the “Persian miniature” was the gift by A. A. Akhmatova to her son after his return from the concentration camp. The sheet includes the painting and the textual decor placed around it. There is no documentary evidence of the history of the present, a donator or the symbolical meaning of the donation. This article discusses the problem of the textual decor and its connection with the content of the picture. The textual decor is presented by extended cartouches with oriental inscriptions. The most frequent are the quotations from Jami’s “Yusuf and Zuleikha”. This helps to correlate the textual decor with the meaning of the scene presented in the picture. Since professor A. Boldyrev was invited to interpret the textual decor of the picture on Akhmatova’s request, there might be a hypothetical connection between Akhmatova’s awareness of the meaning of the text and her donation of the miniature to her son.

The article is a publication of the first commented translation into Russian of a large part of the philosophical and didactic poem (masnavi) Raušanāī-nāmeh – “The Book of Enlightenment” by the great Tajik-Persian poet and philosopher Nāṣir-i Xusrav (Nasir-i Khusrav). Nāṣir-i Xusrav (b. 1004 AD Kobadian d. 1072 AD Yumgan) later in his life adopted the teachings of Isma’ilism (a branch of Shi`a Islam). After traveling to the Middle East, he returned to Khorasan as da’i or Khujjat (the official preacher of Isma‘ilism). He had to hide from persecution in the mountain village of Yumgan. There he spent the last years of his life and wrote his main poetic and philosophical works, viz. Zād al-musāfirīn, Jāmi‘ al-ḥikmatayn and (masnavi) Raušanāī-nāmeh. The latter although comprises the main ideas of the two previous treatises, however, conveys them in a popular form. Nāṣir-i Xusrav’s mostly poetical heritage has already received sufficient attention of the Russian scholars of the 20th century (E. Bertels, V. Nikitina, A. Edelman and A. E. Bertels), however the translation into Russian of his philosophic works remains a desideratum. The translation offered in this article is an attempt to redress the balance. The authors offer a “philological translation”. Contrary to the “literary” translation, this type of translation in the most accurate way conveys the meaning and style of the original in particular, the lexical components, as well as the style. Out of the total 594 beyts the authors had published 162 beyts, which comprise the translation of the al-Ḥamd and the Faṣl fi al-naṣīḥat. The next 58 beyts were translated by M. Shakarbekova. Here we propose the translation of the the following 100 beyts. Nāṣir-i Xusrav deals there with the four elements, the three kingdoms of nature and the origin of the human body from these kingdoms. According to A. E. Bertels, the set of themes of this passage reflects “the scheme of the universe”, and, in general, contains the picture of the world, which was typical for Muslim authors. As one of the oldest poetic documents in the Persian language, this text is of great interest for the study of traditional ideas, as well as their evolution, among authors of other historical epochs and directions of Islam.

The article deals with matla‘ (first she‘r – two-line couplet – in a ghazal) of the first ghazal in the Divan by Mirza Asadulla-khan Ghalib (1792–1869) written in Urdu. One of the items usually commented there is the garment made of paper (kāġhażī peirahan). It used to be worn in ancient times by the complainers who appealed to the ruler. The range of complaints in the poetry of Ghalib as well as by other Urdu and Persian poets was wide, however, stable. “Wearing paper clothes”, the petitioner complained about the Almighty, the ill fate, a cruel girl, a lack of understanding of the petitioner’s poetry and the poor remuneration, and finally, about the poet himself, who “dressed” his poems in the paper. Тhese diverse situations form the elements of the literary motif as well as its context and are common in the Persian verses by the predecessors of Ghalib and also himself. Its analysis helps to understand all levels of meaning inherent in one of the most difficult-to-interpret texts by Ghalib.

In the study of Ismailism, an important role was played by the discovery and subsequent study in the late 19th and early 20th centuries of the handwritten sources containing doctrinal Ismaili texts. Turning to these sources put the study of this area of Islam on a scientific basis for the first time. The poem (masnavi) by Nasir-i Khusrav “The Book of Enlightenment” (Rawšanā'ī - nameh) belongs to the very important texts of this kind. This article includes an annotated translation of bytes 333–455 of the poem. The chapters presented here reflect Nasir-i Khusraw’s contribution to the preaching of knowledge as a religious duty. This part includes 8 small chapters: On the properties of the human race, On the properties of simpletons, On the properties of solitude, Talk about the properties of laudable and blamed, A word about instruction and preaching, In rebuke of hypocritical friends, In rebuke of slanderers, In rebuke of following (ṭaqlīd). This part of the masnavi is devoted to the necessary prerequisites for assimilating the Ismaili doctrine of the soul and body, the sacred and profane understanding of Ismaili spirituality, the best prerequisites for comprehending Ismaili knowledge, as well as criticizing those simpletons ignorant of Ismailism who persecute the preachers of “true knowledge” and “block their way to paradise” with their wrong behavior. Despite the simplicity of the style of this passage, its understanding requires clarification regarding Nasir’s poetic terminology, as he loads traditional poetic expressions (istilahat ashshu'ara) with additional connotations based on Ismaili philosophy.

Резюме: перевод и герменевтика классической персидской газели принадлежат к числу актуальных проблем иранской филологии. Статья включает филологические переводы двух газелей Шамс ад-Дина Мухаммада Хафиза (XIV в.) в сопровождении детального поэтологического комментария. Во введении к публикации кратко изложена концепция, лежащая в основе проекта полного перевода «Дивана» газелей Хафиза на русский язык.