Influence of Iranian Literature on Turkish Literature

In 1037 Saljuq Turks invaded Iran and founded a dynasty which continued to reign in Iran till 1197 A.D. These Saljuq Turks, even prior to their invasion and conquest, were in touch with Iranian civilization and culture. When they came to power the Saljuqs accepted Farsi as their court language.

It was during their supremacy that great men of letters like Umar Khayyam, Khwajeh Nizam-al-Molk and Ghazali flourished. A branch of these Saljuqs went and occupied Turkey and they continued to reign in that country even after the conquest of Iran by the Mongols.

When Mowlana Jallaluddin, the great mystic poet of Iran left Balkh on the eve of Mongol invasion and went to reside in Quniyya in Antolia, he felt at home in his new place of residence because there, he could also converse in Farsi and could recite his mystic verses in Persian where everyone would understand and enjoy his verses.

Although various Turkish dialects as well as Persian were in use in the Saljukid domains, the court and literary language of the whole kingdom continued to be Farsi. As Mr. Rothfield (Davar, Iran and its culture, p. 331) points out, even here it was an Iranian poet who ushered the Turkish language into existence.

This Iranian poet, Baha’uddin, the son of the famous Mowlana Jallaluddin (1207 - 1272 A.D.), composed a poem entitled Rubab-Nameh in Farsi, in which he included 156 Turkish verses. This was the beginning of Turkish literature under Iranian inspiration. However, it needed another impetus. This time from an Iranian statesman Mir Ali Shir Nawai (+1561 A.D.) the Minister of State for Sultan Hussayn Bayqara, ruler of Herat.

He gathered round him a literary circle composing a new Turkish literature on the Persian model. This Turkish literary movement that was set in motion in Khorasan was artificial and ephemeral. It did not thrive in the ensuing political and religious upheavals to which Khorasan was exposed.

However, it had a permanent effect, in helping to stimulate the growth of the kindred Ottoman Turkish language in the Anatolian Peninsula. But, in the Turkish language that thus emerged in Anatolian Peninsula, Farsi and Arabic words were quite frequently used. Turkish poetry that was emerging was mainly based on Persian poetic forms and prosody and according to Mr. Gibb, even thoughts were absorbed from Persian literature.

They imitated the Iranian poets in their selection of notions and ideas along with the manner of their presentation. The influence of Iranian civilization and language was very pronounced in the Ottoman Empire.

As Professor Toynbee remarks:

From the remote domain which they had carved for themselves in the European provinces of Orthodox Christendom, the Ottoman "Ghazis of Rum," still looked to the heart of the "Iranic World" for intellectual light and leading. The Ottoman Sultan Bayazid II (1448- 1512), who was the father of Salim I and the son of Mehmet the conqueror, was in correspondence with the divines and the men of letters of Khorasan, including the poet Jami, and the Sunni doctor Farid-ad-Din Ahmad-i-Taftazani, the Shaykh-al-Islam of Herat who was put to death by Shah-Isma’il in A.D. 1510, for refusing to pay lip service to the Shia’ creed.

Toynbee shows that prior to the advent of Shah Isma’il the founder of Safavid dynasty, Iran was the real literary and cultural center through which the Saljuqs, Osmanlis, Transoxanians, and the Indian Muslims drew their inspiration and power.

In this vast area that Toynbee calls "Iranic World," the people had discarded Arabic in favor of Farsi as its secular literary vehicle.

The territories which were conquered from Orthodox Christendom by the Seljuqs and the Osmanlis were a kind of colonial extension of the Iranic World, and the representatives of the Iranic society in these partibus infidelim, like its representatives in Hindustan, depended for the maintenance of their culture upon a study flow of arts and ideas, and of immigrants to import them from the homelands of the Iranic civilization in Iran itself.

The last of these immigrant Kulture-Träger were the fugitive Timurid prince Badi-az-Zaman and the 700 families of indigenous skilled artisans whom the Ottoman Sultan Selim brought home with him from Tabriz in 1514.

At that point in time, there ensued a contest between Shah Ismai’l the Iranian King and the Ottoman Sultan Selim on the question of who should be the political and military leader of the Iranic society. Sultan Selim wanted to be the Caliph of Islam throughout the Islamic world. This was contrary to the wishes of Shah Isma’il who also had a similar plan in a different direction.

