Daqāyiqī Marvazī

This article is an encyclopaedia entry on a little known Persian writer and poet active in north-eastern Iran in the twelfth century: Shams al-Din Muhammad Daqayiqi Marvazi. The entry presents the scarce data on Daqayiqi’s biography, mainly drawn from a thirteenth-century Persian source, and discusses the attribution to him of two important prose works: a Sindbad-nama (‘Book of Sindbad’) and a Bakhtyar-nama (‘Book of Bakhtyar’). Both works belong to the literary tradition of narrative cycles focusing on the redeeming role of narration, which circulated throughout the Eurasian continent from Late Antiquity, with the Persian versions playing a fundamental role in the tradition's textual journey. Apparently, only the second work is still extant, in three manuscripts (currently conserved in Paris, Leiden, and Oxford).