محمدرضا ترکی

Humor has been a consistent presence in Persian literature since its inception, serving as a literary device for political and social critique, as well as a means to imbue works with a lighter tone. Nezami Ganjavi, a pioneer of satirical writing in the 6th century, utilized satirical techniques to not only critique the social, cultural, and moral milieu of his era, but also to infuse his narratives with an element of amusement. In his poem "Leyli and Majnun," the incorporation of humorous verses serves to alleviate the somber narrative and engage the audience. The rhetorical framework governing the work has provided a platform for humorous discourse and expression. Utilization of identification and simile as prevalent literary techniques within this framework has given rise to situational humor. Additionally, wordplay, a hallmark of the 6th-century (Arrani) style, has been extensively employed, contributing to verbal humor. Etiology and paradox, two other devices, have frequently contributed to tempering the story's solemn atmosphere. The humor in Nezami's works has been subtly interwoven within the layers of language, often evading immediate recognition, thus adding a touch of subtle irony to his verses. 

Nezami's Makhzan Al-Asrar is one of the poems which have always been the focus of commentators and editors. Muhammad Ibn Qawam Balkhi's description (8th century AH) is one of the earliest descriptions which investigated one thousand and three hundred verses. Despite some deficiencies, the description of Muhammad Ibn Qawam Balkhi has carefully explored many of the implications, verses, narrations, and astrological and medical terms. In the present study ten verses of Nezami's Makhzan Al-Asrar are discussed based on Qawam Balkhi's description and some of the semantic aspects or implications which may be helpful in describing the verses are analyzed. It is noteworthy that the meaning and interpretations of other commentators have also been criticized in these ten verses.

In a general perspective, narratology viewpoints in the field of “story” (including novels, short stories and so on) is founded based on the narrative characteristics of the story. Therefore, for illustrating “Memory” as a narrative context with unique characteristics, we need to redefine a number of the descriptions according to fundamental ideas about narratology along with considering the special characteristics of memory. In this article, after a brief discussion about memory, its components, its narrative characteristics, the narrator’s role and James Phelan’s theory of the narrator’s reliability and we examine the role and reliability of the narrator in Ahmad Dehghan’s book Rouzha-ye Akhar based on the viewpoints of rhetorical narratology. Our main purpose is to identify the narrator’s role and his functions and to measure the reliability of his dialogue according to James Phelan’s “theory of unreliable narrator”. With this study, it is known that the narrator of the memory by using various methods such as omission, reticence, moral and ideological evaluations, repetition, etc to support his purposes and this can change him into an unreliable narrator in all three aspects of reporting, interpretation, and evaluation.

One of the most important literal and literary conjectures on the Hafez Divan is Sharh-e Soudi. Soudi who was one of literary men and scholars of the Ottoman Empire in the 10th century AH, had many compilations. His most important work is the account of the Hafez Divan. He wrote this commentary in the Turkish language of Asia Minor. This description has been relevant in many ways and has been used by scholars and exponents for many years in the Persian translation, so it is necessary to critique this description and to examine the way the Soudi is described. In this study, the structure of Sharh-e Soudi is examined in six sections: arithmetic, vocabulary meaning, grammatical points, rhetorical points, meaning of verses and ideas and exponent theories. In each section, while explaining the method of expository description, examples of objection or advantages of Sharh-e Soudi are provided. Carefully studying the Sharh-e Soudi on Hafez Divan, on the one hand, we come across advantages such as innovation, narrow-mindedness, and attention to subtle points in the description of some verses, and on the other hand a myriad of misconceptions, grammatical and lexical errors, inaccurate comments, and so on, we face.

Nizami’s narration of Khosrow and Shirin is noteworthy for several points including the way these two characters meet each other, their tragic destinies despite the joyfulness of Persian romances, and the active role of Shirin. Therefore, to study the formation of the story and the tragic destinies of its characters, the article analyzes the structure of its narrative. The narration of Khosrow and Shirin begins with a complete sequence. This sequence forms two other major sequences, which are Khosrow’s efforts to gain the four desirables (Shirin, Royal throne, Shabdiz, and Barbad) and Shirin’s efforts to gain Khosrow. The sequences of the narrative are cycles of the change of situation from the stable to the unstable; actions and reactions of the auxiliary and opposing forces have a vital role in changing the situation. Each sequence begins with a change from a balanced state to an unbalanced one and ends with the possibility of transformation and, ultimately, the materialization of transformation. At the end of the narrative, because of the narrator’s belief that worldly blessings are unstable, these desirable transformations are lost and there is no sign of permanent achievement whatsoever.