Shah Isma’il wished to reduce the religious dualism of the Islamic world to a unity by imposing the minority’s religion (i.e. Shi’ism) upon the majority of the Iranic Society by sheer military force; but this proved to be beyond his powers. As Toynbee puts it:

At the end of his career, as at the beginning both sects were still in being in the Iranic world side by side and although the Shi'ah had obtained a net numerical increase through the excess of Isma’il’s forcible conversions of Sunnis to Shi’ism over Selim’s forcible conversions of Shi’is to the Sunnah, the Shi’ah still remained in a minority on the whole.

The great change (a change for the worse) consisted first in the forcible sorting out and geographical segregation of the two sects by the violent means of massacre and deportation and compulsory conversion, while the second new feature was the fiery hatred between Sunnis and Shi’is which had flamed up on both sides owing to the introduction of these methods of barbarism.

This schism of the Iranic Society on the moral, religious as well as the political plane severed all the threads that had previously knit the Iranic Social fabric together and this sawing asunder took the life out of Iranic civilization and stopped its progress dead.

The Late Mirza Mohammed Khan Ghaznavi, the Iranian Scholar, in a letter addressed to Professor Edward Browne relates the main reason why the literature and poetry of Iran during the Safavid period sunk to a very low ebb:

The chief reason for this... seems to have been that these kings by reason of their political aims and strong antagonism to the Ottoman Empire, devoted the greater part of their energies to the propagation of the Shi’ah doctrine and the encouragement of divines learned in its principles and laws.

Now although these duties strove greatly to effect the religious unification of Persia (which resulted in its political unification), and laid the foundations of this present day Persia, whose inhabitants are, speaking generally, of one faith, one tongue and one race, yet on the other hand, from the point of view of literature, poetry and Sufi-ism and Mysticism and everything connected with the "Accomplishments" they not merely fell short in the promotion thereof but sought by every means to injure and annoy the representatives of these "Accomplishments" who were not too firmly established in the Religious Laws and its derivatives...

However, although this sudden impoverishment of culture in Iran played a part in dealing a deadly blow to the Iranic culture, the main reason for this sudden closure of the ancient channels of communication along which the vivifying streams of culture had been flowing into Anatolia from Iran, was due to the new frontiers that now were erected between the Shi’ah Iran and the Sunni Osmanlis whereby any exchange of ideas between the two parts of that society were completely stopped.

As nothing was there to replace the Iranian culture according to Professor Toynbee:

The Osmanlis lived a cultural life in death, until in our time, they have thrown off the remnants of their dead Iranic culture and have sought to adopt our Western culture, like a suit of ready-made clothes as a counsel of despair.

However, one should not forget that the Osmanlis did not completely broke their contact with Iranian literature. Jami’s works considerably influenced the Turkish literature for a century. In the 16th century the Indian Iranian poets Faizi or Urfi were recognized as ideals in Turkish poetry.

In the 17th century, Sa’eb Isfahani, influenced the Turkish poetry and later it was the turn of Shaukat to do the same. Of course, Sa’adi and Hafiz were also esteemed greatly. Then in 1879 Abdul Hag Hamid Bey and Shanasi Effendi made a break with the past and introduced the spirit and forms of Western literature into Turkey.

As Mr. Gibb observes:

there is found to be as profound a difference in form and spirit between a Turkish literary work of 1900 and that composed 50 years earlier as that between the works of Tennyson and Chaucer.

Sultan Salim used to compose Persian poetry and in his court Farsi (Persian) was used in profusion.

When Wilhelm II, German Kaiser, wished to touch the heart strings of Sultan Abdul-Hamid, the last Ottoman Emperor, he ordered the Diwan of Persian verses of Sultan Salim to be printed on the best paper in Berlin and offered it to him.

Up until the present Revolution in Turkey the study of Persian language was compulsory in all Turkish schools and most of the high dignitaries of Ottoman Court used to recite Persian verses of Hafiz and Sa’adi and other great poets of Iran and considered it as a sign of culture and refinement.

Most of the Ottoman Sultans including Sultan Abdul-Hamid used to consult Hafiz’s Divan prior to taking important decisions. Turks carried Iranian culture and literature to Europe. One notices many Farsi words in the vocabulary of many countries in Eastern Europe.

The Rumanians still today call an enemy dushman, curtain is pardeh, minced meat is Kufteh etc... We find the following slightly altered Persian words in Yugoslavian language, adigar, aferim, agush, aya, ayna, armagan, ashicare, avaz, bashca, bashowan, bazarjani, bazuvent, behar, behut.

