Samak-e-Ayyar: an epic or a fiction

جستارهای نوین ادبی

Article 3, Volume 40, Issue 1 - Serial Number 156, March 2007, Pages 37-56   

Document Type: Research Article

DOI: 10.22067/jls.v40i3.13159

Author

Mahmood Mahmood Hasanabadi^*

Abstract

The old, rich and popular tradition of verbal story telling by narrators has been prevalent among all indo-Europeans, especially Aryans who were living in the Iranian plateau, in the Eastern parts of Iran and Khorasan. This tradition of oral narration has kept fiction and also historical events and has transmitted them to us. The writer of this article tries to evaluate this tradition and analyze it diachronically. Then, he will show that most-if not all-of the stories and mythological works, in early Islamic era could have been formed under the influence of this popular and verbal tradition. Some parts of Shahnameh, Vis-o-Ramoin and Samak-e –Ayyar had been first orally narrated by the narrators and then they were written down. This fact has also been proved through a morphological comparison of Sahnameh and Samak-e-Ayyar. This comparison also proves that Samak-e-Ayyar is an epic and not a fiction.

Keywords: Samak-e-Ayyar, Shahnameh, morphology, Tradition of story-telling

Keywords

Samak-e-Ayyar; Shahnameh; morphology; Tradition of story-telling