Analysis of the construction of Farhad in Nezami Ganjavi’s Khosrow va ShirinNezami

Parsa, Sayyed Ahmad

doi:10.29252/kavosh.2025.22460.3653

Analysis of the construction of Farhad in Nezami Ganjavi’s Khosrow va ShirinNezami

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Sayyed Ahmad Parsa

Department of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Language and Literature, University of Kurdistan

10.29252/kavosh.2025.22460.3653

Abstract

The love story of Khosrow va Shirin has been noticed for a long time and narrated in different ways. The narrations of Al-Jahiz (772-840), Dinawari (9^th century), Tabari (839-922), Al-Tha'lebi (961-1038), Ibn-e Nabatah (1287-1367) and Ferdowsi (941-1025) are considered among the works that do not mention Farhad. Nezami Ganjavi (1136-1222) brought up this character for the first time in his book Khosrow va Shirin, and he made him Khosrow's love rival. The present research seeks to analyze the discourse logic on the construction of Farhad in Khosrow va Shirin by Nezami Ganjavi. It is supposed to answer these questions ‘From where and how did Farhad enter Nezami Ganjavi's poetry?’ and ‘What are the reasons for naming the book by Nezami in the current form and for changing Shirin's personality traits in comparison with previous works?’ The research method is descriptive-analytical. The data were collected through library work, document analysis, and content analysis. The result showed that Farhad's story has entered Nezami’s work through the local narratives of the Zagros region and by combining it with Ferdowsi’s narration. Nezami was able to create a different work. From a discursive perspective, he interfered with the title of the work and changed it to Khosrow va Shirin by removing the name Farhad from the title of the original work, adding the name Khosrow instead and placing it before the name Shirin. It seems that he did this for two reasons, patriarchal discourse and power (being a man and a king). By doing so, while highlighting the name of Khosrow, he includes the story of Farhad as a sub-narrative.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Lyrical literature

References

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