In Egypt, Isma’il Pasha the father of Malik Fu’ad I, the King of Egypt, spoke Farsi and up to the advent of the last King Fu’ad of Egypt, Farsi was spoken by the kings and grandees who were of Turkish blood, because in order to speak Turkish well they had to study Farsi.

One can quite assuredly state that until the end of the 19th century Farsi was still a dominant language throughout Asia and, as we have already seen, until the middle of the last century Farsi was the official language of India.

Transoxania had depended almost as much as the Ottoman Empire upon the inflow of culture from Iran, and it suffered still more severely from the blocking of the channels and the drying-up of the springs; for at this moment Transoxania needed an additional cultural stimulus in order to leaven the barbarism of her Uzbeg conquerors who now sat on the thrones of the cultivated Timurids. When the stimulus, so far from being intensified, was removed altogether, the Iranic culture of Transoxania was doomed to decay.

Deserts in Persian Literature

By Mahin Tajadod

The Persian mystic tradition compares the spiritual quest to the crossing of desert valleys. Sufism enumerates seven of these valleys: quest, love, knowledge, detachment, unity, amazement and annihilation. The path is perilous. Asceticism to purify the soul; the disavowal of carnal passions; the renunciation of earthly desires--all these thorns wait on the mystic's path.

Gold, the possession of goods that flatter the eye and the heart and stir envy and desire--all the world's vanities--appear as mirages in the path of the thirsty voyager.

Every caravan needs a guide to cross the desert; no-one would be so foolish as to venture across the sandy wastes without someone to lead them. Similarly, the Iranian mystic tradition requires seekers after truth to seek the help of pirs, masters who can show them the way. No disciple would risk setting out on the path of devotion without the help of an initiator to instruct him and pass on the necessary knowledge. Like a caravan-leader who holds a camel by the reins to steer the beast and its rider through dangerous passages, the spiritual master takes in hand the chain of the proselyte's instruction.

Attar, the great twelfth-century Persian poet, describes in The Conference of the Birds a journey these creatures make when they decide one day to set off in search of their king. Guided by the hoopoe, a bird rich in mythological associations that was Solomon's companion and that knows how to avoid mirages and espy waterholes from afar, they set off for the mountain called Qaf, home of the Simurgh, ruler of the birds. Many of the travellers cannot stand the heat, the hunger and thirst and, fearing the unknown, prefer to return to pleasanter lands. Others have the courage to endure the journey and its perils. For want of food, water and shade many die en route. Only thirty birds--in Persian, si-murgh--reach their goal, flying over Qaf and meeting the object of their quest in a mystic communion.

"And so those thirty birds contemplated the face of Simurgh in the reflection of their own faces.... They saw that it was truly the Simurgh, and if they turned their regard on themselves, they saw that they were the Simurgh too. Finally, looking one way then the other, they realized that they and the Simurgh were in reality one."

Ogres and fairies
In Persian legends and poetic epics, the desert is also the land of ogres, genies and fairies. In his Incantation of the Simurgh, the twelfth-century Iranian philosopher Suhravardi explains how to avoid the ogres known as doual-pa that leaped onto travellers' shoulders and would not come down until they had strangled them with their legs. "As the traveller passes, the doual-pa suddenly throws out its legs and grips him around the throat, so hindering his progress that he can no longer find the Water of Life. But I have heard it said that a man can be delivered if he goes aboard Noah's Ark and takes in his hand the staff of Moses."

The genies known as djinn also inhabit the desert: they can be recognized by the clogs they wear, and they are less dangerous than ogres or demons. Peris, fairylike creatures who are the personification of beauty and grace, only appear after nightfall. The story goes that Nasir ad-Din Shah, who ruled Persia from 1848 to 1896, used to dress carefully every evening, then set off on his favourite horse to the desert to meet the most beautiful of these fairies.

Whether the flesh is forgotten or the mind becomes doubly sensitive to its prickings, whether the spirit grows drowsy or gains in lucidity, the desert is first and foremost a mirror in which one can see the world and maybe also glimpse the face of God. The only certainty is that sooner or later you will see yourself.

A Mythological Glance at Demons in Ancient Iranian Literature

by Mansour Yaqouti

Ferdowsi says:
You consider demon to mean bad people;
Those who are not grateful to God
Anyone who has disregard for human manners;
You should consider him a demon and not human;

The Book of Kings (Shahnameh) has it that during the rule of the legendary king of Persian, Jamshid, demons worked as engineers and architects to build bathhouses, bridges and houses. As one can understand from Firdawsi's poems, demons were like humans or those with different, heretical religious beliefs. Probably they were polytheists and had remained faithful to the religion of their ancestors. Therefore, they were probably people who were backward in terms of civilization. They were hunters who lived in caves or were nomads and spent most of their lives in the mountains. Can't we take caves as symbol of black tents at those times?

