The ways of creating historical fiction stories in the Chahar maqala (“Four Discourses”) by Nizami ‘Aruzi Samarqandi (the mid-6/12th cent.)

Abstract

The article is a part of the research introduction to the new Russian translation of the Chahar maqala (“Four Discourses”) by Nizami ‘Aruzi Samarqandi, scheduled for publication next year as part of the third book in the series The Persian Mirrors for Princes Written in the Saljuq Period: Originals and Fabrications. This article is focused on the textual and literary analysis of the text illustrative and evidentiary base consisting of over 40 entertaining stories. According to the way of creating historical fiction, these stories are divided into five main categories: a) author’s fictions, following a certain structure and added to the formally plausible part of a story; b) author’s concoctions from beginning to end; c) the stories with an event borrowed from somewhere, but provided with an invented plot; d) the autobiographical memories, which stand out with amazing chronological accuracy against the unbelievable background of the first three categories; e) the borrowings from Arabic texts in the author’s translation.