The Requirements of Textual Exegesis: Looking at Gholamhussain Dinani’s Reading of Shams-e Tabrizi’s Ghazals

Although hedonistic and some other self-beneficial and pleasure-seeking approaches towards a text are assumed to be subjective, those who aim at dealing with textual exegesis, and publishing the resultant text in the public domain undertake a responsibility for which they must accept some requirements necessary to the successful accomplishment of the task. Exegetes should know the text well and get acquainted with it thoroughly. To achieve a reliable, revised, or edited version, exegetes should exert themselves in laborious task of revising. They should be sensitive, precise, and strict during the task of reading; furthermore, in case of encountering with any linguistic or metrical heterogeneities (in poetical texts) or any alternations regarding the internal logic of the main text, they should not rely on their self-reading of the text; instead, they should try to unravel the problem through continual and repeated rereading, referring to dictionary and other related resources, note-taking from corrected and revised versions, and consulting experts of the field. The above-mentioned procedure will be fruitful when exegetes acquire the necessary requirements for textual interpretation and mastery in related fields. One should not surmise that proficiency and expertise in a discipline of Humanities ensure mastery in all of the related domains; this kind of complacency, especially amongst those who are assumed to be authorities of the field, is not acceptable at all. The current paper, as a pioneering model, intends to analyze and criticize Gholamhussain Dinani’s reading of Rumi’s ghazals from various angles of vision, namely, the reliability of the text as a sourcebook, the correct reading, the way of dealing with problems confronted as a result of inadequate knowledge about the mentality and language of the main author, and exegete’s explanations about the literary content.