AYENEH-YE-PAZHOOHESH
Year:2025 | Volume:36 | Issue:212|Papers Count:26

This article, composed in the form of a letter (murāsala), examines the verse “īn hame jilwa-yi ṭāwūs o kharāmīdan-i ū / bār-i digar nakunad, gar tu be raftār āyī”from the perspectives of meaning and lexicon.

René Wellek (1903–1995), a distinguished literary scholar and linguist, was originally Austrian but began and completed his university studies in Prague. In 1939, following the Nazi occupation of Prague, he emigrated to England and then to the United States. A student of the Prague structuralist school, he succeeded in synthesizing his ideas with the principles of the New Critical formalist approach in America, ushering in a new era of literary studies worldwide. One of his most important works is Theory of Literature (1948), co-authored with the American critic Austin Warren (1899–1986). Fortunately, this book has been translated into Persian with both precision and scholarly care, and it stands as one of the most significant and influential works in literary research—serving, from its first publication to the present day, as a theoretical guide for a wide range of scholars in literary criticism, literary history, and comparative literature across the globe. Although many of Wellek’s works have been translated into Persian, traces of his ideas are scarcely visible in Persian-language works, whether in books and articles on literary criticism, literary history, and comparative literature, or even in master’s theses and doctoral dissertations in these fields. This is certainly not due to the quality of the Persian translations, as the translators were generally competent scholars well-acquainted with Wellek’s thought, producing accurate renditions. Rather, the problem lies primarily in the complexity and conciseness of Wellek’s prose, coupled with his numerous unelaborated references to older or contemporary subjects and sources. These features often quickly tire the reader and discourage further study. In this series of articles, I aim to introduce, critique, and examine René Wellek’s views on literary history. This series consists of three main parts, each comprising two to several different chapters. In the first part, drawing on various works by Wellek and supported by examples from Persian literature, I present his theory of literary history. The second part discusses critiques written of his views, and finally, the third part offers critical analyses of selected studies on the history of Persian literature in light of Wellek’s theories.

The gelatin printing technique was one of the practical and influential methods employed in political activities during the Qajar period in Iran, primarily used for producing clandestine pamphlets (shab-nāmi) and political announcements (i‛lānāt). Nonetheless, this technique was also employed, albeit to a lesser extent, for printing books. In this article, the author provides a brief overview of the history of this technique’s introduction into Iran and its geographical spread, and then proceeds to introduce books printed by this method that are currently held in Iranian libraries.

The collection of quatrains Nuzhat al-Majālis, compiled by Jamāl Khalīl Shīrwānī in the first half of the seventh century AH in the region of Shīrwān, contains approximately four hundred early Persian quatrains. According to what is recorded in the final qaṣīda of the manuscript, this precious anthology of quatrains was prepared for a special gathering of ‛Alāʾ al-Dīn Shīrwānshāh. Most researchers have identified this Shīrwānshāh as Alāʾ al-Dīn Farīburz, son of Garshāsp; however, some have introduced him as Alāʾ al-Dīn Farāmarz, son of Gushtāsp. In this article, the identity of the dedicatee is clarified based on coins discovered from the period of Shīrwān rule in the first half of the seventh century AH. According to these documents, the ruler of Shīrwān from 622 to 652 AH was named Alāʾ al-Dīn Abū al-Muẓaffar Farīburz b. Garshāsp b. Farrukhzād. On coins struck in his name, the names of three Abbasid caliphs—al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh (575–622 AH), al-Mustanṣir bi-llāh (623–640 AH), and al-Musta‛ṣim bi-llāh (640–656 AH)—are inscribed. These records show that “Farāmarz” and “Gushtāsp” are corruptions of “Farīburz” and “Garshāsp,” and that no such individuals actually existed in the Shīrwānshāh lineage. It is most likely that Nuzhat al-Majālis was presented to Alāʾ al-Dīn Farīburz sometime after 632 AH.

This study is an exploration of early literary, historical, exegetical, and mystical sources concerning the origins, nature, and narratives of the story of the “ring or seal of Solomon.” In early Persian literary texts as well as in certain classical historical, exegetical, and mystical works—both in Persian and Arabic—there are numerous references to the khātam (seal) of Solomon the Prophet, along with various reports and tales describing the episode of “the seal, Solomon, and the demon.” However, these sources contain no explicit statements or direct indications about the “clear and original origin” of the story of Solomon’s seal or about how its narratives and tales found their way into literary, exegetical, and historical texts. Neither the Quran nor the Bible—the most authoritative and sacred scriptural and exegetical sources—mentions Solomon’s seal, and it remains unclear exactly which sources underpin the accounts concerning Solomon’s ring and its details as presented in classical historical, exegetical, and literary works. This article represents an effort to uncover answers to this very question.

