Introduction

It is rare for a literary or artistic work to find its final form immediately after creation and production; therefore, literary and artistic works must go through at least two stages in order to reach the desired form of the poet, writer, and artist. These include the stage of creation and production, and the stage of revision, correction, or editing.
The stage of creation and production may be accompanied by passion, intuition, excitement, and panic, but the stage of revision requires calmness, alertness, accuracy, and the application of a set of artistic and rhetorical awareness, and literary or artistic subtleties and devices.
The divans left behind by great poets, even if they were written during their lifetime and in their own handwriting, are still not unlikely to have differences in recordings and changes that are the result of the poet's own revision. In the case of poetry, the subject of the poet's revision may be the full text of a piece of poetry; for example, a ghazal or a verse from it, or a word, phrase, or a combination of them.

Literature Review

The almost definitive opinion of the editors and commentators of Hafez's Divan is that after composing the poem, even after its publication, Hafez continued to make aesthetic, rhetorical, and even political revisions to it.
In Rumi's Divan, there are ghazals with a common source, one of which has only a few verses and the other is a detailed ghazal with many more verses. Despite the existence of many contexts, the issue of "preferred substitute" has not been addressed in the texts so far; although, in the edition of divans, they may mention in the introduction or text that the poet has changed this verse or that this ghazal is another report and narration of this ghazal.

Methodology

In examining the authentic editions of the Masnavi, we came across consecutive verses that had a completely synonymous and corresponding meaning and content, so that the presence of one did not require the other; although different tastes may have differed in their preference for one of the two over the other. When we consulted the manuscripts, especially the Konya manuscript dated 677, we found that only one of those verses is in the text and the other is mentioned in the margin of the manuscript as a preferred recording, but later scribes or editros have often preferred to keep both in their text instead of bringing them into their text. Our method has been to compare the authentic editions of the Masnavi with the manuscripts and to find such verses that we have called “na’m al-badl” (preferred substitute).

Discussion

In this article, the subject of our discussion is Rumi's Masnavi and possible direct or indirect revisions, accompanied by his approval of some verses, and the replacement of verses from the text with other verses, which were made in the final revision of the text in the presence of his caliph Hessam al-Din Chalabi and his son Sultan Walad.
These revisions are reflected in the Konya manuscript dated 677 A.D., which the scribe claims to have copied from the aforementioned final manuscript. Due to its importance, this manuscript was the basis for two excellent revisions of the Masnavi, which were completed and published by Reynold A. Nicholson about a hundred years ago and by Muhammad Ali Movahed seven years ago. In addition, seven or eight revisions and single editions based on this manuscript have also been published in Iran and Turkey. Nicholson, Movahed, and those responsible for publishing the Konya manuscript edition have taken different scholarly and discretionary approaches to the verses found in the manuscript's margins, frequently indicated by the mark "صحّ" (ṣaḥḥ, signifying the "correct reading"); some (such as Adnan Karaismailoğlu and Derya Örs) have remained faithful to the manuscript and have transferred the text and margin exactly to the text and margin of their printed manuscript, but the rest of the editors have acted in a variety of ways in adding verses to the text, or replacing them with verses from the text, or mentioning them in the footnotes of their printed manuscript. This different attitude towards the marginal verses has caused differences in the number of verses in different editions of the Masnavi, even the printings made from the single copy of Konya 677!
By comparing each of the marginal verses of Konya 677 and one or two other manuscripts with two authoritative editions of the Masnavi (Nicholson and Movahed) and printings based on the single copy of Konya 677, we have come to the conclusion that the addition of those verses to the text was against the opinion of the creator of the text (Rumi) and its final compilers, albeit with the approval and supervision of the creator of the work (Hessam al-Din Chalabi and Sultan Walad). The subject and content of some of the marginal verses are completely identical to the corresponding verse in the text and are two expressions of the same meaning, differing only in terms of rhetoric or aesthetics, the clarity and understanding of the matter. We have called such verses “na’am al-badal”; that is, the best substitute and alternative for recording the text, and in fact, the preferred recording.

Conclusion

We emphasize that the opinion of the creator of the work and the final compilers of the text was that these types of verses included in the margin were their revised and preferred recording. Also, subsequent scribes and editors of the text should have replaced them with the recordings of the text and moved the text to the margin; their loyalty to the recordings of the original version here is considered a kind of disloyalty to the final opinion of the creator of the version.