Singing Moses’s Song

Keith A. Stone | 28 December 2018

Erin and Iran

In Erin and Iran, ten essays by North American and European scholars discuss parallel themes in and interactions between Irish and Iranian cultures. In the first section three essays explore common elements in pre-Christian Irish and pre-Islamic Iranian mythologies, common elements that have often been pointed out by scholars of Indo-European mythology but rarely examined in detail. In the following section four essays address literary subjects, ranging from medieval romances such… Read more

Global Medieval

Global Medieval: Mirrors for Princes Reconsidered begins with a question: Is a genuine history of political thought in the premodern period possible? The volume brings together mirrors for princes from a variety of historical contexts and lineages of political thought, each with its own international cast of characters and varied modes of advice, sanctified by claims of distant and often alien origins. Placed in a comparative structure, these texts become a… Read more

Mirror of Dew

Mirror of Dew introduces one of Iran’s outstanding female poets, whose work has not previously been available in English. Zhāle Qā’em-Maqāmi (1883–1946) was a witness to pivotal social and political developments in Iran during its transition to modernity. Persian poetry at that time was often used polemically and didactically, for a mass audience, but Zhāle did not write to be published. The poems, like the mirror, samovar, and other familiar objects… Read more

Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāma

Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāma: Millennial Perspectives celebrates the ongoing reception, over the last thousand years, of a masterpiece of classical Persian poetry. The epic of the Shāhnāma or Book of Kings glorifies the spectacular achievements of Iranian civilization from its mythologized beginnings all the way to the historical time of the Arab Conquest, when the notionally unbroken sequence of Iranian shāscame to an end. The poet Hakim Abu’l-Qāsim, who composed this epic, was renamed Ferdowsi or “the man of Paradise”… Read more

Comparative Literature and Classical Persian Poetics

Comparative Literature and Classical Persian Poetics applies comparative literary approaches to classical Persian traditions of composing and performing poetry and song. Olga M. Davidson focuses on epic, especially the classical epic Shahnama, composed in the early eleventh century CE by the poet Ferdowsi, and on the relationship of this epic to other genres that are found embedded in it. Included among these other genres are forms of verbal art that were originally composed without… Read more

Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings

Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings presents a far-reaching reassessment of the classical Persian epic known as the Shahnama or “Book of Kings,” composed by the poet Ferdowsi in the early eleventh century CE. Combining comparative perspectives with a close reading of the internal evidence provided by the text of this epic, Olga M. Davidson argues that the poet of the Shahnama is actually a character in the epic, coexisting with ancient Iranian heroes… Read more

On the Wonders of Land and Sea

On the Wonders of Land and Sea: Persianate Travel Writing initiates a comparative study of non-European travel writers in the eastern Islamic or Persianate world from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. The essays in this volume discuss travel narratives by male and female Muslim and Parsi/Zoroastrian travelers in the Hijaz, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Europe. Focusing on the literary and linguistic aspects of the travelogues, the essays… Read more

Heroic Kṛṣṇa

Heroic Krsna is a portrait of a pre-Hindu and pre-classical figure of a superhuman hero who in time became the divinity Krsna, an incarnation of Visnu. This is a picture, drawn from the epic Mahābhārata, of an archaic warrior who excelled as a charioteer; in fact this is the best depiction that we presently possess in any epic corpus of a charioteer type. Krsna is also described in his role of moral instructor,… Read more

Ruse and Wit

The essays in Ruse and Wit examine in detail a wide range of texts (from nonsensical prose, to ribald poetry, titillating anecdotes, edifying plays, and journalistic satire) that span the best part of a millennium of humorous and satirical writing in the Islamic world, from classical Arabic to medieval and modern Persian, and Ottoman Turkish (and by extension Modern Greek). While acknowledging significant elements of continuity in the humorous across distinct languages,… Read more