Jungs (manuscript anthologies) and other old miscellanies are invaluable sources in literary research and the process of critical editing (taṣḥīḥ) of texts. Many scattered poems and writings have been preserved within these works, and at times they provide unique copies of ancient texts. However, placing excessive trust in such sources without scrutinizing their accuracy and authenticity can lead to distortions of the original text. Jungs are typically the result of private compilations and may contain errors, subjective interventions, or alterations by copyists or compilers. Therefore, it is essential to approach jungs and similar old collections with careful attention and caution, treating them primarily as auxiliary sources. Only through such an approach can one approximate the original text and safeguard the scholarly integrity of the edition.

Mīrzā Ḥasan Rushdīyyih is a well-known figure in modern Iranian history. He is considered one of the pioneers in establishing modern schools in Iran and almost single-handedly initiated a revolution in modernizing education in the country. His life and memoirs have been explored to some extent by his relatives and by researchers. This article, however, focuses on a lesser-known aspect of his life. Alongside managing various schools, Rushdīyyih also earned income by selling books, using part of the proceeds to fund the schools. Yet things did not always proceed smoothly, and there were challenges. Examination of unique, previously unstudied judicial documents reveals that Rushdīyyih filed and pursued a legal complaint regarding a fraud involving the sale of his books. This article provides a documented account of this episode, which is thought-provoking in its own right, illustrating just how arduous advancing significant cultural projects could be in modern Iranian history. The primary sources for this study are copies of Rushdīyyih’s case file in the archives of the judiciary (‛adlīyyah), published here for the first time. In addition to presenting a brief narrative of this case, the article also offers transcriptions and selected images of these documents for scholarly use.

Fikr-i Āzād (Free Thought) was a periodical published in Mashhad toward the end of the Qajar era under the management of Aḥmad Bahmanyār Kirmānī. Beginning with the previous issue of “Khurāsānīyāt” this series has been dedicated to investigating poems published in this journal that have not been recorded in other sources, presenting them in chronological order.

Dariush Shaygan, an eminent Iranian philosopher, writer, and intellectual, was one of the most important contemporary thinkers who devoted his life to studying various sciences and cultures, reflecting on Eastern identity, and critiquing tradition and modernity. Raised in a multicultural and multilingual environment, he built comparative bridges between Islamic philosophy (ḥikma), Eastern mysticism, and modern Western philosophy. Initially recognized for his admiration of Eastern traditions, Shaygan later turned to a fundamental critique of them, emphasizing the necessity of critical rationality and modernity. His works represent a synthesis of mystical insight, concerns about identity, and an exploration of the relationship between East and West. The present article is written by the Iraqi thinker Prof. Dr. Abd al-Jabbar Rifai. In this study, Rifai seeks to examine and introduce to an Arab audience the main components of Shaygan’s thought across seven sections. This article has been translated into Persian with the author’s permission.

Mīrzā Ṣādiq Burūjirdī, as indicated by his family name, was a native of Lorestan and the city of Burūjird, and one of the prominent poets of the Constitutional era. Numerous poems by him were published in the journals of that time. The themes of his poetry generally revolve around social issues such as patriotism, the pursuit of knowledge, the promotion of culture, women and freedom, equality, and respect for and education of Iranian women during that period. A review of periodicals from this era reveals many of his poems that are not recorded in his dīvān (collected works). It is noteworthy that the extant dīvān of this poet, according to his daughter who compiled it, is in fact a selective anthology of her father’s poetry. In any case, the present article is devoted to newly discovered poems by Ṣādiq Burūjirdī.

The thirteenth installment of Neveštegān examines several rare terms found in classical texts, addressing and correcting misinterpretations or misreadings by scholars. These include: “puxta” or “burīda” in a work by Hakim Tirmidhi; “kw” in the invocation “wʾrnmʾn kw” as recorded in Šaṭḥiyyāt al-Ṣūfiyya and Dastūr al-J̌umḥūr; “btʾrh” in Khwaja Abdullah Ansari’s translation-commentary; “badeyārpūš (?)” in Nāma-yi Salāṭin; and “zabāndān” or “zabāndār” in Rasûlid Hexaglot. The article concludes with two brief notes that supplement discussions from previous issues of the series.

In this forty-first installment of the series entitled “Reading Manuscript” (Nuskhih-khwānī), the author examines the content of several manuscripts. Some of the subjects addressed in these texts include: the price of a book in the year 1333 AH; the rescue of a manuscript from the flood of 1238 AH in Kirmānshāh; a poem about the ministry of Sulṭān al-‛Ulamāʾ and verses on the date of his death; Mahdism and the issue of opposition to oppression; hostility toward knowledge within layers of our civilization; a scholar in 743 AH who anticipated the advent in the years 745–749 AH; Sheikh Khiḍr Kurd and his prediction of the rule of al-Malik al-Ẓāhir; the Persian literacy of Abū Hurayra and Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya; ‛Umar’s directive to the people of Kūfa on using the Persian word “matars” (do not fear); the term “Nardashīr” in a ḥadīth of the Prophet; a poem against ‛Alī Akbar Burqāʿī for participating in the Vienna Peace Conference; and a poem depicting a debate between a sheikh and a drunkard.

