Examining Intertextuality between Ferdows al-Murshediyeh and Religious and Mystical Texts: Based on Al-Risala al-Qushayriyya

To understand literary works, it is essential to be aware of the pre-texts and works preceding them. Accordingly, discovering the origins of literary texts is one of the ways of understanding them more accurately. The present study investigates the degree to which Al-Risala al-Qushayriyya (The Treatise of al- Qushayriyya) has been influenced by religious and mystical texts, and through adopting a descriptive-comparative research method, examines its intertextuality based on Gerard Genet's theory. Studying the pre-texts related to the conducts and supernatural wonders of Sheikh Abou Ishaq Kazerouni (352-426 AH) in Ferdows al-Murshediyeh reveals that mythologizing the hero based on archetypes and drawing analogies between lifestyle, miracles and stories of the prophets and those of the spiritual guide by his disciples, to show his high status and grandeur, are evident. The study of intertextuality between Ferdows al-Murshediyeh and other mystical texts concerning mystical themes and terminology, verses and hadiths, anecdotes and quotes of the mystics confirms that there is an explicit intertextuality between its themes and those of Al-Risala al-Qushayriyya. Hence, Al-Risala al-Qushayriyya had been one of the references used by Sheikh Abou Ishaq Kazerouni and his disciples, and Sheikh Abou Ishaq had borrowed some mystical themes, anecdotes, and quotes of other mystics from Qushayri. This explicit intertextual relationship at the level of phrases and words is chiefly represented as quotations without in-text citations.