Persian literaturePersian literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Persian language and is one of the world's oldest literatures. It spans over two-and-a-half millennia. Its sources have been within Greater Iran including present-day Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and Turkey, regions of Central Asia (such as Tajikistan), South Asia and the Balkans where the Persian language has historically been either the native or official language.
Sasanian EmpireThe Sasanian Empire (səˈsɑːniən,_səˈseɪniən), officially known as Eranshahr ("Land/Empire of the Iranians"), was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th–8th centuries AD. Named after the House of Sasan, it endured for over four centuries, from 224 to 651 AD, making it the longest-lived Persian imperial dynasty. The Sasanian Empire succeeded the Parthian Empire, and re-established the Persians as a major power in late antiquity alongside its neighbouring arch-rival, the Roman Empire (after 395 the Byzantine Empire).
Samanid EmpireThe Samanid Empire (Sāmāniyān), also known as the Samanian Empire, Samanid dynasty, Samanid amirate, or simply as the Samanids, was a Persianate Sunni Muslim empire, of Iranian dehqan origin. The empire was centred in Khorasan and Transoxiana; at its greatest extent encompassing Persia and Central Asia, from 819 to 999. Four brothers—Nuh, Ahmad, Yahya, and Ilyas—founded the Samanid state. Each of them ruled territories under Abbasid suzerainty.
ShahnamehThe Shahnameh (Šāhnāme, ʃɒːhnɒːˈme), also transliterated Shahnama, is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 "distichs" or couplets (two-line verses), the Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems. It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century.
Middle PersianMiddle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg (𐭯𐭠𐭫𐭮𐭩𐭪) in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Persian continued to function as a prestige language. It descended from Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid Empire and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian, an official language of Iran, Afghanistan (Dari) and Tajikistan (Tajik).
HafezKhwāje Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī (خواجه شمسالدین محمد حافظ شیرازی), known by his pen name Hafez (حافظ, Ḥāfeẓ, 'the memorizer; the (safe) keeper'; 1325–1390) or Hafiz, was a Persian lyric poet whose collected works are regarded by many Iranians as one of the highest pinnacles of Persian literature. His works are often found in the homes of Persian speakers, who learn his poems by heart and use them as everyday proverbs and sayings.
DariDari (ˈdɑːri,_ˈdæ-; endonym: دری d̪ɐˈɾiː), also known as Dari Persian (Dari: فارسی دری, , fʌːɾˈsiːjɪ d̪ɐˈɾiː or , fʌːɾˈsiːjɛ d̪ɐˈɾiː), is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the term officially recognised and promoted since 1964 by the Afghan government for the Persian language; it is known as Afghan Persian or Eastern Persian in many Western sources. As Professor Nile Green remarks, "the impulses behind renaming of Afghan Persian as Dari were more nationalistic than linguistic" in order to create an Afghan state narrative.
GhaznavidsThe Ghaznavid dynasty (غزنویان Ġaznaviyān) or the Ghaznavid Empire was a Persianate Muslim dynasty and empire of Turkic mamluk origin, ruling at its greatest extent, large parts of Persia, Khorasan, much of Transoxiana and the northwest Indian subcontinent from 977 to 1186. The dynasty was founded by Sabuktigin upon his succession to the rule of Ghazna after the death of his father-in-law, Alp Tigin, who was an ex-general of the Samanid Empire from Balkh, north of the Hindu Kush in Greater Khorasan.
Tajik languageTajik, also called Tajiki Persian or Tajiki, is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by Tajiks. It is closely related to neighbouring Dari of Afghanistan with which it forms a continuum of mutually intelligible varieties of the Persian language. Several scholars consider Tajik as a dialectal variety of Persian rather than a language on its own.
Persian alphabetThe Persian alphabet (Alefbâye Fârsi), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic alphabet with four additional letters added: پ چ ژ گ. It was the basis of many Arabic-based scripts used in Central and South Asia. It is used for the Iranian and Dari standard varieties of Persian; and is one of two official writing systems for the Persian language, alongside the Cyrillic-based Tajik alphabet.