Demons, according to the following verses, were people who insisted on the lifestyle of their ancestors and could not adapt to the new way of living in villages, agriculture and building houses. What is the meaning of 'Anyone who has disregard for human manners'? Certainly, demons were people with their own specific lifestyle and beliefs. The living place of demons could be determined on the basis of Book of Kings and ancient Iranian myths.

The White Demon (Div Sepid) is one of the most renowned demons who lived at a cave in Mazandaran. Based on the most ancient of Iranian myths, demons lived either deep inside the caves or on high mountains and deserted castles. I the myth 'Gol-e Khandan (smiling flower)' the demon that steals Gol-e Khandan keeps her at a deserted castle. In another myth 'Namadineh', Namadineh who is a young and beautiful girl goes a long way to look for some wool. She ends up at a cave, in which a demon lives. Namadineh was a village girl and demon lived at a cave and had not seen a human for years. He treats, Namadineh, who is a kind and humane girl, appropriately and enchants her, so that, whenever she laughs a bouquet would fall out of her mouth and a small sun shines on her brow while planting a small moon on her chin. However, when another ignorant and spoiled girl happens to go to the same cave and disdain the demon, he revenges on her. When the Aryans chose to settle in the lush plain of Iran, the original inhabitant were living in mountains and at cave, covering their bodies with animal hides and, perhaps, putting caps made of the skull of bulls on their heads. Most probably, when confronting those people, Aryans who were relatively more civilized and were familiar with urbanism and agriculture had fought with them.

In another ancient tale, there is a special apple tree at a king's palace, which bears three red, fragrant and big apples every year. The apples are being stolen away and the king asks his three sons to keep watch beside the tree. At last, the younger son injures the thieve and when he tracks the blood, he reaches a cave where a demon lives. The demon had been keeping three young girls there because they were not willing to marry him.

In most tales, the home of demons is a cave and the common clue in these tales is that the demon steals a girl and takes her to the cave asking her to marry him.

Usually, no girl agreed to the marriage and no demon marries the girl by force. Perhaps, symbolically it meant that people living in mountains were willing to have contacts with people living in villages and the reason for girls not agreeing to marry demons was that the latter had no plan to desist the lifestyle of their ancestors.

People who were known demons did not worship the Almighty God and, perhaps worshipped many gods like Anahita, the goddess of rain and plantations; Va the goddess of wind; and Mehr or Mitra, the goddess of light, war and pact.

Before Zoroaster, Iranian people believed in many gods. There has been no paganism in Iran, Mitra and Anahita and other gods and goddesses were supernatural creatures that were demoted to second-degree deities in the religion of Zoroaster.

However, the human culture and believes are deep-rooted and they cannot be simply changed during several centuries. The struggle between new and old is a perennial fights; the old is turned new and new is turned old. Demon is symbol of violence in Persian myths. He has a heinous appearance and resorts to force to attain his goals. He comes out of the blues and steals the bride, which is a symbol for beauty and fertility. The demons were not sophisticated and were easily duped. In many myths they were easily tricked by urban people, who were symbolized by princes. Even the villagers deceived them. An old tale has it that a number of demons lived in an old castle. An old woman with his wise son and another insane son succeed to make them skedaddle away with the help of a turtle and the sound of a drum beaten by tail of a donkey. In some stories, including that of Akvan the Demon, he flies into the skies. This has posed a riddle; does flying means scaling up high mountains? Or reaching deserted caves that were well-nigh inaccessible to city dwellers?

In most fables, the life bottle of the demon is in the brain of a wild goat and the demon dies the moment that goat is killed. Has this anything to do with symbolizing the lives of demons in mountains and its close relationship with hunting? Note that we have seen many engravings of wild goats in seals, pins and daggers belonging to the brass age.

Dialogue is the prerequisite of urban life. Whenever a group of people live together, they have to talk to each other in order to overcome problems.

Violence, however, stems from nomadic lifestyle. Iran's geography is intertwined with high mountains, deserts and forests. Perhaps man and demons represented contrasting features of Iranian nature.

