Love mathnavīs in motaqāreb: metre and subject in early Persian verse narratives

In the early 11th century Ferdowsī’s completed his Shāhnāma in the metre motaqāreb; in the second half of the 12th century Neẓāmī composed a series of mathnavīs, known as the Khamsa, in a five different metres, amongst which the motaqāreb of the Shāhnāma. The mathnavīs of both Ferdowsī and Neẓāmī served as models for subsequent poets, and the metres they used turned into a kind of standard for certain types of mathnavīs, often reworkings of the mathnavīs they had composed. Thus, the motaqāreb-e muthamman-e maḥẕūf came to be seen as the choice metre for the type of mathnavī that literary histories label as ‘heroic epic’, while certain variants of the metre hazaj became associated with the type of mathnavī referred to as ‘romantic epic’. However, an early group of these so-called romantic epics, such as ‘Ayyūqī’s Varqa-o Golshāh and ‘Onṣorī’s Vāmeq-o ‘Adhrā are in motaqāreb. Being composed in the metre of the Shāhnāma, these works are invariably associated to Ferdowsī’s iconic poem. In this paper I would like to discuss the features of this group of verse narratives, with a specific focus on their formal aspects and their position within the early Persian mathnavī tradition, addressing the question of the relationship between metre and subject-matter and approaches to category and genre in Persian poetry.