The Mouse and Cat Attributed to Obaid Zakani and its Various Narrations

Many manuscripts and editions of Mush-o Gorbeh [Mouse and Cat] have been listed or published as the most famous work of Obaid Zakani; however, its comparison and examination clarifies that these various editions of Mouse and Cat are significantly different in terms of language, style, and even story. These narrations are largely considered as belated and folkloric compared to Obaid Zakani’s era and language. Therefore, many people have hesitated to attribute Mouse and Cat to Obaid. In order to investigate this attribution, these works should be compared, so that their shared roots can be identified. This paper merely follows this in three phases. In the first section, different editions of Mouse and Cat are compared and grouped based on the ending verses of the story. In the second section, the ending of the story is examined in all narrations. In the final section, some hypotheses are given regarding the relationship of these narrations, their origins, and other possible narrations based on the verses recorded in these editions of Mouse and Cat. They are, then, compared with the incomplete but older manuscripts. These editions of Mouse and Cat can be grouped in nine categories in terms of narration, and in two general classes in terms of story, based on the style and language. These very differences and a few ancient recordings that can only be seen in some of the belated and folkloric manuscripts indicate that none of these editions of Mouse and Cat can be attributed to Obaid.