What is the secret of happiness? What is the nature of love? What makes us good hosts or good guests? What traits should we seek out in friends and seek to embody as friends ourselves? How should we approach the sensual beauties of this world- when do they induce us to error and when are they signs of God? The poets and bards of many traditions have long sought answers to such questions, but perhaps no culture has taken up this challenge with more passionate urgency than that of Persia, from the ninth century AD to modern-day Iran. These eleven centuries of poetic tradition include poets who have become well-known in the West, such as 'Umar Khayyam, Rumi, and Hafiz, as well as many others whom Westerners have yet to discover. In Iran these poems remain part of everyday popular culture, with people of all classes and levels of education able to recite them from memory, even if they may not always be sure who the poets were, where they came from, or what precisely was the spiritual intent behind the verse. In Persian Words of Wisdom, the US-based Iranian scholar Bahman Solati has compiled hundreds of examples reflecting his country's religious and spiritual traditions, especially the Shia branch of Islam and Islamic Sufism, but also the Zoroastrian faith. This bilingual edition with his own English translations further illuminates the sometimes enigmatic poems with parallel Western proverbs, as well as comparison quotations from Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist scripture and secular sources ranging from Mark Twain to Dale Carnegie. One of Solati's goals in this anthology is to build a cultural bridge through poetry between the West and Iran, making these treasures of Persian culture more available both to Westerners generally and, most specifically, to young people of Iranian descent who have grown up in the English-speaking world, perhaps without fully understanding the wealth of their heritage. For them and all readers, this will be a book of discovery.

An important volume, admirable translated. ... There are no discernable rough spots, no inconsistencies, and the word choices are fresh without being contrived. Hopefully, this book is the harbinger of a trend, and readers can look forward to more English translations of Batur's poetry. --Time Out Istanbul.

Satire, irony and humour have long been features of Persian literature's rich tradition, taking various forms from the coarse and obscene to the subtle and refined. Humour in Iran is a close and comprehensive study of satire and humour – in verse as well as prose – over the eleven-hundred years since the emergence of classical Persian literature. Combining Persian original texts with their English translations, it covers a range of texts and authors, from the lampoon in Ferdowsi's great epic of the ancient kings in the tenth century, through such master satirists as Obeyd Zakani, Sa'di, Rumi, Khayyam, Hafiz, Anvari, Sana'i, Khaqani, Suzani, Qa'ani, Yaghma, and so on. The book also includes twentieth century authors such as Iraj, Dehkhoda, Bahar, Eshqi, Aref, Hedayat, Jamalzadeh, Al-e Ahmad and more. A must read for scholars and students of humour and satire as well as Persian literature and Middle Eastern studies, and it will also appeal to general readers interested in ribald humour and satire.

Compiled by experts on the works of each individual poet, this book covers the poetry and poets of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran. Following a two-pronged approach, this volume studies both those who were influenced by the Constitutional Revolution in their works and those who addressed the Revolution with their work, influencing it directly. Through the analysis of their works, this volume explores influential poets and writers from the period, including Iraj, Vaziri, Afrāshteh, Yazdi, Bahār and ‘Eshqi. It covers female poets who are often overlooked, as well as the major satirical poets whose work educated and entertained the readers and criticized socio-political events. Analysing the mainstream and marginal poets, this volume argues the margins initiated the evolution of Persian poetry. As Persian poetry and its multifunctional legacy became the standard-bearer of the Constitutional movement, this volume is an important contribution to an understanding of Iran. This volume will be of interest to historians of the Constitutional Revolution and Iranian poetry, as well as to students and scholars of comparative revolutions. It is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate courses on Iranian history, Middle Eastern history and comparative studies of literature and revolution.

Fifty leaves that form the sumptuous Kevorkian Album, one of the world's greatest assemblages of Mughal art. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

Focuses on the poems rather than on their authors. Surveys the development of Persian mystical poetry, dealing first with the relation between Sufism and literature and then with the four main genres of the tradition: the epigram, the homiletic poem, love poetry and symbolic narrative.

First published in 1993. This is a collection of Selected Verses from Nasir-i Khusraw's Dzvan. The work of the Persian author in both its philosophical and poetical aspects has been known in the West for more than a century. The outward political and religious events of the first half of the eleventh century were the canvas on which Nasir-i Khusraw's poetry and prose developed.

A masterfully researched and compelling history of Iran from 1501 to 2009 This history of modern Iran is not a survey in the conventional sense but an ambitious exploration of the story of a nation. It offers a revealing look at how events, people, and institutions are shaped by currents that sometimes reach back hundreds of years. The book covers the complex history of the diverse societies and economies of Iran against the background of dynastic changes, revolutions, civil wars, foreign occupation, and the rise of the Islamic Republic. Abbas Amanat combines chronological and thematic approaches, exploring events with lasting implications for modern Iran and the world. Drawing on diverse historical scholarship and emphasizing the twentieth century, he addresses debates about Iran’s culture and politics. Political history is the driving narrative force, given impetus by Amanat's decades of research and study. He layers the book with discussions of literature, music, and the arts; ideology and religion; economy and society; and cultural identity and heritage.