Starting from the authors' discovery that the Persian epic poem V?miq and ?Adhr? by ?Un?ur? (11th century AD) derives from the ancient Greek novel of "M?tiokhos and Parthenop?," the book contains critical editions of the Greek and Persian fragments and testimonia, with English translation and comments. The exciting story of the modern recovery of the two texts is told, and the transformations of the productive theme of "The ardent lover and the virgin" are traced from Greek novel to Persian poem, and through later Persian and Turkish literature. Of particular importance is the authors' attempt to reconstruct the common plot and individual variations, adding a new work to the limited corpus of ancient novels and shedding new light on the genre of Persian epic poetry.

This book, first published in 1978, treats methods of describing the total and special vocabularies of a given text and demonstrates a procedure of description of the vocabulary of the Sufi Mathnavi poem Tariq-ut-tahqiq, composed in the middle of the fourteenth century. The book gives a complete concordance, also indicating inflexional forms, and a complete frequency word-list of this New Persian text. The word-lists are followed by a statistical survey of the general vocabulary, the Arabic loan-words and the Sufi-religious terminology.

First published in 1983, this edited collection is based on contributions at a Scandinavian symposium on the place of women in Islamic society. It offers perspectives which illuminate our understanding of social relationships and structures pertaining to a vast number of the world's population dispersed throughout Asia and Africa. Sociological and anthropological investigations of social organization and the behavioural patterns provided in these papers demonstrate that the status of women, their rights, duties and control over property, their body, the degree of seclusion and veiling, vary considerably. Overall, this collection of papers show that the relationship between Islam and the everyday lives of Muslim women is a complex picture, one that is confronted with a considerable range of interpretations of laws and traditions. This book will be of particular interest to those studying women and Islam, anthropology, religion and sociology.

This book, first published in 1978, treats methods of describing the total and special vocabularies of a given text and demonstrates a procedure of description of the vocabulary of the Sufi Mathnavi poem Tariq-ut-tahqiq, composed in the middle of the fourteenth century. The book gives a complete concordance, also indicating inflexional forms, and a complete frequency word-list of this New Persian text. The word-lists are followed by a statistical survey of the general vocabulary, the Arabic loan-words and the Sufi-religious terminology.

The series is a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. General problems are studied from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Conclusions are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. Special emphasis is given to little-known languages, whose analysis may shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics.

First published in 1983, this edited collection is based on contributions at a Scandinavian symposium on the place of women in Islamic society. It offers perspectives which illuminate our understanding of social relationships and structures pertaining to a vast number of the world's population dispersed throughout Asia and Africa. Sociological and anthropological investigations of social organization and the behavioural patterns provided in these papers demonstrate that the status of women, their rights, duties and control over property, their body, the degree of seclusion and veiling, vary considerably. Overall, this collection of papers show that the relationship between Islam and the everyday lives of Muslim women is a complex picture, one that is confronted with a considerable range of interpretations of laws and traditions. This book will be of particular interest to those studying women and Islam, anthropology, religion and sociology.

Volume V of A History of Persian Literature presents a broad survey of Persian prose: from biographical, historiographical, and didactic prose, to scientific manuals and works of popular prose fiction. It analyzes the rhetorical devices employed by writers in different periods in their philosophical and political discourse; or when their aim is primarily to entertain rather than to instruct , the chapters describe different techniques used to transform old stories and familiar tales into novel versions to entice their audience. Many of the texts in prose cited in the volume share a wealth of common lore and literary allusions with Persian poetry. Prose and poetry frequently appear on the same page in tandem. In different ways, therefore, this creative interplay demonstrates the perennial significance of intertextuality, from the earliest times to the present; and help us in the process to further our understanding and enhance our enjoyment of Persian literature in its different manifestations throughout history