Hosn va Del: Sufist Reading of Khosro va Shirin

The existence of eight imitations and five translations of Hosn va Del into other languages such as English and German shows the importance of this Persian book of verse. Many researchers have sought the sources of this work and some sources have been mentioned, but the imitation of Sibak Neishaburi from Nezami’s Khosrow va Shirin, as the most important source of this work, has not yet been mentioned. Due to the innovative mixing of symbolic story, folk tale and love story which is done by changing the names of characters into abstract concepts resulting in creating two layers of primary and interpretive meaning in the text of Hosn va Del, the similarities between the two books have not yet been discovered. The fruit of such mixing is the creation of a sufist and interpretive reading of Khosrow va Shirin (named Hosn va Del) which is a love story at the primary level and is very similar to Nezami’s Khosrow va Shirin. At the interpretive level, it is a mystical book of verse which narrates the story of the Progression and reaching Knowledge and Immortality. This article tries to study the similarities between the two stories through comparing the texts of these two books and using the method of textual criticism. The results show that the love between lover and beloved is common between the two books. The structure and organization of the two books are very similar and there are very causes and motivations in the plot of the two stories. Also, more than half of the characters of the two stories are of common characteristics. There are similar events as well as places in the two stories. Also, many similarities can be seen in the content of dialogues. The results of this study show that Khosrow va Shirin is the main source of Hosn va Del and Sibak Neishaburi is among the imitators of Nezami in composing love story.