مجله متن شناسی ادب فارسی
سال چهاردهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 54، تابستان 1401)

The History of Al-Uthman perfectly illustrates the events and happenings of the Ottoman government from the beginning of its emergence to the time of Ragheb Pasha. It also includes the events taking place after 1744. Besides its historical value, this work provides the audience with valuable knowledge about the social situation of the people, the behavior, and actions of the Ottoman rulers, cultural changes, and the way of thinking and the viewpoint of people during that era. The author of this work, Ahmad Judet Pasha, was born in 1823 in Bulgaria and was a very prominent and influential person in the Ottoman government. The translator is Mohammad Hossein Khoei and as said by his own words, he tried to translate this work by the order of Naser al-Din Shah in 1900. The prose of this work, excluding the introduction, which is an artificial one, is in colloquial language and is one of the anonymous texts of the Qajar era. There are two manuscripts of this book, both of them date back to the thirteenth century. However, the first version is complete and the second version is incomplete. Due to the importance of the Qajar colloquial language in the changes and developments of modern Persian, the present study aims to investigate the position of the author and translator and its translation style so as to elucidate the worth of this anonymous historical version alongside its linguistic significance.

This study tried to explore how a competent speaker chooses a special arrangement for his/her text with his/her presupposed knowledge of the audience in his/her social and cultural contexts and how the structure of the text or, in other words, arrangement of its components plays an important role in the meanings received by the audience. With this purpose in mind, several stretches of speech with the topic of "request" were extracted out of the Shāhnāmeh to see what Ferdowsi's textual tactics were for arranging the structures of different types of requests with regard to the topic of "request", as well as the interlocutors involved. The results showed that such versified requests followed different types of patterns of arrangement. The following sequences of moves were found: "praise" (to God and the audience), "introduction" (variable), "the very request" (a story and a request), and "closing" (variable). These moves with minor variable arrangements and/or omissions showed that Ferdowsi paid attention to the cultural and social contexts of his own time. Therefore, the move patterns of "request" texts in the Shāhnāmeh were predictable, leading to a better understanding of the text by the audience. The moves of "introduction" and "closing", including different steps (sub-moves) with varied arrangements according to the subject and the context, played an important role in persuading the audience and providing the rhetoric of the request too.

Cultural Semiotics is one of the most important approaches to semiotics. Yuri Lutman is one of the founders of cultural semiotics, which defines culture and intercultural relationships based on how ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ interact within the sphere of a specific Semiosphere. Based on this model, in the first part of the present study, considering the historical awareness and narration of Shahnameh, the analysis of Bahram Choobin's relationship with Hormoz and Khosro Parviz is conducted. The research method in this study, while citing history and Shahnameh and library documents, has been based on describing and analyzing the relationships and incidents related to the above-mentioned personalities. The study examines the types of relationships among the three mentioned persons from the perspective of ‘Self/Other’ and ‘Center/Margin’ based on cultural semiotics. In the second part, the study has reached the supposed result by explaining the hegemonic role of some archetypes and historical Myths in ‘Othering’ by Bahram Choobin, The findings of this study show that according to the Semiosphere of the Sassanid era and the Shahnameh narrative of the actions of Bahram Choobin and Hormoz, Bahram has been identified as ‘Self’ and ‘Central’ due to his victory in the war with Saveh Shah, protection of Iran, and his loyalty to Hormoz. Hormoz has been removed from the position of ‘Self’ and ‘Central’ and has been placed in the position of ‘Other/Marginal’ due to its history of ill-treatment with Ashraf and Bahram. But Bahram Choobin has been determined to conquer the kingdom and has a desire that is contrary to the Semiosphere of the central government, the masses of people and his relatives. This degrades him from the position of the ‘Ideal Other’ to the ‘Other/Marginal’; therefore, the trend is reversed. At the same time with the uprising of Bahram Choobin against the central government, the role of some archetypes and historical myths has been very effective in emphasizing the role of Bahram Choobin in the Otherness non-culture position.