There is a tale among Kurds called 'Sabz-e Qaba' (green-cloaked) according to which an old farmer comes across a talking turtle in his farm. He takes it to his home. One day the turtle asked the farmer's wife to suit the king's daughter for him. The women declines first, but finally goes to the palace and the king accepts her request provided that the turtle would build a palace for his daughter by the next day whose bricks would be alternately gold and silver and birds cover the sky over it in such a manner that the sun's light would not touch the princess. Next day, the palace is there to the amazement of all people and bird cover the sky above it.

The princess marries the turtle. On the marriage day, a handsome boy comes out of the turtle's shell. One day, the princess takes the shell and burns it down in the absence of her husband. Her husband goes away in anger and tells her, "If you want to find me, you have to wear out seven pairs of iron shoes and iron sticks." She finally finds him and discovers that he is the son of a female demon who becomes angry at the princess and covers the whole earth with feathers telling the princess to sweep the ground overnight. Her son helps the princess and the demon who is at her wit's end accepts the princess as her daughter-in-law.

This tale indicates another stage of human life. The son of the demon represents the young generation that has discarded old notions and married the princess. Her father does not agree to their marriage and proposes an impossible condition: building a palace of gold and silver bricks. The young man does it, but still sticks to his shell, which symbolizes old traditions. The princess takes a bold action and burns the shell. In reaction, the young man goes back to his mother, who shelters him. The demon's efforts for keeping the old traditions are in vain. The shell has been burned and the new generation that has emerged from the old relations is seeking a totally different situation.

:link source: http://www.iranchamber.com/literature/articles/demons_ancient_iranian_literature.php

A Brief History of Persian Literature

The Persian Language
The Old Persian of the Achaemenian Empire, preserved in a number of cuneiform inscriptions, was an Indo-European tongue with close affinities with Sanskrit and Avestan (the language of the Zoroastrian sacred texts). After the fall of the Achaemenians the ancient tongue developed, in the province of Pars, into Middle Persian or Pahlavi (a name derived from Parthavi - that is, Parthian). Pahlavi was used throughout the Sassanian period, though little now remains of what must once have been a considerable literature. About a hundred Pahlavi texts survive, mostly on religion and all in prose. Pahlavi collections of romances, however, provided much of the material for Ferdowsi's Shahnameh.

After the Arab conquest a knowledge of Arabic became necessary, for it was not only the language of the new rulers and their state, but of the religion they brought with them and -later- of the new learning. Though Pahlavi continued to be spoken in private life, Arabic was dominant in official circles for a century and a half. With the weakening of the central power, a modified form of Pahlavi emerged, with its Indo-European grammatical structure intact but simplified, and with a large infusion of Arabic words. This was the Modem Persian in use today.

Arabic continued to be employed in Iran, though on a decreasing scale, as Latin was used in Europe -that is, as a language of the learned. As such it was employed by Abu Ali Sina (Avicenna), al-Biruni, Rhazes, Al Ghazali and others; indeed, many of the most famous names in Arabic literature are those of men of Persian birth. But in general the use of Arabic declined; Persian developed rapidly to become the vehicle of a great literature, and before, long spread its influence to neighboring lands. In India, Persian language and poetry became the vogue with the ruling classes, and at the court of the Moghul emperor Akbar Persian was adopted as the official language; spreading thence and fusing later with Hindi, it gave rise to the Urdu tongue.

To the west of Iran, Persian heavily influenced the language and literature of Turkey; Turkish verse was based on Persian models as regards form and style, and borrowed an extensive vocabulary.

A notable feature of Persian is the small extent to which it has changed over the thousand years or more of its existence as a literary language. Thus the poems of Roudaki, the first Persian poet of note, who died in the year 941 CE, are perfectly intelligible to the modem reader. Persian literature too has a number of noteworthy characteristics, the most striking of which is the exceptional prominence of poetry. Until quite recently there was practically no drama, and no novels were written; prose works were mostly confined to history, geography, philosophy, religion, ethics and politics, and it was poetry that formed the chief outlet for artistic expression. Classical Persian literature was produced almost entirely under royal patronage whence the frequency of panegyric verse. An influence of at least equal strength was religion, and in particular Sufism, which inspired the remarkably high proportion of mystical poetry.

