نامه فرهنگستان
سال دهم شماره 1 (بهار 1387)

For many reasons, Mahd¦ â Akhavan Sales must be recognized as one of the most important figures of modern Persian poetry. However, there are people who either do not consider him a modern poet or consider him a poet bordering between being modern and being traditional. The basis of such judgments are the poems Sales has written in the model of Nima, not his poems written in the classical style. In this paper, the writer tries to show that such views reflect only a shallow understanding of artistic modernity and lack of understanding of the requirements of modern art.

In this paper, the writer examines the character of Marda¦ s, father of Zè a¤ h¤ h¦ak, and admires his piety and humanity. The specific question the paper addresses is whether piety and humanity are the characteristics of Mard¦as, or are they, in fact, the old characteristics of Zè a¤ h¤ h¦ak, the three-headed dragon, which conforms to the Rig Veda. To do so, the writer first takes a glance at the mythical characteristics of the §S¦ahn¦ameh, and then explains the transformations made to render the mythical themes more rational.

Sad¦ â's prose is among the most sublime examples of Persian literary prose. The book, however, has not been given the attention it deserves. The writer of this paper has made an attempt to scrutinize the book to reveal the secrets of its magnificence. He begins with determining the position of the book in the prose books of Persian literature and then goes on to show the elements that contribute to this magnificence. The writer classifies these elements as either linguistic or literary and discusses them in detail.

The regional Persian dialects had already developed when the written modern Persian (Dari Persian), devised on the basis of the Arabic alphabetical system, emerged during the second half of the 2nd century A.H. Since then, very valuable Persian literary, historical and scientific works have been written in Dari Persian. Thus Persian regional dialects and the written modern Persian developed continuously and steadily side by side throughout the Persian speaking regions in Iran as well as the neighboring countries. However, during the last two centuries, alongside the two developments, a third form of Persian has appeared, i.e. the standard Persian dialect, mainly in two forms; that is, the slow, detailed vs. the rapid shortened and scrambled spoken versions. In this paper, the writer investigates and describes the nature of the development of the integrated Persian language varieties, as mentioned above.

In his Science of the cosmos, science of the soul, William Chittick attempts to find relevance between views of the ancient Muslim thinkers and those of today. In other words, he seeks to prove that the thinkers of the early Muslim world can offer ways for solving difficulties and vexing problems of contemporary modernity-stricken societies. The book has been written in a totally Islamic monotheistic tone, attributing the decline in thought of today's Muslim communities to their distancing themselves from the traditional rationality of the past. The root-cause of this intellectual decline, according to Chittick, lies in the fact that the contemporary Muslims have abandoned their traditional way of thinking, which used to be monotheistically oriented, and moved towards instrumental rationality of ultra modernism. Chittick concludes that man's endeavor to attain science cannot and should not get far away from Divine way; otherwise, there will be all ignorance, vexation and chaos.

As one of the most prominent manifestations of the Iranian culture, Sufism has always been of interest to researchers. Also, the question of women as one of the most important manifestations of beauty in creation has always been a controversial issue in the Iranian Sufi texts. Among the books written on the views of Sufis on women, Zahra Taheri's book is different both because of the method she has used and because of her efforts to document most of her claims. What is especially admirable in her work is that she has shown moderation in her judgments. This book, which is in fact a summary of ten major Sufi texts, presents in a systematic and scholarly manner, the main views of such Sufis as Solam¦ â, Ab¦u Sa`¦ âd, Mowlav¦ â about women and explains, in a critical vein, the prevalent historical, political, social and cultural conditions in Iran and the world of Islam resulting in such views.

In this paper, the writer examines the available dictionaries (about 15) of the Pahlavi language, written in a time span from the late Sassanid period to present day. The oldest of such dictionaries, Farhang ¦ i Pahlav¦ ik, has been published in various forms over and over again and the most recent one is a dictionary of Pahlavi-Armani written by Georgi Nalbandiyan. The writer first explains each dictionary briefly, mentioning such information as their titles, date of publication, content and number of entries. Finally, the writer presents a classification of existing Pahlavi texts based on their importance and validity.

In this paper, the writer first continues the discussion on the compound words with the structure noun+noun, which started in the previous issue. The writer then discusses four types of compound adjectives resulting from this structure. He then discusses in detail the structure ``noun+(the same) noun'' that functions as adverb or adjective. The paper ends with a discussion of a third structure ``£ kod+Noun'', which is often used as adjective or, less often as, noun. The discussion will continue in the following issues to examine the other structures of compound words.