Zarrinqaba-nameh is one of the longest epic poems after the Shah-nameh, which has mentioned the heroism and wars of Zarrinqaba (the granddaughter of Rostam), Rostam, and his family during the kingdom of Kay-khosrow and prophecy of Solomon's prophethood. The poet and the time of its composition are unknown, but its corrector has considered it to be related to the Safavid Era (10th century AH) based on evidence. One of the most important stylistic features of Zarringaba-nameh is the use of "prepositions" in new and unique meanings and functions, which underlie its linguistic features. Thus, Zarrinqaba-nameh could be considered a unique and unrivaled work among the texts of Persian literature from this perspective. Some prepositions, such as "from", "in", and "to", in Zarinqaba-nameh not only have been used in their unique meanings, but also have shown different roles in the syntax, e.g., two prepositions coming together for a complement, novel and unusual prepositions in simple and compound prefix verbs, and prepositions coming before an object.

As Mersad al-Ebad is a mystical book, its most important subject is theology, and the names of God are mentioned in it frequently and in different forms. There has been a lot of research on the names of God, but there is no linguistic or rhetorical research on the names of God in Mersad al-Ebad. In this descriptive-analytical study, the names of God in the Persian expression of Mersad al-Ebad are examined to determine the most widely used ones, the properties of their uses, and their semantic application. The investigation of God's names in Mersad al-Ebad showed that their most important property is the infrequent metaphorical names and the frequent metonymical (Majazi) ones are made particularly by derivation and pun (Jenase Eshteqaq); the most frequent cause of using God's metonymical names is the mighty of God's high position as the creator and heavenly God. From a semantic point of view, the results showed that every holy name has a specific meaning and application and some of them possess aesthetic use in Mersad al-Ebad. In addition, some of the names of God in Mersad al-Ebad are Asmae Jamali (Aesthetic Names) and Asmae Jalali (Glory Names).

Motif is a common term in the field of science, art, and literature. It is one of the tools for formal and content critiques and analysis of works. Knowing motifs helps to better understand the poets’ poems. By studying and classifying motifs, one can study the evolution of annihilation and survival of motifs in the literature of a country or a period or in different periods and people.  Saeb Tabrizi is the greatest poet composing lyric poems of Indian style. The motifs in his sonnets have a high frequency. The use of these motifs can reflect the poet’s mentality, as well as a picture of the intellectual events of his time. The motifs of prophets are among the most widely used allusive motifs in his poetry. In this study, we examined the functions of the motifs of prophets in Saeb's sonnets. The poet used such motifs to express various thoughts and mentalities.

Khajeh Abu al-Wafa Kharazmi (d. 835AH), is one of the poets and gnostics of the second half of the eighth century and the first half of the ninth century. The purpose of this study is to review quatrains of Abu al-Wafa Kharazmi edited by Beheshti Shirazi, their quality of correction and authentication attributed to him. The research method in this study is fundamental-theoretical and comparative citation to valid gnostic, literary, and historical sources. The accuracy of the quatrains and their authenticity have been examined by referring to authentic literary and historical texts, memoirs, anthologies, selected poems, divans of contemporary poets of Abu al-Wafa Kharazmi before and sometimes after him, and another manuscript of the poet's quatrains recording. Also, the inaccuracies of quatrains in misdiagnosis of the format of poems in the quatrains of Abu al-Wafa Kharazmi are shown. Lack of accurate tracing and search of quatrains in other authoritative literary and historical texts, as well as definitive attribution of some wandering quatrains (attributed to several poets) to Abu al-Wafa Kharazmi by the editor, are among the causes of these mistakes. In this study, an attempt has been made to help the esteemed editor by carefully recording the quatrains and identifying that of other poets in the quatrains of Abu al-Wafa Kharazmi. In the following editions, he tried to refine the quatrains more precisely to provide a more complete and trim text than the quatrains of this poet to its corrected text to be considered in the historical course of Persian quatrain study. Other important factors in the occurrence of these errors and confusions are the inaccuracy and little knowledge of the scribers, and the editor misconception. Several quatrains from the poems of twenty poets of the second to ninth centuries have been mistakenly mixed in the quatrains of Abu al-Wafa Kharazmi by mistakes of scribers and editors. Because scientific research requires accurate texts, it is necessary to carefully review the poet's quatrains in terms of the quality of correction and authenticity of the poems.