Document Type : .

Authors

• Hatef siahkoohian ¹
• Hossein hassanrezaei ²

¹ Department of Religions and Mysticism, Takestan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Takestan, Iran.

² Assistant Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

The overt celebration of forbidden acts and rule-breaking characters in Qalandariyāt, along with the blatant transgression of this type of poetry against the symbols and signs of Islamic law and the violation of social-religious norms, has astonished many of its audience. Some researchers have examined these poems from a historical perspective, seeking to uncover the relationship between this type of poetry and anti-nomian movements such as the libertines during the medieval Islamic period. Many scholars, in a convergent approach with the Sufis, have connected the rule-breaking symbols and images of this type of poetry in various ways to the metaphysical framework of Sufi hermeneutics (interpretation), considering them as symbolically encoded references in poetic language that can only be deciphered with Sufi hermeneutical materials. In the midst of this, what has been overlooked in these discussions is the examination of the poetic structure or poetics of Qalandariyāt, and how it is formed within the system of the primary genres of Persian poetry. This research, moving beyond a symbolic analysis and without reducing the dynamic poetic images in Qalandariyāt to predetermined Sufi archetypes and symbols, demonstrates through a descriptive and analytical method, by examining a sample from Attar, how “Qalandari poetry” configures its carnival-like and heterotopic poetic structure through dialogue and debate with two poetic types: “Zohdiyāt” (ascetic poetry) and “Madhiyāt” (praise poetry).