negin mozhgani

Although we have access to a number of critical editions of Attār's works, there still remain some problematic and ambiguous points in his works that cannot be clarified merely based on the codicological details. To elucidate such matters, it is indispensable to analyze closely the different aspects of Attār's style based on the authentic documents to discover the general patterns. In this study, we deal with some of the symmetrical patterns recurring throughout all the layers (from the verses to the whole work) of Attār's original poems. These patterns are classified into four main groups including repetition, parallelism, congruency, and a particular recurrent structure. The study of these symmetrical patterns, combined with the other stylistic and codicological details, can help us with evaluating the authenticity of some of the confusing parts in Attār's works.

"Esteshhad"(confession), or on a lighter note "Quranic citation", has always been one of the most outstanding features of Persian prose. Such as any other verbal phenomenon, this oratorical industry has naturally experienced a considerable evolution due to the prevailing intellectual and literary requirements of each period. Surveying several examples of confession in Persian prose from 5th up to 8th Hijri centuries shows that this industry has transformed from reasoning in to a rhetoric element and its lingual structure has changed from an independent, explicit and expansive state to a concise, ambiguous and motion-based pattern as a result of this functional evolution. The ultimate result of this is the emergence of a new additional combination in Persian language can be called "confessional". Due to the absence of this kind of additional combination in the Persian grammar books, it seems necessary to carry out a comprehensive review on its structure. The forming factors, the linguistic and literary structures, and the patterns and functions of confession (Esteshhad) additions are what have been studied in present paper.