Safīne, Majmūʻe, and Jong The Historical Transformations of a Literary Genre

The terms “majmūʻe”, “safīne”, and “jong” are presently used in the senses which may differ from their past meanings. Some related terms in Arabic and Persian languages, such as “bayāż”, “jarīde”, even “korrāse”, “daftar”, “mofrad”, and “jozv” have been coined for special concepts, which are hardly definable in some cases. Therefore, acquiring a relative perception of these terms, with regard to their application in the texts and documents of each period, is indispensably necessary. Some of these terms have been inserted into each other’s semantic fields or have lost their exact meanings in various periods; therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to their semantic evolution. In this paper, firstly the oldest uses of the three basic terms “majmūʻe”, “safīne”, and “jong” are studied in Persian texts up to the end of the ninth century A.H. For this purpose, the literati and poets’ references in the texts, and the old anthologies (safīnes and jongs) are examined to clarify the meanings of the terms and their semantic changes during several periods. In addition, the relationship between the terms and their common uses in other eras are referred to in brief.