Critical Correction and Translation of Four Ghazals of Awhadi Maraghai into Isfahan Dialect of 7th and 8th- Century A.H

In the divan of Awhadi Maraghai, four ghazals are found in the ancient dialect of Isfahan people. The manuscripts are documented bearing some defects and modifications, such as some words which are not identical in the two different manuscripts; furthermore, the printed texts do not appear in better conditions. In 1963, Adib Toosi corrected, translated into Persian and transliterated three of these four ghazals in an article; however, his work was not flawless and in several parts of the article some defects could be characterized. Therefore, re-correcting and re-translating these three ghazals in addition to one he had not studied seems necessary. In this study, after the introduction, literature review and introducing the available manuscripts, all of the Awhadi’s dialectical ghazals were critically corrected, described, explained, and transliterated wherever it was necessary. Besides, describing and explaining the verses some defects of Adib Toosi’s article were mentioned.
 
1. Introduction
In the divan of Awhadi Maraghai, four ghazals are found in the ancient dialect of Isfahan people. The manuscripts are documented bearing some defects and modifications, such as some words which are not even the same in the two different manuscripts; furthermore, the printed texts do not appear in better conditions. In 1963, Adib Toosi corrected, translated into Persian and transliterated three of these four ghazals in an article; however, his work was not flawless and in several parts of the article some defects could be characterized. Therefore, recorrecting and retranslating these three ghazals in addition to one he had not studied, seems necessary. In this study, these four ghazals, regarding their Isfahani dialect vocabulary, were critically corrected, described, explained, and transliterated wherever was essential. Besides, some defects of Adib Toosi’s article were mentioned.
 
2. Theoretical Framework
This research critically corrects,  analyzes, and reports every verse of Awhadi’s dialectical ghazals. In the past, the people of Isfahan used to speak in one of the ancient central Iranian dialects. However, nothing has left from these ancient dialects except for a few words. Fortunately, the Isfahan Jews and some of the towns and villages around this city still speak in the same dialect, otherwise, reading and understanding the meaning of some of Awhadi Isfahanian’s verses would be much more difficult or perhaps impossible.
 
3. Methodology
In this study, using several manuscripts which among them the oldest and the most authentic one was used as the main manuscript, four Isfahani ghazals have been critically corrected and translated into Persian, and their dialectical  terms have been investigated and transcribed, as well as their etymology which was discovered wherever it was required. The manuscripts and texts that were used in the correction of the Awhadi's dialectical  ghazals include: 1- The manuscript dated 837 A.H from Farrokh library, with four Awhadi's dialectical  ghazals, and being the main manuscript for this correction. 2- The manuscript dated 870 A.H from the imperial library with four Awhadi's dialectical  ghazals. 3- The manuscript dated early 11^th century A.H from the Parlement library containing all of four Awhadi's dialectical ghazals. 4- The manuscript dated late 11^th century A.H from the Tabriz National library containing only one ghazal out of the four. 5- The manuscript dated 13^th century A.H from the Malek National Library, which contains three out of the four ghazals. 6- The published Awhadi's divan corrected by Saeid Nafisi with all the four ghazals. 7- Adib Tousi's article which corrected, translated and transliterated three out of four Awhadi's dialectical gazals, was mainly based on the manuscript dated 830 Hijri which is unavailable today. Therefore, in the correction of these three ghazals, Adib Tousi's article has been substituted the ancient manuscript dated 830 A.H As it's demonstrated in the article, despite the manuscript antiquity, it had many errors in recording these ghazals.
 
4. Results and Discussion
Over the years, the many deficiencies and modification that have been made to these four dialectic ghazals, led numerous verses to become very complicated to understand even for the people who still speak these dialects. Therefore, it was necessary to correct and translate them to Persian so everyone could appreciate them. As an example, here is a verse of the Awhadi's dialectical ghazals, which was corrected, transliterated, translated, and its words were briefly explained:
 
bar taš dele vīst šāru ahnon
feryād keru ke del ke dāru
 
bar            taš            del=e         vīst                 šār[1]-u                ahnon[2]
on             fire           heart=of    twenty[3]city-PRS.is-3SG            now
‘Now the hearts of the people of twenty cities (or every one in the city) are on fire for her love’
Feryād       ker-u            ke              del           ke             dār-u
shout   PRS.do-3SG     that            heart        who          PRS.has-3SG
‘still shouts that who has a heart? (i.e., is there anybody left whom I would not set his heart on fire?)’
 
5. Conclusions and Suggestions
Since these four dialectical verses have been hard to read and comprehend for most copywriters, they altered them in such a way which led to some overwhelmingly obscure and nonsense texts as they are now even difficult to read and understand for the people who still speak these dialects. Therefore, it seemed necessary to critically correct and translate the words and verses of these four dialectical ghazals. Explaining the verses, Adib Tousi's article, in which dialectical verses were corrected, translated and transliterated, was also criticized and some of its deficiencies were declared. In this study, we tried to eliminate these deficiencies with the help of ancient manuscripts.
 
Select Bibliography
Adib Tousi, M. 1963. Three Isfahani ghazals from Awhadi Maraghei. Philosophic Research, Faculty of Literature and Humanities of Tabriz University, 67, 387-400. [in Persian]
Awhadi Maragheie, A. 1961. Divan. correction of Saeed Nafisi. Tehran: Amirkabir. [in Persian]
Awhadi Maragheie, A. 1458. Divan (Manuscript). Mashhad: farrokh (Faculty of literary, Ferdowsi University). [in Persian]
Awhadi Maragheie, A. 1491. Divan (Manuscript). Tehran: Golestan palace library.
Awhadi Maragheie, A. (no date). Divan (Manuscript from early-eleventh Hijri century). Tehran: Library of Iran Parliament. [in Persian]
Awhadi Maragheie, A. (no date). Divan (Manuscript from late-eleventh Hijri century). Tabriz: National library. [in Persian]
Awhadi Maragheie, A. (no date). Divan (Manuscript from thirteenth Hijri century). Tehran: National Malek library. [in Persian]
Borjian, H. 2015. Iranian dialects treasure of Isfahan province. Volume 2, Tehran: Academy of Persian Language and Literature. [in Persian]
Hasandoust, M. 2010. The comparative-subjective dictionary of new Iranian languages and dialects. Tehran: Academi od Pesian Language and Literature. [in Persian]
Kalbasi, I. 1994. dialect of Isfahan jews. Tehran: Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies. [in Persian]  
 



[1]. Adib Tousi considered “sā” instead of “šār” and mentioned it as abbreviation for “time” and also translated it to “now”, “other”, and “then”; however, “sā” in these dialects has other meaning including, “shadow”, “hundred”, and “housing” which are not suitable for this verse.


[2]. Torfani Middle Persian: “ahanūn”; compare with, Keshe: “hátūn”; Abyaneh: “hatan”; Mahalat: “hētōn”; Naragh: “haton”; Balouchi: “hannūn”. In Adib Tousi’s article, “inen” was substituted  “ahnon” and translated to “it is” that seems incorrect because in this dialect “inu” means “it is”.


[3]. also vīst could mean “every one”, because in Isfahan Jewish dialect “gešt” that is similar to »vīst «means “every one” (The conversion of "v" to "g",  "s" to "š", and "ī" to "e" have a history in the evolution of language).