Satirists and the Methods of Satirism in Iran during Seljuq Era

In Islamic Iranian society of Seljuq era, satire was used for laughable and sarcasm expression of various issues of society. There is a definition in modern historiography of Islamic Iranian literature that the meaning of satirist has the same modern meaning of “aiming for socio-political criticism”. It was a literary activity that mostly done and promoted by poets. Due to this rather literary attitude towards satire, if we consider the concept of satire beyond its current meaning as “paradox”, what had been the position of satire meaning and subject in various stratums in this period? The issue of this article is to study of the position of satire in Islamic Iranian society during Seljuq reign due to its types and the method of representation and function in a historical method. Findings of this article shows that in addition to poets which were known as promoters of social criticism in modern Persian literature historiography , various stratum include ordinary people, clowns, scholars and governmental officials had used various ways of satirism in literal culture of society and about various subjects in order to express different issues of society in sarcastic way and represent their purpose in format of satirism concepts and literary methods from humiliation to stultification.