A Note on the Recent Edition of the Dīvān of Abū al-Faraj Rūnī

The most recent edition of the Dīvān of Abū al-Faraj Rūnī, prepared by Dr. Maryam Maḥmūdī and based on four manuscripts, was published in 2019 (1398 SH) by Sokhan Press. At the end of the volume appears a section of annotations followed by a 14-page, double-column glossary of difficult words and phrases found in the Dīvān. Such end-of-text glossaries are valuable tools for lexicographers, editors, and scholars interested in linguistic and philological studies. However, in an age where smart indexing tools are widely available, publishing a glossary without page numbers can be seen as a shortcoming. This article briefly addresses several flaws in the edition and critically examines some issues in the glossary. In addition to textual misreadings that have found their way into the glossary, certain definitions seem inconsistent with the poetic context in which the words occur—suggesting that the compiler relied solely on dictionaries without sufficient attention to contextual usage. The glossary could be significantly improved in future editions by including additional entries and cross-references.