Persian Culture

Poetry that uses satire, invective, and burlesque to criticize social, political, and cultural life has been a vital part of Persian literature for centuries. This anthology brings together some of the most impressive, important, and, crucially, irreverent poetry from major and minor poets from the earliest days of Persian poetry through the death of Jami in 1492, the moment when the classical era of Persian poetry ended.

This book is the first study of Persian literary riddles to appear in English, analysing a wide range of complex riddling poems systematically from the tenth to the twelfth century.

This book offers new insights into the twelfth-century Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi.

This program presents a dance adaptation of a 12th-century Persian poem written by Farid ud-Din Attar in 1177. The 4500-line allegorical poem tells of the journey by a group of birds, led by a colorful Hoopoe bird, which is a metaphor for the master, or Sufi sheikh, who is leading the birds, his pupils, down the path of enlightenment.

Iran's particular system of traditional Persian art music has been long treated as the product of an ever-evolving, ancient Persian culture. In Music of a Thousand Years, Ann E. Lucas argues that this music is a modern phenomenon indelibly tied to changing notions of Iran's national history. Rather than considering a single Persian music history, Lucas demonstrates cultural dissimilarity and discontinuity over time, bringing to light two different notions of music-making in relation to premodern and modern musical norms.

In recent years, Iran has gained attention mostly for negative reasons - for its authoritarian religious government, disputed nuclear programme, and controversial role in the Middle East - but there is much more to the story of this ancient land than can be gleaned from the news. This authoritative and comprehensive history of Iran, written by Homa Katouzian, an acclaimed expert, covers the entire history of the area from the foundation of the ancient Persian Empire to today's Iranian state.