Persian Poetry
Classical Persian poetry is always rhymed. The principal verse forms are the Qasideh, Masnavi, Qazal and Ruba'i. The qasida or ode is a long poem in monorhyme, usually of a panegyric, didactic or religious nature; the masnavi, written in rhyming couplets, is employed for heroic, romantic, or narrative verse; the ghazal (ode or lyric) is a comparatively short poem, usually amorous or mystical and varying from four to sixteen couplets, all on one rhyme. A convention of the ghazal is the introduction, in the last couplet, of the poet's pen name (takhallus). The ruba'i is a quatrain with a particular metre, and a collection of quatrains is called "Ruba'iyyat" (the plural of ruba'i). Finally, a collection of a poet's ghazals and other verse, arranged alphabetically according to the rhymes, is known as a divan.

A word may not be out of place here on the peculiar difficulties of interpreting Persian poetry to the western reader. To the pitfalls common to all translations from verse must be added, in the case of Persian poetry, such special difficulties as the very free use of Sufi imagery, the frequent literary, Koranic and other references and allusions, and the general employment of monorhyme, a form highly effective in Persian but unsuited to most other languages. But most important of all is the fact that the poetry of Persia depends to a greater degree than that of most other nations on beauty of language for its effects. This is why much of the great volume of "qasidas in praise of princes" can still be read with pleasure in the original, though It is largely unsuited to translation. In short, the greatest charm of Persian poetry lies, as Sir E. Denison Ross remarked, in its language and its music, and consequently the reader of a translation "has perforce to forego the essence of the matter".

In the following brief sketch of the vast field of Persian literature we cannot hope to do more than mention a few of the most eminent authors, and to devote a paragraph or two each to the most famous of all.

Early Literature
Though existing fragments of Persian verse are believed to date from as early as the eighth century CE, the history of Persian literature proper begins with the lesser dynasties of the ninth and tenth centuries that emerged with the decline of the Caliphate. The most important of these were the Samanids, who established at Bokhara the first of many brilliant courts that were to patronize learning and letters. Here Abu Ali Sina, better known in the west as Avicenna, developed the medicine and philosophy of ancient Greece, and wrote numerous works that were to exercise considerable influence not only in the East but in Europe -where, translated into Latin, they were in use as late as the seventeenth century. Avicenna wrote mostly in Arabic, but composed an encyclopaedia -- the Danish Nameh-ye Ala'i - in Persian.

The most famous of the court poets were Rudaki and Daqiqi. Rudaki, generally regarded as the first of the great Persian poets, wrote a very large quantity of verse, of which but little has survived. His style direct, simple and unadorned - was to appear unpolished to some of the over-elaborate versifiers of later ages, but appeals more to modem tastes. Daqiqi, a composer of epics, was commissioned to write a work on the ancient kings of Persia, but only completed a thousand couplets before his death. Some of these were later incorporated in the celebrated Shahnameh.

The Ghaznavid and early Seljuq Periods
It is said that four hundred poets were attached to the court of Sultan Mahmoud; of these, the most notable were Unsuri, the greatest of Mahmoud's panegyrists, followed by Farrukhi, Manouchehri and Asadi. Of the prose writers, the most celebrated was Biruni, author of the "Chronology of Ancient Nations", who wrote exclusively in Arabic.

The Seljuq era, regarded as the second classical period of Persian literature, is one rich both in prose and poetry. Famous prose works include Ghazali's influential Revivification of the Religious Sciences in Arabic and its Persian summary entitled Kimiya-ye Sa'adat (The Alchemy of Happiness); Baihaqi's History of the Ghaznavids: the Siasat Nameh, a treatise on the art of government by Nizam ul-Mulk, vizier to Alp Arslan and Malik Shah; the entertaining Qabus Nameh of Kai Kawous, translated by Professor Levy as "A Mirror for Princes"; the collection of animal fables of Indian origin entitled Kalila va Dimna by Nasr Ullah; the charming Chahar Maqala or Four Discourses of Nizami Aruzi; the Fars Nameh of Ibn al-Balkhi, and the noted treatise on poetics of Rashid-i Vatvat. Four of the above works - the Chahar Maqala, the History of Baihaqi, the Qabus Nameh and the Siasat Nameh - are considered by the poet Bahar as the four great masterpieces of early Persian prose.

A number of authors of this period wrote both prose and poetry. One of the most brilliant of these was Nasir-i Khosrow, writer of some fifteen works in prose and 30,000 verses, of which less than half have survived. His best known prose work is the Safar Nameh, an account of his journey to Egypt. Most of Nasir-i Khosrow's poems are lengthy odes, mainly on religious and ethical subjects; they are noted for their purity of language and dazzling technical skill. In the opinion of the scholar Mirza Mohammad Qazvini, the name of Naser Khosrow should be added to those of the six poets - Ferdowsi, Khayyam, Anvari, Rumi, Saadi, and Hafez - whom "practically all" agree to consider the six greatest Persian poets, each in his special field. Other famous poetry of the period includes the work of the mystics Ansari, Abu Sa'id and Baba Taher of Hamadan; the odes of Qatran; Gorgani's romantic epic Vis o Ramin, and the Divans of the two Indian-born poets Masoud-e Saad-e Salman and Rumi. Seven other poets of the period are of outstanding fame and brilliance; these are Khayyam, Sana'i, Moezzi, Anvari, Khaqani, Nizami and Attar.

