A Comparative Narratological Analysis of Bayhaqi’s General History and Zeidari’s Autobiography

The Persian prose of the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries involves some significant books about courtier history. Further, autobiography, as a subcategory of general history, has notable instances in this period. On the one hand, both mentioned groups are worthy literary works of art. On the other hand, they have inseparable ties with story and narration. So, the narratological analysis of such texts not only exposes the secrets of our ancestors’ lives but also give insight to novel's predecessors. The following study compares the narrative elements of Bayhaqi’s Tarikh-e Bayhaqi (or Tarikh-e Mas'udi) as a general history, with Zeidari’s Nafsatol Masdur as an autobiography. Regardless of nearly two centuries time-space in between, there are similarities, as well as differences, between the way that Bayhaqi, a Ghaznavid courtier secretariat, narrates the events of the royal court of the king Mas’ud and the coutiers with the method that Zeidari, a courtyard secretariat of Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu Kharazmi(also known as Jalâl ad-Dîn Khwârazmshâh), narrates the story of his own life. We have examined the narrative elements of each text, in three broad categories to answer regarding “Who” “What” and “How” questions, while in the final section we have compared the characteristics of the two texts.