Persian literature

Introduction
Background
- Ancient Iran
- The Arab invasion
- The emergence of New Persian
Classical poetry
- Court poetry
  - Early poets and the Shāh-nāmeh
  - The proliferation of court patronage
  - The qiṭʿah and the robāʿī
- Religious poetry
Classical prose
The Mongol and Timurid period
- Saʿdī and Ḥāfeẓ
- Jāmī
The Safavids and the introduction of Shiʿism
Modern Iran

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images & Videos

Sulṭān Muḥammad: “The Feast of Sada” in the Shāh-nāmeh

See actors discuss their roles in a play based on a poem by Farīd al-Dīn al-ʿAṭṭār, The Conference of the Birds

Quizzes

4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul

Famous Poets and Poetic Form

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:

Poetry: First Lines

Related Questions

How did Achaemenian kings use Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions?
How did Bayhaqī’s prose style differ from the later ornate style of Persian historians?
How did Neẓāmī connect the seven princesses to the adventures of Bahrām Gūr?
How did Nima Yushij transform the style and subjects of modern Persian poetry?
How did Persian literature influence classical Urdu writing?
How did Persian prose use anecdotes to teach rulers about good government?
How did Sadeq Hedayat use everyday language and psychological themes in his stories?
How did Shahrnoush Parsipour use magic realism in Women Without Men?
How did Simin Daneshvar portray foreign occupation in Savushun?
How did Sufi mystics use the ghazal to express divine love?
How did Sufi writers use Persian prose to discuss mystical love and religious ideas?
How did oral transmission affect the preservation of the Avesta?
How did printing, translation, and European education contribute to modern Persian literature?
How did the Constitutional Revolution change the role of Persian poets and writers?
How did the Gāthās preserve the teachings of Zoroaster?
How did the Shāh-nāmeh influence Persian miniature painters?
How do short, long, and extended syllables shape Persian poetic metre?
How does monorhyme work in a qaṣīdeh or ghazal?
How does the rhyme scheme of a masnawi differ from the rhyme scheme of a ghazal?
How were qaṣīdehs used at Persian royal courts?
What advice about government appears in Niẓām al-Mulk’s Siyāsat-nāmeh?
What events in Iranian history and legend are covered in the Shāh-nāmeh?
What role does a radīf play in Persian poetry?
What themes does Sadeq Hedayat explore in The Blind Owl?
Where was Old Persian used during the Achaemenian Empire?
Which Persian poetic form was especially used for epic poetry?
Which ancient Iranian myths are preserved in the Yashts?
Which characters are central to Neẓāmī’s story of Khosrow, Shīrīn, and Farhād?
Which famous Persian poets came from Shiraz?
Which kinds of stories were commonly told in masnawis?
Which poets helped establish new poetry in Iran during the 20th century?
Which subjects are explored in Neẓāmī’s Khamseh?
Which subjects commonly appeared in the nasīb section of a qaṣīdeh?
Which surviving Pahlavi works were later incorporated into Ferdowsī’s Shāh-nāmeh?
Which writing systems have been used for New Persian in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan?
Why did Mohammed Ali Jamalzadeh’s Once Upon a Time become important in modern Persian prose?
Why did Neẓāmī’s romantic epics inspire writers in Turkish, Kurdish, and Urdu?
Why did Persian become an influential cultural language in Central Asia, India, and Turkey?
Why does New Persian contain many Arabic loanwords?
Why is it difficult to determine the dates of the Avesta’s different texts?

Literature World Literature

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External Websites

Iran Chamber Society - Images of Women in Classical Persian Literature and the Contemporary Iranian Novel

wine bottle Ceramic wine bottle, fritware, Iran, second half of the 17th century; in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Persian literature

Also known as: Farsī literature, Modern Persian literature, New Persian literature(Show More)

Written by

J.T.P. de Bruijn

Professor Emeritus of Persian, University of Leiden, The Netherlands. Contributor to Encyclopaedia Iranica and Encyclopaedia of Islam. Author of Persian Sufi Poetry and others.

J.T.P. de Bruijn

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

History

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 Farsi in Iran, where it is the country’s official language, and as Dari in Afghanistan, where it and Pashto are official languages. It is written with a Cyrillic alphabet...

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