Obeyd Zākāni’s Akhlāgh-ol ashrāf is different from his other works, both in themes and ways of making humor. Zākāni, in this work, through using parody and irony refers to the words of the previous poets and writers to say that morality is the origin of corruption, and immorality is the source of prosperity, to be able, in this way, to criticize the behaviors of different social classes. The very displacing of the religious and ethical maxims accompanied by Obeyd’s insistence on creating satirical atmospheres is an honest reflection of his time which under the socio-political hegemony of Ilkhanid was a thorough decadence. The satirical look of Zākāni on the works of Ferdowsi, Sa’di, Nizami and other great Iranian writers, has turned out his black humor into an encyclopedia of references to Persian literary masters, and thus not only reminds us of the wise words of the great thinkers but of the fact that how neglectful the people were of these words. This article, by using a descriptive and structural approach, performs a stylistic study on Akhlāgh-ol Ashrāf in order to show the ironical techniques used by Zākāni.
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