Movements and schools
Classical Persian poetry
The masters of Persian poetry, the bedrock of a civilization.
Around the year one thousand, Ferdowsi took sixty thousand couplets to tell the kings and heroes of pre-Islamic Iran, and so saved a language and a memory. After him, Persian poetry became the foundation of a civilisation stretching from Turkey to India: Rumi made the poem a spiritual exercise, Attar sent thirty birds to seek their king only to find they are that king, Saadi mixed wisdom and anecdote, Hafez made wine and love inseparable from God. These texts are still recited by heart, and a quatrain of Khayyam is read in a hundred languages.
works 8
- PoetryShahnameh: The Persian Book of KingsشاهنامهFerdowsi · 1010The kings and heroes of ancient Iran sung in a Persian almost free of Arabic words.Literature
- PoetryThe Rubaiyat of Omar KhayyamرباعیاتOmar Khayyam · 1100Quatrains of wine and doubt, attributed to a Persian scholar of the eleventh century.Literature
- PoetryThe Conference of the BirdsمنطقالطیرAttar of Nishapur · 1177A pilgrimage of birds towards their hidden king, an allegory of the soul's path to God.Literature
- PoetryLayli and Majnunلیلی و مجنونNizami Ganjavi · 1188The Arab legend of Qays, the man mad with love, set in Persian verse in the twelfth century.Literature
- NarrativeThe Gulistan (Rose Garden) of Sa'diگلستانSaadi · 1258A book of Persian wisdom, between prose and verse, drawn from a life of travels.Literature
- PoetryThe Mathnawiمثنوی معنویRumi · 1270The great poem of Persian Sufism, in which spiritual teaching is conveyed through tales and parables.Literature
- PoetryThe Divan-i-Hafizدیوان حافظHafez · 1410The ghazals of a poet of Shiraz, in which love of a face and love of God cannot be told apart.Literature
- Poetryلیلی و مجنونJami · 1484not translated into EnglishThe legend of the man mad with love, taken up in the fifteenth century by a mystic poet of Herat, in which Leyli becomes a figure of divine beauty.Literature