Elegant Exordium and Sublime Epilogue: On Two Essential Features of the Panegyric Odes as Presented in VaṭVāṭ’s Ḥadāʾiq Al-Siḥr

Ḥadāʾiq al-Siḥr fī Daqāʾiq al-Shiʿr (Gardens of Magic in the Minutiae of Poetry), authored by Rashīd al-Dīn Vaṭvāṭ (d. 1182) is the second oldest surviving treatise dedicated to the study of stylistics and figures of speech in the Persian literary tradition. This bilingual treatise focuses predominantly on the composition of panegyric qaṣīdas, a poetic form enriched with literary devices. Within the context of medieval court poetry, creating the exordium (maṭlaʿ) and the epilogue (maqṭaʿ) in a captivating manner holds paramount significance. Thus, Vaṭvāṭ dedicates two chapters to these core sections, offering various instructive examples and valuable insights into the prevailing literary norms that governed the preferred methods of commencing and concluding a poem, and this article delves into their analysis.