an investigation on the sources of the anecdotes from the first chapter of jami’s baharestan

jami’s baharestan is one of the most valuable persian literary works; it embodies a lot of fruitful stories and discourses, whose most sources are arabic. though one may find out from jami’s words that he has not used the literary works of his predecessors, an investigation on arabic sources may lead one to lots of background works of the stories of this book. in this paper, we have identified the arabic background works of twenty three anecdotes and the persian sources of thirty three anecdotes out of thirty six ones of the first chapter of baharestan. we have also shown that at least twelve anecdotes from them have come in the sources prior to jami himself. another finding of this study is that jami has taken this part of baharestan from another book namely nafahat al-uns (breaths of fellowship). in this study, we have found thirty one anecdotes from the first chapter of baharestan in the book nafahat al-uns (breaths of fellowship).