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Browne's famous work, first published in 1902, was the essential text on literary history in Persian studies for many years. As an overview of Persian literature from the earliest times until Firdawsi, it continues to be a valuable reference. Out of print for some time, it is now reissued as a library edition, in facsimile to capture the feel of the original edition.
Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective is a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). Initiated in 1996 and launched in 1999, it aims at finding suitable methods and approaches for studying and analysing literature globally, emphasizing the comparative and intercultural aspect. Even though we nowadays have fast and easy access to any kind of information on literature and literary history, we encounter, more than ever, the difficulty of finding a credible overall perspective on world literary history. Until today, literary cultures and traditions have usually been studied separately, each field using its own principles and methods. Even the conceptual basis itself varies from section to section and the genre concepts employed are not mutually compatible. As a consequence, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the interested layperson as well as for the professional student, to gain a clear and fair perspective both on the literary traditions of other peoples and on one's own traditions. The project can be considered as a contribution to gradually removing this problem and helping to gain a better understanding of literature and literary history by means of a concerted empirical research and deeper conceptual reflection. The contributions to the four volumes are written in English by specialists from a large number of disciplines, primarily from the fields of comparative literature, Oriental studies and African studies in Sweden. All of the literary texts discussed in the articles are in the original language. Each one of the four volumes is devoted to a special research topic.
Written in Persian in the eleventh century, Omar Khayyam's quatrains, known as rubai, were written individually for an audience at court, and explored the meanings of life, love, and friendship. They were almost completely unknown in the West until Edward FitzGerald--himself a relatively obscure critic--translated and organized some one hundred of them into a unified whole that he called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which he published anonymously in 1859. Ignored initially, it soon became a sensation--and FitzGerald with it, his work now translated into seventy languages--and one of the most-read works of literature of all time. Deftly and eloquently recounting in turn the life stories of Khayyam and FitzGerald, linking them over the span of eight centuries, acclaimed biographer Robert Richardson has crafted the story of the legendary Rubaiyat itself, illuminating a literary classic and reinforcing its place in the canon of great world literature.
In the early 1400s, Iranian elites began migrating to the Deccan plateau of southern India. Lured to the region for many reasons, these poets, traders, statesmen, and artists of all kinds left an indelible mark on the Islamic sultanates that ruled the Deccan until the late seventeenth century. The result was the creation of a robust transregional Persianate network linking such distant cities as Bidar and Shiraz, Bijapur and Isfahan, and Golconda and Mashhad. Iran and the Deccan explores the circulation of art, culture, and talent between Iran and the Deccan over a three-hundred-year period. Its interdisciplinary contributions consider the factors that prompted migration, the physical and intellectual poles of connectivity between the two regions, and processes of adaptation and response. Placing the Deccan at the center of Indo-Persian and early modern global history, Iran and the Deccan reveals how mobility, liminality, and cultural translation nuance the traditional methods and boundaries of the humanities.
This book offers a view of Iran through politics, history and literature, showing how the three angles combine. Iran, being a revolutionary society, experienced two great revolutions within the short span of just seventy years, from the 1900s to the 1970s. Both were massive revolts of the society against the state; the main objective of the first being to establish lawful government to make modernisation possible, and the second, to overthrow the absolute and arbitrary state, though this time mainly under the banner of religion and Marxism-Leninism and anti-Westernism. Neither of them succeeded in their lofty ideals for reasons that are explained and analysed within. The author also offers a detailed description of Iran’s short-term society, examining the political and intellectual lives of two of the most remarkable intellectuals-cum-politicians of the twentieth century. This book provides an overview of modern Persian literature, both poetry and prose, and discusses the works of three of the most remarkable Persian poets and writers of the period. It considers classical Persian literature through the great variety of its form and substance, and neo-classical literary developments in the nineteenth century, covering the whole history of Persian literature. This is crowned in the last chapter by the love poetry of one of the greatest Persian poets. Iran will be of interest to students and scholars of Iranian studies and Middle East Politics.
This study provides a new interpretation of how political authority was conceived and transmitted in the Early Mongol Empire (1227-1259) and its successor state in the Middle East, the Īlkhānate (1258-1335). Authority within the Mongol Empire was intimately tied to the character of its founder, Chinggis Khan, whose reign served as an idealized model for the exercise of legitimate authority amongst his political successors. Yet Chinggis Khan's legacy was interpreted differently by the various factions within his army. In the years after his death, two distinct political traditions emerged within the Mongol Empire, the collegial and the patrimonialist. Each of these streams represented the economic and political interests of different groups within the Mongol Empire, respectively, the military aristocracy and the central government. The supporters of both streams claimed to adhere to the ideal of Chinggisid rule, but their different statuses within the Mongol community led them to hold divergent views of what constituted legitimate political authority. Michael Hope's study details the origin of, and the differences between, these two streams of tradition; analyzing the role that these streams played in the political development of the Mongol Empire and the Īlkhānate; and assessing the role that ideological tension between the two streams played in the events leading up to the division of the Īlkhānate. Hope demonstrates that the policy and identity of both the Early Mongol Empire and the Īlkhānate were defined by the conflict between these competing streams of Chinggisid authority.
Though it might seem as modern as Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, and Vladimir Nabokov, translingual writing - texts by authors using more than one language or a language other than their primary one - has an ancient pedigree. The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translingualism aims to provide a comprehensive overview of translingual literature in a wide variety of languages throughout the world, from ancient to modern times. The volume includes sections on: translingual genres - with chapters on memoir, poetry, fiction, drama, and cinema ancient, medieval, and modern translingualism global perspectives - chapters overseeing European, African, and Asian languages Combining chapters from lead specialists in the field, this volume will be of interest to scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates interested in investigating the vibrant area of translingual literature. Attracting scholars from a variety of disciplines, this interdisciplinary and pioneering Handbook will advance current scholarship of the permutations of languages among authors throughout time.
There are sections of Islamic History which mention Hasan-i-Sabbah briefly but no writer treats the subject in details. Hodgson and Lewis published under a misleading title of Assassinsand more recently F. Daftary wrote a general history of the Ismailis. Thus there is a need of a book covering the topic in greater depth and details. Hasan Sabbah; His life and thought, covers the history of the Middle East Crusade Period. It also deals with the founder of the Nizari Ismaili State in the North Iran and Syria and against the powerful Seljuks and the Sunni Caliphate of Islam.