The subject of this seventh installment of “Notes on the Shahnameh” comprises brief observations on several topics: the dictionary Farhangvāra-yi Lugāt wa Tarkībāt-i ‛Arabī dar Shahnameh (Lexicon of Arabic Words and Expressions in the Shāhnāmeh); an analysis of the seemingly irregular verb form na-raftī in the hemistich “agar man na-raftī be Māzandarān”; a note on the proper name “Garjahān-gūsh”; a clarification of the adverb hamānā in the Shahnameh; and two observations on the hemistich “agar tund bādī bar-āyad ze kunj.”

The book Lughat-i Furs, authored by Abū Manṣūr ‛Alī b. Aḥmad Asadī Ṭūsī, was edited and annotated by Fathullah Mojtabai and Ali-Ashraf Sadeghi and published in 1986 (1365 Sh.) by Khwarazmi Publications. As noted in the book’s introduction, this edition is based on the manuscript of Punjab University (Lahore), collated with ten other manuscripts as detailed in the preface. The present note offers a brief examination of some of the words in this work, drawing on early and classical Persian texts.

In his book Ṭu‛ūn wa Shubahāt al-Shīʿa al-Imāmīyya Ḥawla Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī wa al-Radd ‛alayhā, ‛Ādil ‛Azāzī maintains a firm belief in al-Bukhārī’s unparalleled memory in preserving ḥadīth, presenting this trait as a unique point of pride for al-Bukhārī among the great ḥuffāẓ of ḥadīth. Reports attributed to an author named Abū Ja‛far Warrāq in Kitāb Shamāʾil al-Bukhārī serve as the principal evidence for ‛Azāzī and his like-minded predecessors such as ‛Abd al-Salām Mubārakfūrī, ‛Abd al-Sattār Sheikh, and ‛Abd al-Ghanī ‛Abd al-Khāliq in asserting the unmatched quality of al-Bukhārī’s memory. The main question of this article is to assess the authenticity and reliability of Kitāb Shamāʾil al-Bukhārī through the lens of modern historical criticism. To this end, the theoretical framework of the study is outlined along axes such as “historical criticism of sources: concept and necessity,” “typology of sources underpinning the myth of preservation,” “criteria for evaluating the credibility of Kitāb Shamāʾil al-Bukhārī,” and “the principle of authorial reputation.” Due to the breadth of the topic, this paper focuses on analyzing the criteria for assessing the “reputation of the author” of Kitāb Shamāʾil al-Bukhārī, examining the possibility, necessity, and method of such an evaluation. The findings indicate that ‛Azāzī, in citing Kitāb Shamāʾil al-Bukhārī, failed to adhere to the approach of historical source criticism, treating the verification of Abū Ja‛far Warrāq’s reputation as the author of the book as inconsequential, thereby merely imitating Mubārakfūrī and others without independent investigation. This constitutes the construction of the myth of preservation contrary to the standards of modern historical criticism, since authorial reputation is the primary principle in assessing the credibility of classical historical sources. Consequently, ‛Azāzī’s approach seriously undermines the validity of his claim regarding al-Bukhārī’s ḥadīth memory, relegating his work from the status of academic research to that of promotional and propagandistic writing.

The discipline of sīra (the biographical study of the Prophet) is fundamentally a product of Medina, although companions who traveled to other cities and their successors later contributed additional knowledge. Various figures in Medina undertook the compilation of sīra, among whom the Zubayrid family was the most prominent. The works of Ibn Isḥāq and his sīra, as well as the sīra of Mūsā b. ‛Uqba, are two of the most significant products in this field. On the margins of these works, Mālik b. Anas b. Mālik, who was a rival of Ibn Isḥāq, also made contributions. However, his narrations were not widely accepted in Medina and instead found their way primarily to North Africa, where the Mālikī school would later be formally established. al-Qīrawānī compiled the narrations of Mālik on the sīra and other Islamic sciences in his work al-Jāmi‛ fī al-Sunan. This article examines these narrations and their subjects.

