Nizami's Viewpoints on Speech, Oratory, and Poetry

Abu Muhammad Elias ibn Yusuf ibn Zaki Muayyid, known as Nizami Ganjavi, is one of the great poets of the sixth century in the literary scope of Azerbaijan. Khamsa or Panj Ganj (Five Treasures) is his most important work. Meanwhile, Makhzan al-Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) is an ascetic and quasi-mystical verse that has unique features. One of the most important and salient points of this book is explanation of the place of speech and eloquence, especially the poetic rank in the poet's point of view. He has emphasized the extraordinary value of speech and poetry to such an extent that he composed a poem on the virtue of speech and the order of speech and expressed his views on the status and rank of speech and its place in the existence system. The research question is whether Nizami's view of eloquence and poetry is in line with reality or has it been viewed with poetic exaggeration and based on its own poetic bias? For doing so, Nizami's poems about eloquence and poetry at the beginning of the Makhzan al-Asrar have been investigated in this article. His various ideas along with the poetic images of the speech have been analyzed in a descriptive and documentary way in order to have a better understanding of Nizami's ideas on this subject.