A Study of the Musical Qualities of Attar's Ghazals

Since the old days, there has been a strong and deep link between poetry and music, that is why the best poets have always been trying to enhance the musical qualities of their poems in different ways. Ghazals (lyrical poems) also enable the poet to examine his skills in this respect. The combination of mystical meanings with this poetic form has not only affected the content but also strengthened the link between music and poetry in such a way that we may consider mystical poetry with its musical structure as a reflection of the poet’s thoughts, ideas and spiritual states.This article deals mainly with mystical poems of Attar – who is considered as a great pioneer of this kind of poems – and studies the musical features in three categories:1.External music (prosody)2.Internal Music (figures of word and figures of thought)3.Marginal music (synthetic and identical rhymes)Special attention has also been paid to the effects of Attar’s thoughts, states and ideas on the music of his poems.