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.
Nizami Ganjavi, Nizami Ganje'i, Nizami, or Nezāmi, whose formal name was Jamal ad-Dīn Abū Muḥammad Ilyās ibn-Yūsuf ibn-Zakkī, was a 12th-century Muslim poet. Nizami is considered the greatest romantic epic poet in Persian literature, who brought a colloquial and realistic style to the Persian epic. His heritage is widely appreciated in Afghanistan, Republic of Azerbaijan, Iran, the Kurdistan region and Tajikistan.
Abu'l Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrau, better known as Amīr Khusrau, was an Indo-Persian Sufi singer, musician, poet and scholar, who lived during the period of the Delhi Sultanate.
Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi or Sharif al-Din Ali’ Yazdi, also known by his pen name Sharaf, was a 15th-century Persian scholar who authored several works in the arts and sciences, including mathematics, astronomy, enigma, literature such as poetry, and history. The Zafarnama, a life of Timur, is his most famous work.
Hasht Bihisht is a collection of speeches authored by Amir Khusraw around 1302. The poem is based on the Haft Paykar by Nizami, written around 1197, which in turn takes its outline from the earlier epic Shahnameh written by Firdausi around 1010. Like Nizami's Haft Paykar, Khusraw's Hasht Bihisht uses a legend about Bahram V Gur as its frame story and, in the style of One Thousand and One Nights, introduces folktales told by seven princesses. Most famously, Khusraw appears to be the first writer to have added The Three Princes of Serendip as characters and the story of the alleged camel theft and recovery.
A Persian miniature is a small Persian painting on paper, whether a book illustration or a separate work of art intended to be kept in an album of such works called a muraqqa. The techniques are broadly comparable to the Western Medieval and Byzantine traditions of miniatures in illuminated manuscripts. Although there is an equally well-established Persian tradition of wall-painting, the survival rate and state of preservation of miniatures is better, and miniatures are much the best-known form of Persian painting in the West, and many of the most important examples are in Western, or Turkish, museums. Miniature painting became a significant genre in Persian art in the 13th century, receiving Chinese influence after the Mongol conquests, and the highest point in the tradition was reached in the 15th and 16th centuries. The tradition continued, under some Western influence, after this, and has many modern exponents. The Persian miniature was the dominant influence on other Islamic miniature traditions, principally the Ottoman miniature in Turkey, and the Mughal miniature in the Indian sub-continent.
Khosrow and Shirin is the title of a famous tragic romance by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (1141–1209), who also wrote Layla and Majnun. It tells a highly elaborated fictional version of the story of the love of the Sasanian king Khosrow II for the Christian Shirin, who becomes queen of Persia. The essential narrative is a love story of Persian origin which was already well known from the great epico-historical poem the Shahnameh and other Persian writers and popular tales, and other works have the same title.
Zafarnama is the title of a number of Persian and Turkish literary works
The Garrett Zafarnama is an early manuscript of the Zafarnama by Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi now in the Johns Hopkins University Library in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
The illuminated manuscript Khamsa of Nizami British Library, Or. 12208 is a lavishly illustrated manuscript of the Khamsa or "five poems" of Nizami Ganjavi, a 12th-century Persian poet, which was created for the Mughal Emperor Akbar in the early 1590s by a number of artists and a single scribe working at the Mughal court, very probably in Akbar's new capital of Lahore in North India, now in Pakistan. Apart from the fine calligraphy of the Persian text, the manuscript is celebrated for over forty Mughal miniatures of the highest quality throughout the text; five of these are detached from the main manuscript and are in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore as Walters Art Museum MS W.613. The manuscript has been described as "one of the finest examples of the Indo-Muslim arts of the book", and "one of the most perfect of the de luxe type of manuscripts made for Akbar".
The Khamsa or Panj Ganj is the main and best known work of Nizami Ganjavi.
Abd-Allah Hatefi, commonly known as Hatefi was a Persian poet and nephew of the distinguished poet Jami.
The Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp or Houghton Shahnameh is one of the most famous illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Greater Iran, and a high point in the art of the Persian miniature. It is probably the most fully illustrated manuscript of the text ever produced. When created, the manuscript contained 759 pages, 258 of which were miniatures. These miniatures were hand-painted by the artists of the royal workshop in Tabriz under rulers Shah Ismail I and Shah Tahmasp I. Upon its completion, the Shahnameh was gifted to Ottoman Sultan Selim II in 1568. The page size is about 48 x 32 cm, and the text written in Nastaʿlīq script of the highest quality. The manuscript was broken up in the 1970s and pages are now in a number of different collections around the world.
Āzādeh is a Roman slave-girl harpist in Shahnameh and other works in Persian literature. When Bahram-e Gur was in al-Hirah, Azadeh became his favorite companion. She always accompanies Bahram in hunting.
The Zafarnama is a panegyric book written by Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi approximately two decades after the death of its main subject, Timur, the Turco-Mongol conqueror. It was commissioned by Ibrahim Sultan, Timur's grandson between 1424–28, and remains one of the best-known sources of Timur's life. The text was written using the notes taken by royal scribes and secretaries of Timur, suggesting that the history of the book was based on a careful and desired selection of facts.
Gayur-khan or Kyr Bek was the king of Simsir in the 14th century. He was involved in the Timurid invasion of the Caucasus and was recorded in the two Persian chronicles: Zafarnama by Nizam al-Din Shami and the Zafarnama by Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi.
Nizam al-Din Shami, also known as Nizam-i Shami or Nizam al-Din Shambi, was a Persian man of letters and a chronicler who flourished in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. He wrote the Zafarnama, the earliest extant Timurid chronicle and the oldest surviving biography on Timur. Shami's Zafarnama was continued by Hafiz-i Abru, and would also form the basis of the better-known Zafarnama of Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi.
The Iskandarnameh is a poetic production in the Alexander Romance tradition authored by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi that describes Alexander the Great as an idealized hero, sage, and king. More uniquely, he is also a seeker of knowledge who debates with great philosophers Greek and Indian philosophers, one of them being Plato.
The Ayina-i Iskandarī is a Persian legend of the life and exploits of Alexander the Great composed by the poet Amir Khusrau, completed in 1299/1300 during the reign of Muhammad II of Khwarazm. It is presented in the form of 35 discourses, running at 4,416 verses in the 1977 edition of the text produced by Jamâl Mirsaydof. Like his predecessor Nizami Ganjavi, Amir Khusrau's Alexander legend formed the fourth part of his Khamsa, and it was the first response to Nizami's Iskandarnameh. The text expresses a wish for the peace and stability brought about by Alexander as opposed to the period of instability and political turnover of his own time, and makes frequent reference to the "second Alexander" as a means of addressing his ruler Muhammad II, who assumed that title for himself during his reign.
The Kherad-nâme-ye Eskandari of Abd-al-Rahmân Jâmi is a piece of Persian literature which existed as an heir to the tradition of the Khamsa of Nizami Ganjavi. It constitutes the final book of Jami's larger seven-book composition, his Haft Awrang. More specifically, it focuses on legends of Alexander the Great as recounted in Nizami's Iskandarnameh and ultimately in the tradition of the Alexander Romance genre of literature. Jami's representation of the genre offers his readers a spiritual reflection on Alexander's journeys interspersed with long philosophical meditations exemplified through short anecdotes (hekâyat). As with other Islamic authors of this era, Alexander is ultimately identified with Dhu al-Qarnayn in his construction of the eastern wall against Gog and Magog.
