The Merits and Demerits of Hamle-ye Hoseinieh,: A Legacy of Iran’s Epic Literature

Document Type : علمی - پژوهشی

Author

Department of Literary Studies, Research Institute for Humanities Research and Development, Samt Organization, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Mohammad ibn-e Soleiman Tonekaboni, a jurist of the Qajar era and the author of the famous book Qesas al-Olama had read Ferdowsi's Shahnameh rigorously and paid special attention to it. Shavahed-e Farsi, a book he wrote on rhetorical figures derived from the Shahnameh and his own poems. Furthermore, he composed at least one religious epic poem on the subject of the events of Karbala, which is called Hamle-ye Hoseinieh. It can be said that all Persian epic poems written after the Shahnameh were influenced by this noble work of Ferdowsi and Tonekaboni's work is no exception in this regard. Hamle-ye Hoseinieh has not been published so far and a lot is unsaid about it. After a complete review of the only known manuscript of Hamle-ye Hoseinieh, this article tries to investigate its various aspects and determine its strengths and weaknesses and its merit. In addition to a brief biography of Tonekaboni, the obscurities in introducing his works are discussed. It can be implied that the manuscript of Hamle-ye Hoseinieh was a draft. One of the significant aspects of this manuscript is the recording of the pronunciation of some words, which provides interesting information about their different pronunciations. Among the issues discussed in this article are determining the time when this poem was composed and its sources, the method of Tonekaboni in narrating the events of Ashura and the distortions involved, evaluating the work from the perspective of epic features, the influence of the Shahnameh on it, and the way the figures of speech are used.

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