The versatile Khayyam - "the only man known to me", says Bertrand Russell, "who was both a poet and a mathematician" - is still perhaps the best known and most appreciated Persian poet in Europe and America. There was for long considerable scepticism as to whether he was in fact the author of all or any of the quatrains attributed to him, but the discovery recently of manuscripts more ancient than any of those previously known has removed these doubts.

Khayyam's poetry was largely neglected in Iran until the end of the nineteenth century, mainly no doubt owing to the censure of orthodoxy. When Fitzgerald's translation made him suddenly popular in the west the Iranians began to reassess his merits as a poet, and as we have seen, some native critics are now ready to accord him a place in the poetic Pantheon. Since he uses imagery common to the Sufis, Khayyam has often been hailed as a Sufi himself; but while some of his quatrains can be made to bear a mystical interpretation, the general impression of his work is one of hedonism tinged with a gentle melancholy, born of acceptance of the tragic transience of life, the power of destiny and man's ultimate ignorance. The attitude is that of a materialist rather than a deist; indeed, he has with some justice been compared to Lucretius.

Sana'i, who wrote in a style similar to that of Nasir-i Khosrow, was the author of two great Sufi epics, the prototypes of the later masterpieces of Attar and Rumi, as well as of a huge divan. Mu'izzi, hailed by 'Abbas Ighbal as "one of the artistic virtuosi of the Persian language", wrote mainly panegyric verse in a highly elaborate style. Anvari, author of numerous poetical works, mostly panegyric, wrote in a difficult style, sometimes requiring a commentary; he is regarded by some as one of the greatest Persian poets. The poetry of Khaqani is even more mannered. The last three poets mentioned - Mu'izzi, Anvari and Khaqani - are all famous in Iran, mainly for their technical brilliance; but, being particularly difficult to translate, they are less appreciated in the west. This is not the case with the next two poets to be mentioned.

Nizami, born at Ganja in the Caucasus in 1140, was a prolific writer famous especially for his Khamseh or Quintet, a series of five great romances and epics. These consist of the Makhzan al-Asrar or Treasure House of Secrets, a mystical epic inspired by Sana'i; the popular romances Khosrow o Shirin and Laila o Majnun; the Iskandar Nameh or Story of Alexander, and the Haft Paikar, the life story of Bahram Gur. Nizami's style is original and, colorful; his works enjoyed great popularity, and episodes from his romantic poems were favorite subjects for miniature painters.

Farid od-Din Attar, who was born possibly around 1136, was a great and an original poet who produced numerous religious and didactic works. He was essentially a mystic, and as such exercised a great influence on Rumi. The best known of his works, the Mantiq ut-Tair (translated by Fitzgerald as the Bird Parliament), is a mystical allegory in which the birds all set off in search of the mythical Simorgh, whom they wish to make their king. The story, which symbolizes the quest of the soul for union with God, ends with their discovery that they have no existence separate from the object of their search.

The Simorgh then addresses them thus:

Pilgrim, pilgrimage and road
Was but myself toward myself, and your
Arrival but myself at my own Door...
Come, you lost atoms, to your center draw
And be the eternal mirror that you saw:
Rays that have wandered into darkness wide
Return, and back into your sun subside.


The Thirteenth Century as a New Chapter
The Thirteenth century produced two poetic geniuses of the first rank, Saadi and Rumi. It is also particularly notable for histories, of which many were inspired by these singularly troubled times. Hamdullah Mostofi produced notable works both of history and geography, as well as an epic, the Zafar Nameh or Book of Victory, in 75,000 couplets, and Nasir ud-Din Tusi wrote on philosophy and logic. Three notable poets of the period are Iraqi, author of the mystical Lama'at or Flashes; Amir Khosrow, known as "The Parrot of India" and author of no less than five divans, and Zakani the satirist.

