Nameh Farhangestan
Year:2010 | Volume:11 | Issue:2 (42)|Papers Count:12

There is a philosophical trait observed in the Persian masnavis of the fourth and fifth centuries AH. This trait shows traces of both Islamic and Pre-Islamic Iranian thought. The salience of the intellect as a divine entity and different from the sustenance intellect, connects the Pre-Islamic philosophical thought to the Islamic philosophical tradition. Also, the hierarchical cosmology and the dualistic essence of the human being are shared by all these masnavis. This philosophical schema is obvious in the masnavis of the fourth century but gradually takes a more organized shape in the fifth century masnavis, as is clearly manifested in Naser Kosrow’s Rowsana’i-nameh ("Book of Light") and Asadi Tusi’s Garsasp-nameh ("Book of Garsasp"). In this paper the writer describes the commonalities of the masnavis written in these two centuries, regardless of the differences between the ideas of their writers.

After the victory of the Islamic revolution, rules of classical Persian poetry are normally maintained while the content and language are fresh, as is the poet’s attitude toward man and the world. A case in point is the poetry of Fazel Nazari, a poet who writes short sonnets in a smooth, lucid and easy language rooted in the essence of poetry. The most salient characteristics of his poetry include: using fresh and innovative images, using literary techniques unpretentiously, using images in the Indian style Persian poetry, using appropriate rhymes, charged with colloquial words and expressions and elements of nature and human emotions. In this paper, the writer examines 126 sonnets collected in An-ha ("Instants"), and Aqalliyat ("The Minority"), and Geryeha-ye Emperatur ("The Tears of the Emperor").

Islam does not prohibit the consumption of meat. The Law of the Shari’ah and the Tradition of the Prophet Muhammad (s) sanction and even encourage carnivorousness. Muslim mystics in general also followed this rule. However, Sufi masters often advised their disciples to exercise moderation and particularly prescribed a vegetarian or even vegan diet for them when they were on their forty-day retreats, a practice that was met with severe criticisms by some orthodox Muslims.Despite that, some Sufi saints decided to become vegetarian for the rest of their lives. Out of compassion for all the creatures of God, some mystics even practiced total non-violence; not hurting any animal, even a harmful insect or a wild beast, let alone killing one.

Varznameh is a short encyclopedia with such varied entries as agriculture, effects of water and air and stars on farming, production and storing wine and its effects on the body, therapeutic properties of fruits and plants, vinegar, honey, bees, pigeons, hens, dogs, etc. The book was originally written in Greek in the 6th century AD by Cassianus Bassus Scholas Ticus, and was later translated into Pahlavi and Arabic. It was translated into Persian in the 5th century AH from the original Arabic as Varznameh by an anonymous writer. Mr. Hasan ATEfi possesses a unique copy of this translation, who has edited it himself. The book was published by Markaz-e Nasr-e Danesgahi in 171+51 pages. Since many valuable words and terms have been used in this book and the editor has explained very few of them, some of whose explanations are not correct, the writer of this paper has explained the meanings and etymology of some of these terms and in some cases has suggested correct spellings.

All lexicographers and exponents and interpreters of the Sahnameh have recorded Mafarrokan as two words "Ma" and "farrokan" and suggested various meanings for it. In this paper, the writer argues that a close examination of the word and its connection with the previous and subsequent lines indicate that it is a single word, the name of a place from where Keyqobad came to Iran. The word is probably a variant of Mah Farrokan, name of a village surrounding Estahbanat at Fars appearing in Fars-nameh. As was customary with the place names starting with "Mah" (the moon), the word was often shortened as "Ma", and it was recorded as Mafarrokan in the Sahnameh to meet the metrical requirements. According to the Sahnameh, Keyqobad originally comes from the Alborz mountains, but since in the Sahnameh, Alborz is referred to as a mountain existing in all places, including Fars, it is possible that Keyqobad comes from Mafarrokan, that part of the Alborz mountain which was situated in Fars. Thus, the writer concludes, the word should be recorded as a place name in geographical dictionaries.

Kasf al-Zunun ‘an Asami al-Kutub va al-Funun ("The Removal of Doubt from the Names of Books and the Sciences") (1062 AH), was written by the Ottoman Turk scholar Mustafa bin Abdullah, better known as Haji kalifa or Katib Celebi. It is a bibliographic encyclopedia, written in Arabic, which lists more than 14, 500 books (mainly in Arabic, Persian and Turkish written by 9500 authors) in alphabetic order. In this part, the writer introduces Kasf al-Zunun, its addenda (25 addenda), its translations and the most important manuscripts and prints, emphasizing the publication of the book in Iran.

Most of the books on the dramatic literature of Iran have been written from a historical point of view. In his Te’atrokrrasi, Kamran SEPEhRi, based on a survey of previous material and their criticisms, rewrites part of Iran’s history of drama based on a literary-sociological theory. To this end, he adopts the concept of "theatrecracy" from Plato’s treaties on Laws (nomoi), interpreting it as the governance of spectators in drama. He then studies the initial stage of emergence of "theatrecracy" in Iran up to 1925 based on Jacques RANciERE’S view to show both the political aspects of drama and the dramatic aspects of political activities. The writer tries to both introduce the book and to examine its degree of success in applying his theory in a part of Iran’s history of contemporary literature.

Introducing Persian literature to the German readership has a long history. Among the pioneers is Joseph von HAMMER-PuRqsTAll’s Geschichte der schonen Redekunste Persiens (1818) and Diwan des Hafis aus dem Persischen ubersetzt (1812-1813).The tradition was followed by Paul HORN and Jan RypkA, but before Bozorg AlAvi wrote Geschichte und Entwicklung der modernen persischen Literatur (1964) about history of contemporary Persian literature, little attention had been paid to the literature before the Constitutional Revolution. The last section of AlAvi’s book is devoted to the introduction of the pioneers of Persian free verse. Later, of course, certain Iranian poets were translated into German by such translators as Turaj RAHNAMA, sirus ATAbAy and Kurt Scharf. Recently, more specialized translations of modern Persian poets have appeared in German; the most recent one being Sa’id REZVANi’s Moderne persische Lyrik: Eine analytische Untersuchung. The purpose of the present paper is to introduce this book.

The Denkard is the most comprehensive book in the Pahlavi language regarding the doctrines, history and literature of Mazda. This text, consisting of nine books, is a huge collection of theological, mythological, and legal material written in the late Sassanid period in a very concise and difficult language. The third book of the Denkard has 420 kardahs (chapters). Chapter 157 concerns medicine, methods of treatment, body and soul health, duties of the physician and the patient, the physician’s fee, various types of diseases and medications and medical ethics. In this paper, the writers first offer a brief survey of this chapter, and then examine the medical terms from semantic and etymological points of view.

In this study, using the terminology databank (a collection of the scientific terms of the dictionaries of basic sciences) of Iran’s Research Center for Scientific Information and Documents as the corpus, and based on liEbER’S (2004) theory of morphology and lexical semantics, the writer has statistically analyzed the terms, and extracted the frequency of each compound, derivative and derivative-compound lexical item as well as the morphological patterns of the scientific terms. Next, determining the semantic relations between them, the writer has provided the grounds for designing the ontology and the lexical network of this scientific field as a step toward educational and research planning and, ultimately, designing a system of concepts for the country’s scientific network.