Story-Telling Process in the Anecdotes of Hadiqat-al-Haqiqa by Sanāʾi

Sanāʾi Hadiqat-al-Haqiqa (The Garden of Truth) is a mystical and didactic book in verse conceived as a continuing discourse on a wide range of ethical and religious subjects in the form of stories, anecdotes and allegories. Brevity and simplicity is the main characteristic of the book, and this research aims, through a descriptive-analytic approach, to investigate the processing system of Hadiqat-al-Haqiqa stories, especially its short anecdotes, and to study the elements of characterization, plot, dialogues and setting in them. To do so, thirty anecdotes of Hadiqat-al-Haqiqa were selected to be investigated and analyzed. According to the obtained results Hadiqat-al-Haqiqa contains many features of minimalism such as conciseness, simple plot, abundance of dialogue, limited number of characters and episodes.