The Animal-guide through Medieval Persian Poems

The article examines the figure of the animal-guide in medieval Persian literature, in particular in the narrative poetry of the 11th-14th centuries. The author focuses above all on the onager, a sort of wild donkey, and on its various functions within some works of pre-Islamic and Islamic times. In the latter, the analysis essentially concerns some epic and romance mathnavis (narrative poems) on the Sassanid King Bahrām V, a legendary figure famous as onager's hunter. This animal appears in the Persian literature mainly with the function of animal-guide, but also in some relationship with death. In the latter aspect, the onager is sometimes represented as a messenger or announcer of death or while leading the protagonist of the poem himself to the afterworld.