Discipline and Punish in Bayhaqi History: An Analysis of »Hasanak the Vizier« under Michel Foucault’s Theories

Abstract

This study aims at discussing Bayhaqi’s History and the execution presented in the book under Michel Foucault’s patterns in Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (1977). Therefore, the major aim of this paper is to pursue torture, torment, power, and punishment in Bayhaqi’s History based on what Foucault expounded in his analytical book. In his writing of »The Execution of Hasanak the Vizier, Peace be upon him«, Abu’l-Fadl Bayhaqi attempts to present a dramatic history and to reveal an execution rite in Ghaznavid Period of Iranian history. Text analyses under the modern theories which are the products of the new world and its complicated societies never carry contemporary reader to the old time, but bestows new and fresh outlooks to the text and increases the pleasures of reading. Bayhaqi’s History, written by Abu’l-Fadl Muhammad ibn Husayn Bayhaqi (died in 1077), is a living and documentary book which enjoys literary and historical merits, and consequently demands social and sociological reviews and evaluations.

Keywords

• bayhaqi’s history
• abu’l-fadl bayhaqi
• michel foucault
• sociology of literature