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FACTS ABOUT PERSIA

Iran , officially Islamic Republic of Iran, republic (2005 est. pop. 68,018,000), 636,290 sqmi (1,648,000 sq km), SW Asia. The country's name was changed from Persia to Iran in

1935. Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and the

Caspian Sea; on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan; on the south by the Persian Gulfand the Gulf of Oman; and on the west by Turkey and Iraq. The Shatt al Arab forms part

of the Iran-Iraq border. Tehran is the capital, largest city and the political, cultural,

commercial, and industrial center of the nation.

PERSIASN LITERATURE

Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic

material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically

been the national language. For instance, Rumi, one of Persia's best-loved poets, born in

Balkh (in what is now Afghanistan), wrote in Persian, and lived in Konya then the capitalof the Seljuks. The Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia andadopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from Iran,

Afghanistan and other parts of Central Asia. Not all this literature is written in Persian, as

some consider works written by ethnic Persians in other languages, such as Greek andArabic, to be included.

Described as one of the great literatures of mankind, Persian literature has its roots in

surviving works of Middle Persian and Old Persian, the latter of which date back as far as

522 BCE (the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the BehistunInscription). The bulk of the surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times

following the Islamic conquest of Persia circa 650 CE. After the Abbasids came to power(750 CE), the Persians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic empire and,increasingly, also its writers and poets.

Persians wrote both in Persian and Arabic; Persian predominated in later literary circles.

Persian poets such as Ferdowsi , Sa'di, Hafiz, Rumi and Omar Khayyam are well known

in the world and have influenced the literature of many countries.

Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Literature

Pre-Islamic Persian literature consists of religious texts, the most notable of which is the

Avesta, a collection of liturgic fragments, and the later Pahlavi writing of the Sassanidperiod. The Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th cent. was accompanied by a linguisticinfusion: one century later, approximately 50% of the Persian literary lexicon consisted

of Arabic terms. As Islam became the dominant theme, Arabic became the literary

language, until the emergence of local dynasties in the 10th cent. The first extant Islamic

Persian poetry dates to the Samanid state (874-999); the first famous representative ofthis literature was the poet Rudaki (d. 940 or 944). To Rudaki are attributed a lostmathnawi (epic poem with rhyming couplets) version of the fables of the kalila wa dimna

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as well as a few qasidahs (panegyrics). Other major figures of this period are Abu Shukur

of Balkh, who is credited with the introduction ofrubaiyyat, Persian poetic quatrains;

Daqiqi, a Samanid court poet and a precursor of Firdawsi; and Baba Tahir Uryan, authorofrubaiyyatexpressive of pain.

Literary Flowering and the Golden Age

The first group of major Persian poets gathered in the court of Mahmud of Ghazna and

included Unsuri (d. 1040 or 1049), Farrukhi (d. 1038), Minuchihri (d. 1041), Asadi (d.c.1030/1041), and Firdausi. The first four wroteDiwans (collections of poetry that

included qasidas, long poems dealing with pre-established themes, such as spring, or

long-lost loves). Asadi was a pioneer of the munazara genre-staged disputations between

opposing characters or concepts. The major Persian national epic, the Shah-nama, theBook of Kings, was written by Firdawsi to celebrate the mythic pre-Islamic history of

Iran, in a style that attempted to exclude usages and expressions of Arabic origin.

This formative period of Persian literature also witnessed the modest beginnings ofPersian prose and the establishment ofrubaiyyatand mathnawi as classical literary

genres. The travelogue of Nasir-i Khusraw (d. 1088), Safar-nama, in which he relates his

pilgrimage to Mecca and his travels in Syria, Egypt, and Arabia, represents the

maturation of Persian prose. One of the masters ofrubaiyyatwas Omar Khayyam, whosereputation in the West is largely due to Edward FitzGerald's nonliteral adaptation of his

quatrains. Khayyam's poetry belongs to the mystical and didactic genres that were

developed by Sanai in hisHadiqat al-Haqiqa, Garden of the Truth, and that found theirculmination in the work of Farid ad-Din Attar. The 11th cent. also witnessed the

blossoming of the great romantic epics in Persian under masters such as Nizami (d.

c.1209), who is famous for hisKhamseh or quintet.

Panegyric poetry developed in the Ghaznavid court with Masud bin Sad (d. 1131), and inthe Seljuq court with Azraqi (d. c.1130) and Amir Muizzi (d. 1147). The most prominent

of panegyric poets were, however, Anwari (d. c.1190), court poet of prince Sanjar of

Balkh, and Khaqani (d. 1199), whose poetry is reputed for its complexity. Both thepolitical treatise Siyasat-nama of Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1092), and the ethical didactic work

Qabus-nama of the Ziyarid prince Kay Kaus are representative of the more colorful style

of rejuvenated Persian prose. A most important work in prose was the Chahar Maqala,

Four Treatises, by Nizami Arudi (d. 1174) of Samarkand, which discusses the crafts of

scribes, poets, astrologers, and astronomers.

At the heart of the Golden Age of Persian literature were the mystic and didactic works of

Sadi and Jalal ad-Din Rumi. Also worth noting are Iraqi (d. c.1288), author of theLamaat, a mystic compendium of prose and poetry with pantheistic inclinations, and

Amir Khusraw (1253-1324), a Persian-speaking Indian poet. The culmination of the

Golden Age comes with the work of the poet Hafiz. While mysticism was the dominant

strain of Persian poetry, Persian learning was emerging in philosophical, historical, andscientific writings. Persian also began to be used as a scholarly and court language in

India, which subsequently attracted many immigrant Persian poets. The prominent

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scholars of the era include Nasir ad-Din Tusi (d. 1274), Juwayni (d. 1283), Rashid ad-Din

fadl Allah (d. 1318), and Mustawfi (d. 1349).

The Silver Age and Later Works

The 15th cent. period of the second Turko-Tartar invasion and the establishment of theTimurid dynasty is considered the Silver Age, or the last episode, of classical Persian

literature. This period is characterized by imitations of and commentaries on the works of

the Golden Age. Among the notable literary figures were Jami, Saib of Tabriz (d. 1677),Mirza Bedil (d. 1720), an Indian writer who achieved great renown in Afghanistan and

central Asia, and Ali Hazin (d. 1766), who was exiled to India. The religious and political

turmoil of the 19th cent., together with the model set by European literature, led to

substantial changes in form and content. Nationalist and social themes were introduced,while classical genres were reformed and challenged. Modern poets include Iradj, Abid e-

Pishawari, Parwin, and Nima. Recent Persian experimentation in fiction includes that of

S. Hedayet and M. M. Hejazi.