Persian literature is the jewel in the crown of Persian culture. It has profoundly influenced the literatures of Ottoman Turkey, Muslim India and Turkic Central Asia and been a source of inspiration for Goethe, Emerson, Matthew Arnold and Jorge Luis Borges among others. Persian literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Persian language and is one of the world's oldest literatures. Persian literature, body of writings in New Persian (also called Modern Persian), the form of the Persian language written since the 9th century. with a slightly extended form of the Arabic alphabet and with many Arabic loanwords. The literary form of New Persian is known as Farsī in Iran, where it is the country’s official language, and as Darī in Afghanistan (where it and Pashto are official languages); it is written with a Cyrillic alphabet by Tajiks in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Background
· Ancient Iran- Ancient Iran, also known as Persia, historic region of south western Asia that is only roughly coterminous with modern Iran. Parsa was the name of an Indo-European nomadic people who migrated into the region about 1000 BC. The first mention of Parsa occurs in the annals of Shalmanesar II, an Assyrian king, in 844 BC. The Iranian languages belong, together with the Indo-Aryan languages of the Indian subcontinent, to one of the oldest branches of the Indo-European linguistic family. There exist documents written in the Old Iranian languages that have survived for nearly three millennia. The oldest texts are the Gāthās, short hymns written in an archaic form of an Old Iranian language called Avestan, named for the Avesta, the holy book of Zoroastrianism. The only other Old Iranian language found in extant texts is the Old Persian used by the Achaemenian kings for inscriptions in cuneiform writing (6th–4th century BCE). They contributed little to the development of literature in Iran. However, in some collateral sources (including the Bible) there are indications that epic literature existed in the oral tradition of reciters at court. The conquest of the Achaemenian Empire by Alexander the Great about 330 BCE caused a radical break in Iranian culture. During the new era, which lasted until the Arab conquest of the 7th century CE, Iran was deeply influenced by Hellenism. Greek and Aramaic became the dominant languages. For almost 500 years Iranian languages were not used in writing. The oldest preserved documents that use Middle Iranian languages date only from the 3rd century CE. The most widely used written language was Middle Persian, better known as Pahlavi, which remained in use with the Zoroastrians into Islamic times.
· The Arab Invasion- The Muslim conquest of Persia, also known as the Arab invasion of Iran, led to the fall of the Sasanian Empire of Iran (Persia) in 651 and the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion. The rise of Muslims coincided with an unprecedented political, social, economic, and military weakness in Persia. The contribution made by the descendants of the Sāsānian elite to the development of the political and administrative institutions of the Caliphate increased in the 8th century after Baghdad was founded as the capital of the ʿAbbāsid dynasty, close to the place where the Sāsānian kings once had their palace. Iranians contributed much to the development of the scholarly traditions of Islam. The linguistic and literary sciences dealt primarily with the Qurʾān and with the poetry of the pre-Islamic Arabs, both of which provided the norms for classical Arabic and its use in Arabic literature. During the early ʿAbbāsid period (8th–9th centuries), the activity of translators was lively. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ made an Arabic version during the 8th century that was later retranslated into Persian. He also translated the Khwatāy-nāmak (“Book of Kings”).
· The emergence of New Persian- The emergence of the New Persian language and literature presents considerable historical problems. Persian poetry is indebted both to Arabic literature and to the Iranian tradition. Since Persian poetry originated in courts for the glorification of Iranian princes, lyrical poetry was the first genre to appear. In the 10th century they controlled most of eastern Iran and present-day Afghanistan. The Sāmānids belonged to the local Iranian aristocracy and even claimed a pedigree going back to the Sāsānian kings. Though they remained faithful to Islam, they did much to promote the literary use of Persian and the survival of Iranian traditions. Balʿamī, one of their officials, adapted in Persian two important works by al-Ṭabarī, a native Persian writing in the early 10th century exclusively in Arabic: a commentary on the Qurʾān and a huge chronicle of Islamic history that included an account of the ancient kings of Iran. the writing of poetry in Persian was established as a court tradition. The works of the Sāmānids have been preserved only as fragments.
· Classical Poetry- The classical Persian poets and theoreticians saw the aim of their art primarily as the continuation of Arabic poetry in another language. For them, poems that were not written according to the rules of Arabic prosody did not count as serious poetry. It is difficult to assess in detail what has survived from pre-Islamic Iranian poetry because so little is known about oral Middle Persian poetry. Classical Persian poetry and preIslamic literature was precisely the introduction of the recording in writing of poems composed on principles already evolved in Arabic philology. The only form not conforming to the rule of monorhyme is the masnawi, or poem in couplets, in which each distich has a separate internal rhyme, which changes with each new distich (aabbcc and so on). In court poetry, the special form of the panegyric is the qaṣīdeh, its length varying between 15 and more than 100 distichs. Ghazals are much shorter poems, usually no more than 7 to 10 distichs.
Court Poetry
The first significant Persian poet was Rūdakī. He flourished in the 10th century, when the Sāmānids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved.
