The Morphological Analysis of Houd (PBUH) Tale in the Translation of Tabari’s Commentary

Abstract

Showing the possible connections between Quranic texts and new scientific approaches in the today world is amongst the most important missions of Muslim scholars. This paper follows the same mission and the author studies the tale of Houd (PBUH) in the translation of Tabari’s commentary based on morphological theory of Vladimir Propp. The number of characters and their functions as well as the plot resulted from the sequence of functions in this story have close relationship with Propp’s theory. Regarding fictional movements, a new movement is seen in this story which is absent in Propp’s models and has fundamental differences with them. The theory of Propp originates from the study of Russian folk tales and its application for investigating religious tales is not without problems but since this theory pays attention to the structures not instances, it is very useful for studying religious tales. Finally, the author suggests that Iranian scholars should provide morphological analysis of other Quranic tales till the final structure of Quranic texts is obtained via comparing such analyses.

Keywords

• Houd (PBUH)
• the translation of Tabari commentary
• Tale
• Morphology
• Vladimir Propp