Article Info ABSTRACT Article type: Research Article Etiquettes have played a predominant role as educational texts among Iranians. The dominant method in these contents is one-sidedness and the inclusion of some pieces of advice for doing or prohibiting doing things. It is also noted not to be accompanied by rational reasoning, to a great extent. The concepts and topics contained in these texts are political and moral. Furthermore, they tend to use religious, mystical, and customary supports and, accordingly, the structure and necessity of social institutions, including the institution of education, are used as a model of instruction-suggestions with the listener/reader. To add up, the method of disseminating the mentioned knowledge with the repetition-reminding structure is based on the compliance strategywhich has usually suspended the principle of questioning and dialogue in educational interaction. In this article, the aspects of question avoidance and the reasons for its refusal are indicated and interpreted in five political-ethical etiquettes that appeared or were re-considred in the 5 th to 7 th centuries of AH. The results have indicated the author-narrators of the mentioned texts sometimes directly and explicitly invite the listener/reader to refrain from asking questions. Sometimes they have dealt with this matter indirectly by telling stories and planning punishment/encouragement discourse. The discursive order of the proposition/production anecdotes/prevalence of questioning in these texts is organized around the two elements of the nature of the subject and the position of the narrator, which seems authoritarian based on the vertical structure hidden in the theory of education. Of course, in explaining this authoritarianism and interpreting it as educational tyranny, one should think about it because there are other textual and extratextual implications that modify such a view.

Article Info ABSTRACT Article type: Research Article The matter of explaining the essence and attributes of God in Islamic mysticism has been influenced by Quranic tradition that is the criterion based on which the mystics have categorized the essence, attributes, and actions of God. Rumi, in Masnavi-e-Ma'navi, being referred to as the most prominent mystical work in Persian language, has been engaged with this subject with precision and delicacy, and, also, has broached the unknown nature of God. Likewise, Laozi, the Chinese sage, in Dao-de-jing, the most predominant text of the Dao tradition that was written in the eighteen century before Masnavi-e-Ma'navi, has raised major and delicate discussions on the unknowability of the essence of Dao. Accordingly, the present paper is an attempt to represent and investigate the findings concerning God's essence and attributes in Masnavi-e-Ma'navi and Dao-de-jing. Furthermore, it also aims at explaining the similarities and differences between them via integrating the descriptive-analytical method. As depicted by the results of the study, the true essence of God in Masnavi-e-Ma'navi and that of Dao in Dao-de-jing is elusive and unknowable. However, God's attributes in Masnavi-e-Ma'navi are more numerous than those of Dao in Dao-de-jing. This is justifiable via the reference to nomenclature in Islamic mysticism and mystical interpretations of God's names. Also, even though, some attributes of Dao, such as profoundness, silence, and formlessness, do not have known equivalents in Islamic mysticism, they are used as attributes of God in Masnavi-e-Ma'navi. Introduction: The concepts of God's essence and attributes are referred to as common terminologies in Islamic philosophy and theology and have entered the field of mysticism and multiple examples of such type have been manifested in many verses of "Masnavi-e Ma'navi", as a significant work of Islamic mysticism. The formation of these terms dates back to Qur'an and Islamic tradition and the emergence of various philosophical-theological movements. It may seem far-fetched to evaluate the mystical grasp of Masnavi-e-Ma'navi on God's essence and attributes with the understanding of "Laozi", the founder of Daoism. However, despite the approximate time gap of eighteen centuries between the publication of Masnavi-e Ma'navi and that of Dao-de-jing, and the different geographical conditions in which they were formed, as well as the different cultural and intellectual environments of Rumi and Laozi, it is possible to perceive their similar and sometimes identical epistemological approaches to the concepts of God's essence and attributes and show their common theological and ontological mindsets in explaining and understanding these concepts.