Professor Mozaher Mosfa’s opinion about Shafi’i Kadkani
It was 76 or 77. I was a bachelor’s student. Ostad Shafii’s classes were held in the group’s library those days. It was almost noon. The door opened and Professor Mazahir Mosfa entered the class. Professor Shafi’i jumped up and went to meet them. Mosfa sat on Shafii’s chair and Shafii was next to him. Master Mosfa said with that sweet look and noble smile, I came to listen to your lesson. Shafi’i smiled and lowered his head and said nothing. Moments passed. Master Musafa said, now that you are not talking, I am reading poetry. He read the piece of hesitation. Shafiei listened with pleasure and repeated under his breath.
Years later – winter 2005 – I had a detailed conversation with Dr. Musafa on the occasion of the note I had written about the relationship between Prof. Faruzanfar and Dr. Musafa in Bukhara. Atefeh and Mr. Dehbashi and my teacher Dr. Masoud Jafari were also there. We talked from here and there and the word reached Master Shafii. Master Mosfa said:
Dr. Shafii. You see, I have a bias towards them. I am always afraid that my judgment about Dr. Shafii is a subset of the affection I have for him. First of all, Dr. Shafiei’s stylistic and critical work is very new. These few books that he has written about style and criticism and these works are completely new in the thousand-year period of Persian poetry and prose. Secondly, Dr. Shafii is bright like the sun. Go see all the heart and veins! He has no enmity towards anyone. There is an inner goodness and generosity in this person and he has no grudge against anyone. He criticizes, dislikes, investigates, but has no enmity towards anyone. These are traits that cannot be found in anyone. After that, he writes both new and traditional poetry. And everything I have seen from him has been good; I mean, I also have the disease of getting involved in other people’s poems, but I don’t see any problems in Shafii’s poems. I don’t know if this is a subset of my affection towards this person; I have brotherly affection towards them.
There are those who, through ignorance, beat him in classes, but this is an injustice against Persian literature. Is it except that Shafiei Kadkani has served? Except that he is really working around the clock. A student who is a Shafii student is really different from a student who is not a Shafii student. See his treatises. A certain professor has thousands of treatises, go and look, fifteen out of the thousand treatises have not been published. When a treatise is written with Shafi’i, it has a lot of customers to be published. In his classroom, the meanings that were in seminaries were in the teaching of scholars of ancient science and literature and jurisprudence, this is in Shafii’s classroom. Everyone benefits from Shafii’s class. I go to his class sometimes. He embarrasses me every time I go to his class. But I like his class. I keep telling him that I came for you to talk and you don’t talk anymore. We read poetry and talk together. We do not have an intercessor. Shafii is petite. Someone may come and put the Arabic texts in front of him, for example, read like Shafi’i, now a little lower and higher, less and more. Or, for example, an English scholar may be stronger and more fluent than him, but overall, Shafi’i is the leader of Persian literature in our time in the university. It is truly the pillar of our university’s reputation. God! Please forgive me if I have been affected by the emotion between us because I have a great affection for them. Sometimes I think that what I say is the command of affection, but I turn to my heart and say: This is not affection; The lesson is so pure, the research is so pure, the stylistics is so pure, the works he has done on Persian texts. See the same logic, it can’t work better than this. In the work of correcting, the act of copying is not the only criterion, it requires intelligence, it requires intelligence, which I think Dr. Shafi’i has.”
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This post is written by monese_ghamgosar