Shahnameh of Ferdowsi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the epic poem the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, the ‘Book of Kings’, which has been at the heart of Persian culture for the past thousand years. The poem recounts a legendary history of Iran from the dawn of time to the fall of the Persian Empire in the 7th century and serves, in a sense, as a creation myth for the Persian nation. The Shahnameh took Ferdowsi thirty years to write and, consisting of over 50,000 verses, is said to be the longest poem ever written by a single author. Laced with tragedy, Ferdowsi’s epic chronicles battles, romances, family rifts and Man’s interior struggle with himself. Although the stories may not always be true they have a profound resonance with Iranians even today, and the poem has been referred to as both the ‘encyclopaedia of Iranian culture’ and the identity card of the Persian people.
Guests
-
Narguess Farzad No other episodes
Senior Fellow in Persian at SOAS, University of London - Charles Melville
2 episodes
Professor of Persian History at Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge - Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis
4 episodes
Curator of Middle Eastern Coins at the British Museum
Reading list
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The Persian Book of Kings: Ibrahim Sultan's Shahnama
Firuza Abdullaeva and Charles Melville (Bodleian Library, 2008) Google Books → -
Epic of the Persian Kings: The Art of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh
Barbara Brend and Charles Melville (eds.) (I.B.Tauris, 2010) Google Books → -
Muhammad Juki's Shahnamah of Firdausi
Barbara Brend (Philip Wilson, 2010) Google Books → -
Epic and Sedition: The Case of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh
Dick Davis (University of Arkansas Press, 1992) Google Books → -
Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings
Ferdowsi (author), Dick Davis (trans.) (Penguin Classics, 2007) Google Books → -
The Epic of the Kings
Ferdowsi (author), Reuben Levy (trans.) (London, 1967 and reprints) Google Books → -
Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings
Elizabeth Laird (Frances Lincoln, 2012) Google Books → -
The Persian Book of Kings: An Epitome of the Shahnama of Firdawsi
B. W. Robinson (Routledge, 2002) Google Books → -
Persian Myths
Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis (British Museum Press, 1993) Google Books → -
The Idea of Iran
Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart (eds) (I.B.Tauris, four volumes published between 2005-2009) -
Ferdowsi: A Critical Biography
A. Shapur Shahbazi (Harvard University Press, 1991) Google Books →
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Programme ID: b01p7dcv
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p7dcv
Auto-category: 891.5511 (Persian literature)