While Persian poetry can boast an unfailing audience of admirers and specialists, classical Iranian theories of literature have only attracted very little attention to themselves. Of course, Shams-e Qeys-e Râzi is famous for his Ketâb al-mo‘jam. But until recently, the treatise was merely viewed as a handbook of metrics. As for his illustrious contemporary, the philosopher and astronomer Nasîr al-Dîn Tûsî, most monographs on his life and work show no awareness that he ever took part in the theorization of Persian poetry. The fact is that studies on early Persian poetology are scarce. Yet we believe that, from Râduyâni to Shams-e Qeys and from Nasîr al-Dîn to Jâmi, the corpus of treatises on rhetoric, prosody and rhyme from the classical period have more to offer than a mere handful of technical rules for verse composition. These texts deserve to be read for themselves. Some authors go so far as to deliver refined linguistic insights on the Persian language, elaborate philosophical discussions of the powers of poetry or even extent theories of fiction. Each of these trends calls for a detailed examination of its own. However, classical writings on poetry are not only a major source for ancient theories of literature, they are also a key to the understanding and interpretation of Persian poetry altogether. Therefore, our project involves two distinct yet parallel stages: the study of medieval Persian theoretical writings on poetry; and the confrontation of the latter with a relevant, often earlier, body of literary texts. For, with regard to its object, poetology is often slightly behind the times, and could be termed, for this reason, a theory in retrospect.