In this paper the theoretical history of “types of poetry,” as defined in ancient times up the seventh century, has been chronologically analyzed. The study was necessitated upon noticing that despite the wide extent of discussion about categorization and definition of types of poetry in contemporary studies, the question of whether there was a clear definition and categorization of types of poetry in ancient literary theories remains unanswered; and if the answer is yes, what was the basis for categorization of types of poetry? The existence of phrases in Khaqani’s verses that explicitly refer to ten types of poetry reinforces the hypothesis that ancient literary theories clearly defined and categorized types of poetry. So, under the four titles of philosophers and logicians, Arab literary scholars and rhetoricians, Persian works of literary and rhetorical criticism, and poets, ancient theories are studied and it is concluded that literary genres—particularly poetry—was a well-known subject among the ancients and especially Arabs, and in their works of literary and rhetorical criticism, a chapter or at least a title was devoted to it. In Persian literature, the theory of types of poetry is much more recent than the Arabic theory and is entirely influenced by it. Nevertheless, an evolution of the theory of types of poetry can be detected in Persian poetry.

If we consider the reality as irregularity and poetry as a coherent whole, one of the instruments of this irregularity in poetry and its coherence can be considered to be irony. The heterogeneous experiences of the poet from his world lead to the emergence of apparently more controversial issues in his poetry. The poet's humorous awareness of the existing contradictions brings the text into an irony, can make reading the poet more of an intellectual challenge, and gives readers a wider view.
Sanai's heterogeneous experiences, which are the result of a conflict between his ideals and perceptions with his status quo, are intermingled in his poetry and became a whole new one.
The current study was aimed to examine how Sanai's linguistic choices are used to reflect the status quo in the society and to demonstrate his thoughts, beliefs and concerns by evaluating the extent, manner, and use of irony in his poems. Based on the results presented herein, there are often a network of different ironies beside each other in the poetic language of the Sanai, by which his poems were turned into an integrated structure; consequently the general readers can be enjoyed from its appearance, and a particular reader from the discovery of hidden layers. As a representative of the educated stratum, Sanai had considered himself responsible to the common people and tried to reflect their concerns and problems in their work. However, he has been forced to diminish his sharp tongue expression, hence, he had used irony.

As one of the greatest Persian literates of the 12th century and one of the most prominent characters of his time, Khāghāni spoke both languages of Persian and Arabic fluently and many of his literary works have survived in both languages. However, none of his Arabic works are available, except for a few verses and some short prose pieces which has come down in his divan and perhaps his Persian Monsha'āt. For the first time in this study, two Arabic letters of Khāghāni have been introduced, copies of which are kept in Chester Beatty library of Dublin and Ibrahimpasha's groom section of Suleimaniyah library of Istanbul. The mentioned treatises are of the best examples of Iranians Arabic writings and hold many literary and historical advantages, such as making the recognition of events happened during Khāghāni's life easier to the scholars and solving the ambiguities this Persian poet used in the words of his complex poems. As a result, some first-hand and valuable information would be obtained about the recipients of these two letters, Qutb al-Din Abhari and Awhad al-Din Ghaznawi, besides some unsaid matters about the history and Sufism of Azerbaijan in the 12th century. The author of present study has corrected the above-mentioned treatises and is going to publish it under the title of "Qāyat-e Ibda'e" (the Utmost Innovation) with an introduction and analysis.