Foremost in the ranks of historical works are Juvaini's Tarikh-e Jahan Gusha, an account of the Mongol conquests; the history of Juzjani, an important source book for the history of Moslem India; Rashid ud-Din's great Jame ot-Tawarikh or Universal History, and the History of Vassaf. The style of the period tended to over-ornateness; Juvaini, according to Arberry, was "the most accomplished exponent of the prized art of verbal arabesque", while Vassaf "modeled his style on Juvaini at his most intricate and verbose." Of the writings of this school Levy remarks that it was "so filled with metaphor, allusion, and assonance, that the meaning was often lost in a tangle of verbiage". By contrast, the work of the conscientious Rashid ud-Din, considered by Browne to be the best of all the Persian historians, is a model of clarity.

The Fifteenth Century onwards
The fifteenth century produced a number of notable historians -Nizam od-Din Shami, author of the Zafar Nameh (a history of Timur); Yazdi, who wrote a work of the same name; Hafiz-e Abru, Khafi, Dowlatshah and Mir Khand, author of the immense Rozat as-Safa or Garden of Purity. Other prose writers of note , include Davvani, author of the Akhlaq-e Jalali, and Kashefi, who produced an elaborate prose paraphrase of Kalila va Dimna known as Anvar-e Suhaili (The Lights of Canopus). Fifteenth century poets include the Sufis Maghribi and Qasim-e Anvar, Katibi, the saintly Ni'mat Allah Vali, and Jami.

Jami, "universally regarded as the last eminent figure in the history of classical Persian literature" (Arberry) was born in 1414. A man of considerable erudition as well as of poetic genius, Jami produced some forty-five works, of which the best known are the Baharistan, the Divan, and the Haft Aurang or Seven Thrones, a series of four didactic works and three romances (Salaman o Absal, Yosef o Zoleikha and Laila o Majnoun) which he intended to rival the work of Nizami.

After Jami, who died shortly before the rise of the Safavis, Persian poetry is generally considered to have fallen into decline. There were indeed no poets of the very first rank after the fifteenth century, yet in this long period there was no lack of writers and poets of talent, some of them of great eminence.

Of the poets immediately following Jami, his nephew Hatif was a noted writer of romantic and historical epics; also famous were his pupils Asafi, Fighani (who earned himself the title of "The Little Hafiz"), Ahli and the Sufi poet Hilali. Later in the sixteenth century came the poets Hayrati, Kasimi, Kashi the panegyrist, Shani, Fasihi and Shafai.

Saeb (born 1677), the greatest literary figure of the seventeenth century, is considered by some to be the best Persian poet after Jami. In early life he spent some time in India as court poet to the Moghul emperor Shah Jahan, and returned to Iran to become poet laureate to Shah Abbas II. Saeb was a vivid and original poet who infused fresh life into the old forms and founded a new school. Also of note was his contemporary Fayyaz. A famous prose writer of the eighteenth century was Azar, author of the Atesh Kadeh (a biographical dictionary containing the lives of over 800 poets) as well as of a divan and a romantic epic. The prolific writer Hazin produced histories and an autobiography, as well as four divans. Also worthy of note is the poet Nejat.

In the nineteenth century Saba, poet laureate to Fath Ali Shah, composed a divan and an epic called the Shahanshahnameh; as a poet he was excelled by Neshat, also author of a divan. Qaani (died 1853), the best writer of the nineteenth century and perhaps the most outstanding since Jami, was one of Iran's most brilliant and melodious poets. Well-known prose works of the period include Nasir ud-Din Shah's diaries of his three journeys to Europe and the literary biographies of the poet Reza Quli Khan. This period was marked by the increasing influence of European literature, noticeable in the works of the poet Shaybani and others.

The real revival of Persian letters came in the early twentieth century, when the growing desire for reform inspired numerous satires. One of the most outstanding figures of this period was Iraj Mirza (died 1926), a poet of great talent and champion of the emancipation of women. Other noted poets were Adib, Bahar, Lahuti, Shahryar, Aref and the poetess Parvin E'tesami. Poets of more recent decades include Nima Yoshij, Ra'di, Khanlari, Islami, Gulchin, Ahmad Shamlou, Mehdi Akhavan Sales, Mas'ud Farzad, Sohrab Sepehri, Fereidoon Moshiri and the poetess Forough Farrokhzad. Some of these poets have introduced verse forms new to Persian literature. Here should not be forgotten the great works of Sadeq Hedayat, Samad Behrangi, Sadeq Choubak and many others who enriched the persian literature.

:;link source: http://www.iranchamber.com/literature/articles/history_literature.php