علی کوهپائی

This thesis, through the lens of historical Iranian linguistics, examines the first three labours (X?ns) of the story of Rostam’s Seven Labours in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. Our aim was to analyze the syntactic, lexical, and semantic properties of the text and to explore possible new readings of its verses. We analyzed notes of various commentators, especially Khaleghi-Motlagh and Kazzazi, and in some cases proposed alternative emendations and interpretations. The study shows that many verses—even those that seem straightforward and semantically obvious at the first glance—allow multiple readings and interpretations, and that historical linguistic evidence can open paths to interpretations hardly discernable from the standpoint of New Persian alone. The main outcome is not merely the individual new readings reported here, but the demonstration that such alternative readings exist and that a historical-linguistic approach is a powerful tool for revealing them.

This thesis, through the lens of historical Iranian linguistics, examines the first three labours (X?ns) of the story of Rostam’s Seven Labours in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. Our aim was to analyze the syntactic, lexical, and semantic properties of the text and to explore possible new readings of its verses. We analyzed notes of various commentators, especially Khaleghi-Motlagh and Kazzazi, and in some cases proposed alternative emendations and interpretations. The study shows that many verses—even those that seem straightforward and semantically obvious at the first glance—allow multiple readings and interpretations, and that historical linguistic evidence can open paths to interpretations hardly discernable from the standpoint of New Persian alone. The main outcome is not merely the individual new readings reported here, but the demonstration that such alternative readings exist and that a historical-linguistic approach is a powerful tool for revealing them.