. Religious Poetry
In the 10th century the Ismāʿīlī branch of Shīʿism had come into power in Egypt and established the Fāṭimid dynasty. From Cairo intensive propaganda was targeted at the Sunni ʿAbbāsid caliphs of Baghdad. In the Sāmānid period, Ismāʿīlī missionaries gained a considerable influence over the intellectual elite of the eastern Iranian provinces, taking advantage of the new opportunities offered to them by the rebirth of Persian as a written language.
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Classical Prose- In the classical tradition the concept of "literature" was almost synonymous with poetry. Prose was used for utilitarian purposes, particularly in scholarship, religion, and the affairs of government. In all these domains the Persian language was in competition with the more prestigious Arabic. In theology, science, and literary scholarship, Persian works were mostly popularized versions of more sophisticated works in Arabic.
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The Mongol And Timurid Period- Timurid dynasty, dynasty of Turkic-Mongol origin descended from the conqueror Timur (Tamerlane). The period of Timurid rule, centered in Herat, was renowned for its brilliant revival of artistic and intellectual life in Iran and Central Asia. About 1220 the Mongols, led by Chinggis Khan, devastated Iran, especially in the east, where they destroyed several cities. Thirty years later a Mongol state was established in Iran by Chinggis Khan’s grandson Hülegü. Before the end of the 13th century, the Īl-Khans, as the new rulers were called (see Il-Khanid dynasty), had become Muslims and had assimilated Persian civilization, mainly as a result of their officials, most of whom were Iranians. Tabrīz, the capital of the Mongols, became a cultural centre where old traditions were safeguarded but innovations were also attempted. An important development during this period was the opening of contacts with China, which had also been incorporated into the Mongol empire.
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Modern Iran- Evidently from the time of the Sassanids (226–651 CE) Iranians have called it Iran, meaning the "Land of the Aryans" and Iranshahr. In the mid 1930s, the ruler of the country, Reza Shah Pahlavi, moved towards formalising the name Iran instead of Persia for all purposes. In the early decades of the 19th century, contacts between Iran and Europe rapidly increased, while two wars with Russia (1804–13 and 1826–28) made apparent Iran’s military weakness. Among enlightened members of the Qājār elite the necessity of reforms was deeply felt. This led to the first attempts at a modernization of Iranian society. In general, these reforms sought to implement technical improvements. Poetry remained a prominent form of literature in Iran through the early 21st century. Following various international trends in poetic expression, many different schools of poetry further developed the modernist principles introduced by Nima Yushij. Of the great classical poets, Omar Khayyam and Ḥāfeẓ in particular survived as respected figures from the past who are today still considered to be relevant to modern poets. The Islamic Republic of Iran, applying criteria of political, religious, and moral correctness, placed severe limits on the free expression of writers and poets, although there were brief periods when government censorship was relaxed. From the 1980s onward, a substantial Persian emigré literature emerged in the United States and Europe.
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the celebrated headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. Among the major Victorian writers, Matthew Arnold is unique in that his reputation rests equally upon his poetry and his poetry criticism. Only a quarter of his productive life was given to writing poetry, but many of the same values, attitudes, and feelings that are expressed in his poems achieve a fuller or more balanced formulation in his prose. This unity was obscured for most earlier readers by the usual evaluations of his poetry as gnomic or thought-laden, or as melancholy or elegiac, and of his prose as urbane, didactic, and often satirically witty in its self-imposed task of enlightening the social consciousness of England.
Sohrab and Rustum
by: Matthew Arnold
Sohrab and Rustum, epic poem in blank verse by Matthew Arnold, published in 1853 in his collection Poems. Among Arnold's sources for this heroic romance set in ancient Persia were translations of an epic by the Persian poet Ferdowsī and Sir John Malcolm's History of Persia (1815). Sohrab and Rustum: An Episode is a narrative poem with strong tragic themes first published in 1853 by Matthew Arnold. The poem retells a famous episode from Ferdowsi's Persian epic Shahnameh relating how the great warrior Rustum unknowingly slew his long-lost son Sohrab in single combat. One of the main themes of "Sohrab and Rustum" is the danger that can come from chasing one's personal vainglory too strongly. Sohrab does not realize that Rustum is his father when they fight, nor does Rustum know that Sohrab is his son.
Rūmī
Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet" and the "best selling poet" in the United States. Rumi's works are written mostly in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic, and Greek in his verse. Rūmī, in full Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, also called by the honorific Mawlānā, (born c. September 30, 1207, Balkh [now in Afghanistan]—died December 17, 1273, Konya [now in Turkey]), the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language, famous for his lyrics and for his didactic epic Mas̄navī-yi Maʿnavī (“Spiritual Couplets”), which widely influenced mystical thought and literature throughout the Muslim world. After his death, his disciples were organized as the Mawlawiyyah order.
Looking for Your Face
BY: RUMI
It is dedicated to seeking understanding, and promoting spiritual truth and social harmony. It provides resources in spiritual direction, contemplative prayer, and retreat opportunities to individuals, groups, churches and spiritual wellness organizations. It aims at living with intention and integrity by encouraging spiritual growth through education and contemplative practice.
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