The Story Teller of Amir Arsalan, the Emergence Time, the Most Important Genres of That Time, and Travel Memoirs

Amir Arsalan is one of the most important and popular Persian epics and one of the first works which manifests the signs of the transformation from story to novel in Persian prose. Although Amir Arsalan is regarded as a modern text and so many valuable studies are carried out on it, it still seems necessary to discuss the name of the story teller as well as the year this story emerged.Furthermore, many researchers believe that a few years earlier the emergence of Amir Arsalan, the first Persian novels were translated and published, and hence it is believed that these signs of transformation emerged under the influence of novel. The present study consists of two parts: the first part addresses the story teller and the time this story emerged and it is tried to shed light on the dark aspects of this attribution and date the emergence year of this work more precisely. After eliminating these ambiguities, the cultural space of the time Amir Arsalan emerged is addressed regarding the printing industry and it is attempted to introduce translated novels and plays along with travel memoirs which were written in Persian so as to investigate the likelihood of the familiarity of the story teller with these genres. Following this path, a more coherent and precise picture of the story teller and the cultural space of the emergence time of this story will be drawn.