| Art of Persia | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | Documentary |
| Directed by | Richard Downes |
| Presented by | Samira Ahmed |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 3 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer | Matthew Springford |
| Producer | Richard Downes |
| Production location | Iran |
| Original release | |
| Network | BBC Four |
| Release | 15 June – 29 June 2020 |
Art of Persia is a three-part 2020 BBC documentary series about the history and culture of Iran. The series is presented by Samira Ahmed. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Iran, also known as Persia and officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Iraq to the west and Turkey to the northwest, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. It covers an area of 1.648 million square kilometers, making it the world's 17th-largest country. Iran has around 90 million people, making it the world's 17th most populous country. Its capital and largest city is Tehran with around 16 million people in its metropolitan area.
The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group who comprise over half of the population of Iran. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language as well as of the languages that are closely related to Persian.
The history of Iran is intertwined with that of Greater Iran, a sociocultural region spanning the area between Anatolia in the west and the Indus River and Syr Darya in the east, and between the Caucasus and Eurasian Steppe in the north and the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman in the south. Central to this area is the modern-day country of Iran, which covers the bulk of the Iranian plateau.
The Shahnameh, also transliterated Shahnama, is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 "distichs" or couplets, the Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems, and the longest epic poem created by a single author. It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the greater region influenced by Persian culture such as Armenia, Dagestan, Georgia, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan celebrate this national epic.
A samovar is a metal container traditionally used to heat and boil water. Although originating in Russia, the samovar is well known outside of Russia and has spread through Russian culture to other parts of Eastern Europe, as well as Western and Central and South Asia. Since the heated water is typically used to make tea, many samovars have a ring-shaped attachment around the chimney to hold and heat a teapot filled with tea concentrate. Though traditionally heated with coal or kindling, many newer samovars use electricity to heat water in a manner similar to an electric water boiler. Antique samovars are often prized for their beautiful workmanship.
A Persianate society is a society that is based on or strongly influenced by the Persian language, culture, literature, art and/or identity.
The culture of Iran or culture of Persia is among the most influential in the world. Iran (Persia) is widely considered to be one of the cradles of civilization. Due to its dominant geopolitical position in the world, it has heavily influenced peoples and cultures situated as far away as Southern Europe and Eastern Europe to the west; Central Asia to the north; the Arabian Peninsula to the south; and South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia to the east. Iranian history has had a significant influence on the world through art, architecture, poetry, science and technology, medicine, philosophy, and engineering.
The Iranian city of Isfahan has long been one of the centres for production of the famous Persian carpet. Isfahani carpets are renowned for their high quality. The most famous workshop in Isfahan is Seirafian. In Europe, they became incorrectly known as Polish rugs because of the trade route from Persia to France running through Poland.
Richard Nelson Frye was an American scholar of Iranian and Central Asian studies, and Aga Khan Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Harvard University. His professional areas of interest were Iranian philology and the history of Iran and Central Asia before 1000 CE.
In the Western world, Persia was historically the common name used for Iran. On the Nowruz of 1935, Reza Shah officially asked foreign delegates to use the Persian term Iran, the endonym of the country, in formal correspondence. Subsequently, the common adjective for citizens of Iran changed from Persian to Iranian. In 1959, the government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Reza Shah's son, announced that both "Persia" and "Iran" could be used interchangeably, in formal correspondence. However, the issue is still debated among Iranians.
Touraj Daryaee is an Iranian Iranologist and historian. He currently works as the Maseeh Chair in Persian Studies and Culture and the director of the Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies at the University of California, Irvine.
Persian embroidery is a type of Persian art and handicraft.
Samuel Greene Wheeler Benjamin was an American journalist, author, artist, and diplomat..
Quest of Persia is a Persian action-adventure video game series. The first Game of the series “The End of Innocence” was released in September 2005. "Lotfali Khan Zand" was released in May 2008.
Kaveh Farrokh is a Greek author of several academic books and peer-reviewed publications specializing in Iranian history, and has been a frequent lecturer on Iran-related topics at the University of British Columbia as part of the UBC Continuing Education program. Currently, he is a counselor and learning specialist at Langara College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Mahnaz Afshar is an Iranian actress. She gained wide recognition in the record-breaking film Cease Fire (2006). Afshar is one of Iran's highest-paid actresses, She has received various accolades, including a Crystal Cymorgh, two Hafez Awards and an Iran's Film Critics and Writers Association Award.
The composite Turko-Persian, Turco-Persian, or Turco-Iranian is the distinctive culture that arose in the 9th and 10th centuries in Khorasan and Transoxiana.
Prince of Persia is a video game franchise created by Jordan Mechner. It is centered around a series of action-adventure games focused on various incarnations of the eponymous Prince, set in ancient and medieval Persia.
Indonesia and Iran established diplomatic relations in 1950. Indonesia has an embassy in Tehran, and Iran has an embassy in Jakarta. Both countries are full members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), The Non-Aligned Movement, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and Developing 8 Countries.
Willem Marius Floor is a Dutch historian, writer, and Iranologist. He was born in 1942 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. After finishing high school, he attended the University of Utrecht where he studied economics, non-Western sociology, and Islamic studies. He also studied Arabic and eventually became interested in Persian. He received his PhD from the University of Leiden in 1971. The title of his PhD dissertation was "The Guilds In Qajar Persia." Ever since, he has been engaged in Iranian studies. Throughout this time, he has published extensively on the socio-economic history of Iran. As an independent scholar, Willem Floor has published numerous works of history as well as translations. Dr. Floor is also a winner of Farabi International Prize for Humanitarian Studies.
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