The Content Analysis of the Safavid Era Storytelling: A Political and Social Goals Approach

Entertainment is one of the most well-known purposes of a story. In this article, it will be shown that in addition to entertainment, stories played an important role in the political and social goals and conditions of the Safavid era. To this end, the proverbial tales of the Safavid era have been content analyzed. The first major goal in the story of this period is to "propagate the ideological foundations"; the critics of this period aim to promote religious discourse among the masses by propagating the prevailing political ideology. Another purpose of the stories is related to the "political and social" issues in two areas: "Naql, in the role of stabilizing / shaping Iranian identity" and "Naql, in the role of socio-political preacher". It could also be mentioned that the stories have "psychoanalytic" themes, full of fantasies to raise people's health through the imagination or forgetfulness. Another aim of the proverbial tale of the Safavid era is "fun and entertainment." Based on the statistics extracted from the stories, it is revealed which of the purposes of the story in this period were more important than the other goals and why.