The Literary Genre of Salavāt-khāni in Folk Literature

Similar to classic literature, there are several different literary genres in folk literature. Some of these genres belong only to folk literature, this is while others belong to both folk and classical literatures. It is an essential task to identify each one of these genres. Salavāt-khāni is one of the folk poetries which intend to recall the sanctity of the saints on different occasions by inviting the audience to salute the saints at certain moments. Poems of this type are usually classified according to the occasions they are being used. For instance, they are known as worksong, chavoshi, or sahari-khani, this is while each one of these examples belongs to a different genre. Consequently, the goal of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of Salavāt-khāni. To this end, generic studies are used to study the internal and external features, such as structure, content, mode, function, and the specific interaction between the orator and the audience. There are only a few cases of Salavāt-khāni which are recorded in manuscripts. However, these limited cases are enough to prove Salavāt-khāni as an autonomous literary genre according to its unique structure.