A Comparative Structural and Content Analyses of the Motif of Love in Omman Samani’s and Safi Alishah Esfahani’s Ashurai Mystical Poems

In the Islamic mysticism, Love is one of the most frequent concepts that has been considered by many poets and authors since long ago. In mystical-Ashuraic poetry, love is one of the most commonly used themes too; In the poems of Safi Alishah Isfahani's Zobdah al-Asrar (as the first mystic poems of Qajar period) and Omman Samani's Ganjinah al-Asrar (as the most prominent mystic poems of this period), there are clear and hidden references to the True Love of the martyrs of Karbala especially Imam Hossain (A.S.). The main issue of the current research is the adaptation, description, and analysis of the motif of "love" and its elements in the poems of these two poets and the way they use linguistic and imagery capacities to express these concepts artistically. Therefore, the linguistic and rhetorical characteristics of these poems are investigated and compared with a descriptive-analytical method. The result is that at the thought level, there is not a subject as frequent as "love" in their poetry. In particular, love for Imam Hussain (A.S.) has been considered. At the phonetic layer, the selection of soft prosodic rhythms and weights, the selection and repetition of words suitable for the concepts of love have given an inner meaning a touch of lyrical and emotional atmospheres. In addition from literary perspective, The structure and style of similes, metaphors, and hints are formed on the basis of romantic images, and poets have tried to effectively induce their fundamental mystical thoughts by using these elements.