At the beginning of its genesis in the third century, rhetoric was expanded. It was called “Badi”, “Bayan” and in later centuries it was introduced as “Balaghat”. However, this process did not last long and the pure light of rhetoric becomes multiple like the shadows of knurl. According to the reports of rhetoric contemporary historians from the late sixth century and at the beginning of the seventh century, we see the branching of this knowledge until we access what we call “Badi’, Bayan, Maa’ni”. The main subject of this article is about the independence date of “Badi”. Many contemporary historians believe that this branch of knowledge with its current meaning was made by Sakkaki and after that it became popular as a technique developed by Badraldinebne Malek (Matlub, 2010). This belief is so famous among rhetoric researchers and students that many articles, books or entries written about “Badi” introduce the independence of this knowledge from the seventh century by Sakkaki or Badraldinebne Malek (see Matlub, 2010; Maraghi, 1990). What we will present here is a new narrative about the independence date of this knowledge. The novelty in this method is rooted in the difference of writers' attitude towards famous rhetoric historians about the nature of history, especially intellectual history. Textual studies show this fact that the independence of “Badi” with its current concept was not something suddenly, and it began slowly at least two centuries before Sakkaki. Our research shows that this continuum has at least five chains that Sakkaki and Badraldinebne Malek are only their fourth and fifth chains. In the following sections we introduce and describe the individuals in this Continuum.     

In this article we assume that intellectual- historical phenomena were gradual and connected; therefore, the independence of “Badi’” was not an accident but a process. Thus, the beginning of this process was followed in the historical texts of rhetoric. Moreover, in research like this we cannot rely on the information of just one specific knowledge or mainstream; in fact, referring to simultaneous changes in other knowledge and mainstreams and finding a cause and effect relationship between different changes is one the most important responsibility of a historian who is supposed to narrate the history of a thought. So in this article after a precise analysis of rhetoric texts, we enter another territory called logic and attempt to highlight the changes occurred in this field related to metonymy and metaphor and consider them as a background for the changes in “Badi”.

There is a very considerable criterion for old rhetoricians and contemporary researchers to rely on for considering the independence of “Badi’”. This criterion is the absence of simile and metaphor and generally metonymy in “Badi” (for example see Sobki, 1332). They generally believe that Sakkaki was the cause of this separation. According to a rather unknown source, we will prove that the date of this separation is at least two hundred years before him. Mavadol Bayan by Ali ebne Khalaf Katib (1036) is one of the important resources that we may see the separation of metaphor from the subject of “Badi” for the first time. At first we consider the reasons of the author to separate these two, and then we present our own analysis about this subject. Rhetoric contemporary researchers explain that before Sakkaki the term of “Badi” meant “Baligh” and “Hasan”. This is almost correct. One of the meanings that Ali ebneKhalad Katib uses for this word is this. For instance, when he aims to show the distinction between simple prose and rhetorical prose he confesses thatthe way he chooses in writing his prose to prevent vain prose speech that people use in ordinary writings and conversations, and that way is decorating the text with the ornaments of rhetoric and “Badi” like metaphor and simile and rhyme and “Taghsim” and “Moghabele”, etc. (Katib, 1036). In the above phrase, rhetoric and “Badi” have been used with the same meaning. Katib (1036), like previous rhetoricians, reminded that metaphor is a part of “Badi”; however, he does an amazing job in introducing this technique. Mavadol Bayan like other books such as Alsaaatein and Alomda fe-Sanaate Sheer has a part called “Badi” in which he starts to introduce its chapters. By analyzing this part, we realize that he has omitted the metaphor from it (Katib, 1036).  Since IbneMotaz to Jorjani, metaphor was a part of “Badi”. According to this subject, Katib did not choose an opposite way to the previous rhetoricians by separating “Badi” from rhetoric and metaphor from “Badi”. In fact, it seems that Katib (1036) transfers metaphor and simile to the topic of metonymy in the chapter of rhetoric and not “Badi”. If we want to show the process of changes about metonymy and metaphor before the beginning of the sixth century, in the first step we should say that from the fourth century the topic of metonymy found its way to rhetoric books. In the second step, metaphor has been presented in two chapters called metonymy and “Badi” that makes a kind of dichotomy or at its best way a kind of repetition. Finally, in the third step the separation of metaphor and simile from “Badi” and its transfer to a new section called metonymy or reality and metonymy took place. This process was almost finished before the end of the fifth century. There is no doubt that the most progressive person in this period was Aliebne Khalaf Katib. After that, individuals such asMatrazi and then Sakkaki and Badroldinebne Malik helped this process.The importance of Avicenna in influencing the transfer of metaphor and in shaping “Badi” is in his two innovations in Esharat  and alTanbihat. (Aristotle's logics became popular among Muslims in nine part but Avicenna, in Esharat and Manteqol-Mashreqain, divides logic into two main parts based on “tasavvorat” and “tasdighat” and reduced Aristotle's chapters from nine to two (Faideei, 1865); he does this by being inspired from Farabi's classification of science to “tasavvor” and “tasdigh” which was expressed in Oyoon-alMasael and by considering the distinction between “tasavvor” and “tasdigh” methods. Avicenna mentions the subject of “Alfaz” in the “Tasavvorat” chapter. This subject includes another innovational part which is the division of all kinds of implications to “Motabeghe” and “Tazammon” and “ltezam”.