The third century AH was a period in which the disciplines that would later be recognized as the Islamic sciences flourished. The science of ḥadīth was the mother of these disciplines and profoundly influenced other Islamic fields such as tafsīr, fiqh, ethical writings, and works on asceticism. The science of rijāl (biographical evaluation), situated between ḥadīth and history, also emerged and developed during this century. The genre of history in the sense of biographical history—such as the Tārīkh of al-Bukhārī or the Tārīkh of Yaḥyā b. Ma‛īn—belongs to this very period. One recently discovered work is the al-Tārīkh authored by Ibn al-Fallās (d. 249), which represents a combination of Islamic history and rijāl. In this article, we seek to illustrate a particular model of historiography from this era by reviewing this work.

al-Salwa fī Shurūṭ al-Khalwa is a work by one of the mystics of the Kubrawīyya order on the subject of seclusion (khalwa). Seclusion was among the most important principles of practice for followers of this spiritual order (ṭarīqa), and several of them authored treatises explicitly entitled “on retreat,” or wrote books whose central theme was retreat and seclusion. Examples include Najm al-Dīn Kubrā’s fi al-Khalwa, Sayf al-Dīn Bākharzī’s Waqāyi‛ al-Khalwa, and Majd al-Dīn Baghdādī’s fi al-Khalwa wa al-‛Uzla. Similar treatises by ‛Alāʾ al-Dawla Simnānī, ‛Abd al-Raḥmān Isfarāyinī, and others also exist under these or similar titles. al-Salwa fī Shurūṭ al-Khalwa and some of these other treatises were written in Arabic. Drawing on various manuscript copies of this work, the author of this article seeks to provide a clear picture of the book and its author, and for the first time introduces this work, which contains significant information about the spiritual leaders of the Kubrawīyya, their relationship with disciples, and their practices of seclusion. This study also reveals that the translator of the Risāla ilā al-Hāʾim al-Khāʾif min Lawmat al-Lāʾim, previously published, is in fact the author of this same book, al-Salwa fī Shurūṭ al-Khalwa.

This article presents a detailed catalogue of fourteen newly identified manuscripts housed in the Library of the Islamic Sciences and Culture Research Institute (affiliated with the Office for Islamic Propagation of the Qom Seminary). In this study, the cataloguer has sought to provide systematically organized information on both the contents and the physical features of these manuscripts for the reader.

The exact history of the earliest Persian translations of the Quran remains unclear. Although it is reported that some verses were translated into Persian as early as the first Islamic century, the formal precedent for such efforts dates back to the Samanid era in the mid-fourth century AH, with the translation of al-Ṭabarī’s tafsīr under the order of Amīr Nūḥ al-Sāmānī and the endorsement of the scholars of Māwarāʾ al-Nahr. This initiative enabled Persian speakers to read and hear the word of God in their native tongue. With the advent of the fourteenth century AH, the art of translation departed from the older prose styles and entered a new phase, gaining a fresh character through the evolution of Persian prose, gradually moving from literal renderings toward comparative translations. Following the Islamic Revolution, Quranic translation experienced remarkable growth and attained a worthy stature; in recent decades in particular, scholars of Quranic studies have been able to convey God’s message from the source language to the target language without excess or deficiency. One translation that aligns well with systematic translation principles, breaking free from rigid Arabic grammatical constraints and adapting to the temperament and idiom of Persian, is Dr. Haddad Adel’s rendition of the Quran. This article, after briefly outlining the conditions and methods of Quranic translation, introduces and critiques this translation, comparing it with several other versions.

The course “Research Skills” (Mahārat-hā-yi Pajūhishī) is one of the Level 1 seminary courses. For several years, the Seminary’s Research Department has established local research offices in all schools across the country to teach this subject. During this time, the course was taught without any official or standardized textbook. After years of anticipation, the Research Department, in collaboration with the Center for Compilation of Seminary Textbooks and Resources, has produced an instructional text entitled Darsnāmih-yi Mahārat-hā-yi Pajūhishī (Research Skills Textbook). This textbook is designated for seminary students at the diploma level in the second semester of the second year, and for those with lower secondary education in the first semester of the fifth year. In this article, the textbook is critically analyzed based on content, structural, formal, linguistic, and methodological criteria. Some of the findings of this analysis include: (1) the use of the plural form “skills” (mahārat-hā) in the textbook’s title is incorrect; (2) the lessons should be delivered in a workshop format; (3) the textbook requires content, literary, and technical editing; and (4) the selection of content does not sufficiently consider the needs and interests of the learners.

This article offers a definition and classification of educational books and outlines seven periods in the history of textbooks in Iran. It then turns to examine the catalogue of textbooks held at the Library of Āyatullāh al-‛Uẓmā Burūjirdī, enumerating three primary positive features of these books and highlighting certain works from this list that hold historical value. The article also recalls prolific and influential textbook authors from the Qajar and Pahlavi eras, and concludes with several corrections and annotations on subsequent points. Finally, it situates this bibliography and catalogue as research relevant to the field of children’s and adolescents’ literature.