From the sixth/twelfth century onwards prose-cum-verse styles of composition flourished in Persian prose. In the first part of my paper I will consider – from a theoretically-informed perspective - the findings on mixed prose and verse in medieval Arabic and Persian literature, as presented by Wolfhart Heinrichs and Julie S. Meisami respectively in a collection of articles Prosimetrum: crosscultural perspectives on narrative in prose and verse (eds. J. Harris&K. Reichl, 1997). I shall look into the question of what exigencies can possibly account for the medium shift within a single narrative and will suggest two major clusters of factors, focusing on the time-frame of the sixth/twelfth – seventh/thirteenth centuries: 1) intra-literary factors, i.e., those which are immanent to certain literary genres or works; 2) extra-literary factors, i.e., those related to such issues, as a literary canon, authorial self-awareness, value differentiation between verse and prose in a literary system of the period, and finally, the specific connotations of meaning imparted to the two media.
In the second part of the paper I will address the different usages of the prosimetric mode in two historical works – the Tārīkh-i jahān-gushā of Juvaynī (d. 1283) and the Jāmi' al-tavārīkh of Rashīd al-Dīn (d. 1318; the parts available in Roushan's edition). The identical genre and the chronological proximity of the two compositions make them a fascinating case-study for our purpose. I will demonstrate that while both authors perceive prosimetrum as a means for “aestheticizing” the medium of prose and for granting a didactic stance to their narratives, in addition Juvaynī masterfully deploys it, first and foremost, in order to graft the tale of the Mongol conquest and the fortunes of the new rulers onto the narrative of the Iranian historical past.
