the fā’-e ajami, its written form, namely ڤ (with three points over it) came to look strange and unfamiliar to the scribes of manuscripts in general. Thus, when copying from the old manuscripts, they were unable to recognize this written sign, and willynilly began to miswrite or distort it. In the present study, based on instances from the Divan of Qatrān-e Tabrizi, we have addressed the problem of distorting and miswriting in relatively recent manuscripts.

Ma‘ārij al-Nubuwwah fī Madārij al- Futuwwah, authored by Muʿin al-Dīn Farāhī Hirawi in Herat in the late 9th/15th century, is a significant work in the field of sīrah (biography) of the Prophet Muhammad. The Persian work has been widely circulated, with over hundreds of copies preserved in major libraries and museums worldwide. Notably, there are significant differences between the copies found in Turkey and those from other regions in terms of age. Given that popular books have often been subject to false claims of authorship or antiquity by spurious writers and deceitful scribes, and given the geographical distance and linguistic differences between Western Anatolia and Eastern Khorasan at the book’s writing, questions arise regarding the necessity to investigate the authenticity and identities of the scribes and owners of these early copies. Addressing these issues, this research aims to identify the most accurate and original text of the book. This involves focusing on the causes and processes of their initial transmission to the Ottoman territories.