Introducing the version of Maqhatel Al-Shohdai by Abul Mafakher Razi, the oldest extant Muqtal in Persian language

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Shahrekord University

10.22077/jcrl.2025.8151.1160

Abstract

One of the topics linked to Persian language and literature is religious categories, and Ashura literature, as a subset of ritual categories, is unparalleled in its kind in terms of the breadth of its scope and the number of creators in this field, and is unique in the entire field of Persian literature in successive centuries. One of the most brilliant manifestations of Ashura literature is the Maqtal-e-Shuhada. In this article, for the first time, the Maqtal-e-Shuhada of Abu al-Mafakher Razi, a poet, scholar, translator, and historian of the fifth and sixth centuries AH and a contemporary of Sultan Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad and his son Sultan Masoud Seljuqi, is introduced. He is famous for his poem "The Polished Bird", which is considered one of the most famous poems in the history of Persian literature, but many aspects of his life remained unknown. To correct the Maqtal-e-Shuhada, we have used a single copy from the ninth century that is in the Central Library of the University of Tehran. We have examined the works and writings of Abu al-Mafakhir, taken a brief look at his prose and poetry, who is perhaps the first author to extensively use his own poems in his book, and examined the stylistic features of Muqatil al-Shuhada, which is simple, popular prose, uses authentic Persian vocabulary, and at the same time has scholarly prose with the characteristics of the ancient Khorasani style.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics