Classical Persian Literature

Classical Persian Literature

Searching Persian sources and references for the book Rezvan: An imitation of Golestan by Mirza Aqa-Khan Kermani

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors
Najme Hosseini Sarvari 1
Ali Jahanshahi Afshar 2
1 Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, kerman, Iran
2 Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran
10.30465/cpl.2026.10860
Abstract
Rezvan is the first book by Political activist, journalist, writer, and constitutionalist intellectual, "Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani". From his youth until the days nearing the end of his life, he was busy collecting narrations and finalizing this book. Mirza Aqa-Khan wrote Rezvan in imitation of the style of Sa'di’s Golestan, but many of the stories, poems, and sentences in the book are taken from works of classical Persian literature; texts such as One Thousand and One Nights, Kelileh and Demneh, Tales of "Obeyd Zakani" and others. The subject of this research is the identification and description of the Persian sources and references of Rezvan. This research was conducted by searching classical sources of Persian literature and describing and qualitatively analyzing the data, and can be of interest to researchers in order to gain a better understanding of Mirza Aqa-Khan’s thoughts, the evolution of his thoughts, and his influence on other writers. The results of this research show that Mirza Aqa-Khan had thoroughly studied classical literature. His main source in writing Rezvan was Golestan. He used a significant number of classical Persian literature texts to compile the book, and he narrated these narratives exactly, with slight changes in names and words, or with abridgement and sometimes in detail.

Key Words: Mirza Aqa-Khan Kermani, Rezvan, Persian poetic and prose works, Poems, Tales, Prover.

Introduction
Mirza Aqa-Khan Kermani (1854-1896) was a political activist, journalist, writer, and constitutionalist intellectual. He was killed in Tabriz, along with "Sheykh Ahmad Ruhi" and "Mirza Hassan-Khan Khabir-al-Molk, on charges of participating in the murder of "Nasir-al-Din Shah" and on the orders of "Mohammadali Mirza", the crown prince of "Muzaffar-al-Din Shah". Most researchers believe that Mirza Aqa-Khan is one of the most influential modernist intellectuals of the Constitutional revolution, whose efforts, and especially his writings, played an important and undeniable role in the Iranians' awareness and their struggle for freedom.
Mirza Aqa-Khan and other constitutional intellectuals played an important role in literary modernization and a fundamental revision of the form and content of Persian literature. They initially and seriously paid attention to Persian prose, because there were no examples in classical Persian prose in the field of modern types of prose writing, such as critical and social articles, plays, stories, etc. However, the work of these writers was not limited to criticizing classical Persian prose or recommending simple writing. Rather, they also created valuable examples of modern Persian prose through their writing and translation.
Mirza Aga-Khan was a creative thinker, had a strong memory, and read a lot and he wrote, despite his short and eventful life, numerous works on history, wisdom and philosophy, literature, politics, and the social life of Iranians, as well as music, dance, calligraphy, and more. Researchers have divided his works into two stages: imitation and a stage of breaking tradition and innovation. Rezvan is Mirza Aqa-Khan's only literary prose in the imitation stage. This book is written in imitation of Sa'di's Golestan and in riming prose and contains mostly moral stories, fragments, verses and proverbs in Persian and Arabic. Although Golestan was Mirza Aga-Khan's primary source for writing Rezvan, he also drew on other classical Persian and Arabic literary works. The subject of this research is to identify and describe the Persian sources and references of Rezvan.

Materials & Methods
The aim of this research is to identify and describe the sources and references of Rezvan. This research was conducted using the method of qualitative text description and analysis, relying on library studies and searching classical sources of Persian literature. This article will be useful for researchers to become more informationwith Mirza Aqa-Khan's thoughts, the evolution of his thoughts, and the influence of the Persian literary tradition on his thoughts and writings.

Discussion
Rezvan is Mirza Aqa-Khan's only literary prose in the imitation stage. This book is written in fluent and riming prose and contains a total of 354 tales organized into five sections: a preface, a detailed introduction, four chapters, and an ending; and of these, only seven are poetic tales, and except for five, the rest of the tales are short. The subject of most of Rizvan's tales is wise advice, like Golestan and other tales of classical Persian literature.
A relatively large number of Rezvan's tales are repetitions of tales from classic works of Persian literature. The main source of Rizvan is Golestan. In addition to completely imitating the prose style, genre, structure, and general theme of Golestan, Mirza Aqa-Khan wrote the preface, a long Tale titled "Jedal ba Modaei" (Arguing with a Claimant) and four other tales of Rezvan in imitation of the tales of Golestan.
The most important sources for Rezvan, after Golestan, are the stories of Raghib Isfahani, Obeyd Zakani, and Fakhr-al-Din Ali Safi, Qabusnameh, Kelileh and Demneh, One Thousand and One Nights, some works of Attar Neyshaburi, Masnavi Ma'navi (Rumi's spiritual Masnavi), Shahnameh and Jami's Baharestan are also among the main sources of this book. Mirza Aqa-Khan narrated these tales in their entirety, either unchanged or with slight changes, and in a more concise and sometimes more detailed form than the original source, and in the simple language common in his time. In addition to anecdotes, verses from Sa'di's ghazels and poems by other classical poets, as well as Persian proverbs, are other Persian sources of Rezvan, which are explained in detail in this article.

Conclusion
Rezvan is a book written by Mirza Aa Khan in imitation of the prose style, structure, and subject matter of Sa'di's Golestan, but many of the stories, poems, and themes of the book are taken from other classic works of Persian language and literature. Mirza Aqa-Khan has narrated these tales exactly, with slight changes in names and words, or in abridgement, and sometimes in detail, but he has not mentioned any of Rezvan's sources in the text of the book. Also, to write Rezvan, he did not only use the books he had read; he also heard some old tales from others and included them in the book. Therefore, we can only be sure that Golestan is the only source that Mirza Aqa-Khan read repeatedly and carefully to write Rezvan. However, the close resemblance of some narratives and sayings to classical texts of Persian literature can be a testament to Mirza Aqa-Khan's deep and extensive knowledge of the Persian literary tradition.
Keywords
Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani"
Rezvan"
Persian poetic and prose works"
Poems"
Tales"
"
Proverbs "
Subjects
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Classical Persian Literature
Volume 17, Issue 1 - Serial Number 42
Spring & Summer
August 2026

  • Receive Date 28 November 2024
  • Revise Date 08 December 2025
  • Accept Date 13 December 2025
  • Publish Date 23 July 2026