SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The present thesis analyses the extensive utilisation of Qur'anic materials by Unsuri, Farrukhi, Manuchehri, Abu 'l-Faraj-i Runi and Anvari, and seeks to determine the degree to which it may be seen as a particular thematic development within Persian poetry-rather than as part of a literary tradition developed from Arabic models. The introduction is followed by a comprehensive statistical survey of Qur'anic references in the. Persian poets, with, for comparison, a similar survey covering the work of five Arab poets: Abu Nuwas, Abu al-cAtahiya, Abu Tammam, al-Buhturi and al-Mutanabbi. Each of the following chapters covers a particular thematic area and, where appropriate, is internally subdivided according to the individual episodes. The first major thematic area to be treated is that of Paradise. This is followed by an extensive survey of the materials relating to the prophets, principally Moses, Jesus and Solomon. A third chapter considers miscellaneous other Qur'anic references. Each of these three chapters is organised along similar lines: an initial statistical survey giving a comprehensive listing of the individual citations is followed by general remarks on the context of use and a more detailed commentary on verses of particular literary and thematic interest. Arab and Persian usage is compared, and attention drawn to aspects of rhetorical technique. The implication of the findings yielded by the above investigation is discussed in the final summary. This seeks to evaluate how far the themes and techniques observed in the Persian poets are also present in the diwans of five major cAbbasid poets who, on the one hand, were clearly known to the Persian poets under consideration (and hence a model for them), and, on the other, represent a period when Islamic culture and, specifically, knowledge of the Qur'anic text, had become a standard ingredient of literary training, and hence available for exploitation alongside more traditional materials of poetic discourse.