Comparison

Prose and Verse Retellings of Jami's Fox-Cub Avoidance Parable

Jami tells the same fox-cub fable twice across two of his works. In the prose Baharestan (this section), a fox cub asks its mother for a trick to escape a dog, and she answers that the best of all tricks is simply to sit at home, so that neither the dog sees the cub nor the cub sees the dog. In the verse Haft Awrang parable (Section 109), a fox cub asks the same question and the parent-fox gives the parallel advice: remain in the wilderness while the dog stays in the village, each keeping an eye on the other so neither is caught off guard. Both renderings reach the identical Sufi moral — against a base or dangerous adversary, total avoidance is wiser than either cunning trickery or open confrontation. Comparing the two shows how Jami reworks a single didactic kernel across prose and verse.

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Updated 2026-07-20

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Humanities

Literature

Persian Literature Prerequisite Course