Abstract

The Mosibat Nāmah written by ‘Attār Nishabouri (553-627 A.H.) is the narrative of a spiritual journey in the form of a mathnavi (a story in rhyming verse). The device of spiritual journey has been also used by the poet in another work of his, The Manteq al-Tayr (The Conference of Birds). Both works have a similar ending, although narratives are different.
Among the narrative elements of The Mosibat Nāmah, one can find some functions which recur in the narratives of a literary genre called the allegory of vision. Another work based on the allegory of vision among the Persian mystic texts is The Sayr al-‘Ebād elā al-Ma’ād' (The Journey of Servants to the Resurrection) since it, too, contains some unmistakable narrative elements of the genre. When these two works are closely analyzed, one can conclude that both of them belong to the same literary genre.
The present study compares and contrasts the narrative functions of The Mosibat Nāmah and The Sayr al-‘Ebād in terms of their structural narratology with a focus on functions, similarities, and differences of these two stories.