Abstract

For a long time, sciences such as embellishment, rhetoric, prosody, rhyme, etc. have been used as some criteria to judge the aesthetic aspects of the literary components as well as the evaluation of Farsi and Arabic prose and poetry to pave the way for some kind of systematic criticism. The deep and non-arguing influence of Farsi language and literature in the Indian sub-continent has caused the emergence of valuable works in different areas of poetry, theosophy, philosophy, grammar, lexicon, rhetoric, and so on. Unfortunately, some of these works are not known yet. In this paper, one of the above mentioned works -- 'Hadaegh al-Belaghe'-- a valuable Farsi rhetoric work written about 250 years ago in India, is studied in terms of the structure, importance, position, author's thoughts and fountainheads as well as the book's effects on later works. The book 'Hedaegh al-Belaghe' which is written by 'Shams al-Deen Faghir-e-Dehlavi' (1115-1183 A.H) in 1168 (A.H) was compiled in 5 'Hadighe' (gardens) as follows: rhetoric, embellishment, prosody and rhyme, mystery, and poetic plagiarism. Some outstanding features of the book are the author's vast knowledge about Farsi and Arabic literary and rhetorical figures, citing many Farsi examples, criticism and analysis of opinions and thoughts of the masters of rhetoric, and integration of rhetorical figures.