The Sources of some of Shams Tabrizi’s Aphorisms in his Maqalāt

Document Type : Research article

Author

Assistant Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature Education, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Shams Tabrizi was a learned dervish of the 6th and 7th centuries AH (12th–13th centuries CE).His only surviving work, compiled by others, is a collection of discourses known as the Maqalat (Discourses). Among the sayings attributed to him is a set of forty-one brief statements that have appeared in some manuscripts of the Maqalat as well as in other works. The editor of the Maqalat has presented these sayings separately under the title Kalimāt-e Qeṣār (Aphorisms).This study aims to answer the question of whether these sayings genuinely originated from Shams himself and reflect his own contemplations, or whether they were utterances of others later attributed to him. Since Shams does not reference the sources of these statements or their original speakers, research and investigation into earlier Sufi sources and related texts reveal that, unlike other parts of the Maqalat, these sayings are in fact derived from earlier sources. However, the editor of the Maqalat has only identified two instances of such borrowings.This article examines twenty-one of Shams’s sayings in the Kalimāt-e Qeṣār section and demonstrates that these statements are drawn from sacred and prophetic traditions (Hadith Qudsi and Hadith Nabawi), as well as the sayings of earlier Sufi masters and other sources.

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References

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Persian Language and Literature
Volume 78, Issue 252
December 2025
Pages 60-47

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History

  • Receive Date: 13 August 2025
  • Revise Date: 11 September 2025
  • Accept Date: 26 October 2025
  • Publish Date: 27 December 2025

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