A Study of the Literary Tradition of "Esteqbal" in Vasel Kaboli’s Poems

The literary return movement, which began in response to the decline of the Indian style in Isfahan and spread throughout Iran, did not affect Afghan literature, and Afghan poets continued to compose poems in the Indian and Bidel Dehlavi’s style. At the time of the Indian style domination of Afghan poetry, Vasel Kaboli (1244-1309 AH) was one of the few poets who also paid attention to the poetry of poets before the Indian style. Also, composing poems, he was influenced by Khorasani, Azerbaijani, Iraqi and other previous poets in both form and content. The influence has been more noticeable in the form, especially in terms of meter, rhyme, and radif. The present research is an intertextual analysis of statistical data by the use of descriptive-analytical methods to examine the influence of Vasel Kaboli by the poets before him; a literary tradition that is called “esteqbal”.The findings of this study show that Vasel Kaboli, occasionally has been influenced by a wide range of poets before him. He has systematically imitated Hafez. About 50% of Kaboli’s poems, in the available version of his Divan, have been composed in esteqbal of Hafez Shirazi. There are a total of 62 lyric poems, 33 elegies, 3 odes, 2 Masnavis, and 5 fragments in his Divan. Among those poems, 32 ghazals (of which the subject of 5 pieces is elegy) and one ode are written in esteqbal of Hafez. After Hafez, Vasel Kaboli has paid the most attention to Rumi's ghazals and  made the esteqbal of 6 ghazala of Divan Shams Tabrizi. After Molavi’s poetry, Biddle Dehlavi's poems have been considered by Vasel Kaboli. A statistical look at the esteqbal in the Vasel’s Divan shows that 42% of the rhyming words in the sonnets are exactly of Hafez and about 58% of the rhyming words in the poems in question belong to Kaboli. Considering the role of rhyme in thematic composition, this indicates the greater variety of themes in the poem submitted by Kaboli. Another noteworthy point is that Vasel has sometimes written two poems in response to a poem, examples of which can be seen in esteqbal of Rumi, Hafez, and Qodsi Mashhadi. More interestingly, he has sometimes made an esteqbal of a poet through another poet; like the examples seen about the poems of Rumi and Amir Khosrow Dehlavi. In conclusion, the influence of Hafez and other mentioned poets on Kaboli is not limited to the weight and rhyme but as discussed in the analysis of the esteqbal of Hafez's first sonnet, it includes different formal (including music, language, imaginary, …), and semantic areas.