In this article we attempted to define the real contribution of Sakkaki or Ibne Malik in the division of “Badi” from “Bayan”, which is mentioned a lot in contemporary rhetoric research. In fact, we can comprehend that rhetoricians and logicians before these two almost figures provided backgrounds for this division. The garden of rhetoric only needed a farmer to pick the yield of this nurture.

In terms of style, Monshaat (letters) of Khaghani is one of the complicated and industrial texts in Persian literature. Khaghani had a special style of prose writing, just as in verse, and a full knowledge of various writing methods. This work is of great importance in various aspects such as better understanding of Khaqani's writing style as well as getting acquainted with his environment and time. What has been considered in present study is the contemplation on some of Khaghani's phrases in his Monasaat, corrected by Mohammad Roshan, that are not semantically expressive and the audience may get in to difficulties in reading them. Bad reading and unprincipled copying of the editions are, in some cases, among the factors have reduced the literary value and artistic delicacy of the work. The re-correction of phrases has been accomplished on the base manuscript, and the least on some insignificant manuscripts such as Paris and Sepahsalar that include just a few of the letters. In many reviewed cases, other textual evidences are obtained when the right phrase stands on its right place.

Armaghan-e sobh morning presentʼ is one of the useful academic selections of our in poetry. The author has attempted to present some samples from Khaghani Sharvaniʼs works, including Qasideh ʻodesʼ and other poetic forms in a well-organized order and scholarly precision accompanied by the explanations and delicacies to the students of Persian language and literature and other individuals interested in this area.
The authorʼs effort, particularly in explaining the verses in estimated successful and without numerous errors, but the historical discussions and the personal character of khaghani sharvani, due to other scholarʼs viewpoints, is still erroneous.
The current study attempts to refer to various types of these errors which if they are accepted by the author can be a great of help in editing some of the current incorrect issues under investigation in this work.

There has not yet accomplished a comprehensive research on the details of Khāqānī's life incidents and his relationship with the courts of the kings and the lords ruled during his period, so a very vague image has remained of the faces of his praised ones. It would be undoubtedly impossible to get a minute understanding of the poems of this great poet of 12th century or even to try to correct them carefully and academically without suitable information on his time situation, historical points on his works and realizing the identity of his praised characters. One of Khāqānī's celebrated poems is a ballad with the word “namāyad” as its rhyme which can be briefly called “namāyad ballad” or Shāhed-e-jān (the soul-mate). Who is the one has been admired in this ballad? There is a fierce controversy between the experts and of course the manuscript versions of Khāqānī's Divān about the quantity and the identity of the admirer(s). We are going, in present paper, to make this historical ambiguity clear via existing historical documents and taking the analysis of contemporary Khāqānī experts in to consideration. Additionally, it would be proved that the above mentioned ambiguity and the controversies surrounded the praised character in this ballad are all the result of a fundamental problem in the version of Khāqānī's Divān available in British Museum (on which Sadjadi had edited).

Anvarī, as one of the three messengers of the Persion poetry, has always caught the interest of commentators and people interested in poetry. Mohammad Ibn Dāvūd-e cAlavī-ye Šādīābādī, who lived in Malveh (Mando) in the second half of the 9th c. A. H. and the first half of the 10th c.A. H., was the first person to write a description on Dīvān-e Anvarī. In his work, he has described over 600 couplets of Dīvān-e Anvarī, sometimes employing Indian equivalents for Persian words. This article describes the name and ancestors and works of Shaddi Abbaddi, the distinguishing features of his description of the Dīvān-e Anvarī as well as certain remarks and probable criticism.