1.
Persian art
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This article covers the art of Persia up to 1925, the end of the Qajar dynasty, for later art see Iranian modern and contemporary art, and for traditional crafts see arts of Iran. Iranian architecture is covered at that article, the courts of successive dynasties have generally led the style of Persian art, and court-sponsored art has left many of the most impressive survivals. In ancient times the surviving monuments of Persian art are notable for a tradition concentrating on the human figure, Persian art continued to place larger emphasis on figures than Islamic art from other areas, though for religious reasons now generally avoiding large examples, especially in sculpture. Under the Safavid dynasty in the 16th century this style was used across a variety of media. Evidence of a civilization around Susa has been dated to c 5000 BCE. Susa was firmly within the Sumerian Uruk cultural sphere during the Uruk period, an imitation of the entire state apparatus of Uruk, proto-writing, cylinder seals with Sumerian motifs, and monumental architecture, is found at Susa. Susa may have been a colony of Uruk, as such, the periodization of Susa corresponds to Uruk, Early, Middle and Late Susa II periods correspond to Early, Middle, and Late Uruk periods. Shortly after Susa was first settled 6000 years ago, its inhabitants erected a temple on a platform that rose over the flat surrounding landscape. The exceptional nature of the site is still today in the artistry of the ceramic vessels that were placed as offerings in a thousand or more graves near the base of the temple platform. Nearly two thousand pots were recovered from the cemetery most of now in the Louvre. The vessels found are eloquent testimony to the artistic and technical achievements of their makers, painted ceramic vessels from Susa in the earliest first style are a late, regional version of the Mesopotamian Ubaid ceramic tradition that spread across the Near East during the fifth millennium B. C. Susa I style was much a product of the past. Ceramics of these shapes, which were painted, constitute a large proportion of the vessels from the cemetery. Others are course cooking-type jars and bowls with simple bands painted on them and were probably the grave goods of the sites of humbler citizens as well as adolescents and, perhaps, the pottery is carefully made by hand. Although a slow wheel may have employed, the asymmetry of the vessels. Elamite art, from the south and west of modern Iran shared many characteristics with the art of Mesopotamia. Cylinder seals, small figures of worshippers, gods and animals, shallow reliefs, there are a small number of very fine gold vessels with relief figures. Luristan bronzes are small cast objects decorated with sculptures from the Early Iron Age which have been found in large numbers in Lorestān Province
2.
Visual arts
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The visual arts are art forms such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, photography, video, filmmaking, literature, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines involve aspects of the arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the arts are the applied arts such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design. Current usage of the visual arts includes fine art as well as the applied, decorative arts and crafts. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts. The increasing tendency to painting, and to a lesser degree sculpture. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes, training in the visual arts has generally been through variations of the apprentice and workshop systems. Visual arts have now become a subject in most education systems. Drawing is a means of making an image, using any of a variety of tools. Digital tools that simulate the effects of these are also used, the main techniques used in drawing are, line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. An artist who excels in drawing is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman, drawing goes back at least 16,000 years to Paleolithic cave representations of animals such as those at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. In ancient Egypt, ink drawings on papyrus, often depicting people, were used as models for painting or sculpture, drawings on Greek vases, initially geometric, later developed to the human form with black-figure pottery during the 7th century BC. Painting taken literally is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier, like drawing, painting has its documented origins in caves and on rock faces. The finest examples, believed by some to be 32,000 years old, are in the Chauvet, in shades of red, brown, yellow and black, the paintings on the walls and ceilings are of bison, cattle, horses and deer. Paintings of human figures can be found in the tombs of ancient Egypt, in the great temple of Ramses II, Nefertari, his queen, is depicted being led by Isis. The Greeks contributed to painting but much of their work has been lost, one of the best remaining representations are the hellenistic Fayum mummy portraits. Another example is mosaic of the Battle of Issus at Pompeii, Greek and Roman art contributed to Byzantine art in the 4th century BC, which initiated a tradition in icon painting. Apart from the manuscripts produced by monks during the Middle Ages
3.
Persian miniature
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A Persian miniature is a small painting on paper, whether a book illustration or a separate work of art intended to be kept in an album of such works called a muraqqa. The techniques are comparable to the Western and Byzantine traditions of miniatures in illuminated manuscripts. The tradition continued, under some Western influence, after this, the Persian miniature was the dominant influence on other Islamic miniature traditions, principally the Ottoman miniature in Turkey, and the Mughal miniature in the Indian sub-continent. Persian art under Islam had never completely forbidden the human figure and this was partly because the miniature is a private form, kept in a book or album and only shown to those the owner chooses. It was therefore possible to be free than in wall paintings or other works seen by a wider audience. In Islamic art this is referred to as illumination, and manuscripts of the Quran, in later periods miniatures were increasingly created as single works to be included in albums called muraqqa, rather than illustrated books. This allowed non-royal collectors to afford a representative sample of works from different styles, the bright and pure colouring of the Persian miniature is one of its most striking features. Lighting is even, without shadows or chiaroscuro, walls and other surfaces are shown either frontally, or as at an angle of about 45 degrees, often giving the modern viewer the unintended impression that a building is hexagonal in plan. Buildings are often shown in complex views, mixing interior views through windows or cutaways with exterior views of parts of a facade. Costumes and architecture are always those of the time, many figures are often depicted, with those in the main scene normally rendered at the same size, and recession indicated by placing more distant figures higher up in the space. More important figures may be larger than those around them. The dress of figures is shown with great care, although artists understandably often avoid depicting the patterned cloth that many would have worn. Even when a scene in a palace is shown, the viewpoint often appears to be from a point some metres in the air. This is used in all the manuscripts for the court that constitute the most famous Persian manuscripts. The miniatures normally occupy a full page, later spreading across two pages to regain a square or horizontal landscape format. There are often panels of text or captions inside the picture area, the rest of the page is often decorated with dense designs of plants and animals in a muted grisaille, often gold and brown, text pages without miniatures often also have such borders. In later manuscripts, elements of the miniature begin to expand beyond the frame, another later development was the album miniature, conceived as a single picture rather than a book illustration, though such images may be accompanied by short lyric poems. The withdrawal of Shah Tahmasp I from commissioning illustrated books in the 1540s probably encouraged artists to transfer to these works for a wider circle of patrons
4.
Persian carpet
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Carpet weaving is an essential part of Persian culture and art. Within the group of Oriental rugs or Islamic carpets produced by the countries of the rug belt. Persian carpets and rugs of various types were woven in parallel by nomadic tribes, in village and town workshops, as such, they represent different, simultaneous lines of tradition, and reflect the history of Iran and its various peoples. Their patterns and designs have set a tradition for court manufactories which was kept alive during the entire duration of the Persian Empire up to the last royal dynasty of Iran. Town manufactories like those of Tabriz have played an important historical role in reviving the tradition of carpet weaving after periods of decline, Rugs woven by the villages and various tribes of Iran are distinguished by their fine wool, bright and elaborate colours, and specific, traditional patterns. Gabbeh rugs are the type of carpet from this line of tradition. The art and craft of weaving has gone through periods of decline during times of political unrest. It particularly suffered from the introduction of synthetic dyes during the half of the nineteenth century. Carpet weaving still plays a part in the economy of modern Iran. Hand-woven Persian carpets and rugs were regarded as objects of artistic and utilitarian value and prestige from the first time they were mentioned by ancient Greek writers. In 2010, the skills of carpet weaving in Fārs. The beginning of carpet weaving remains unknown, as carpets are subject to use, deterioration, woven rugs probably developed from earlier floor coverings, made of felt, or a technique known as flat weaving. Flat-woven rugs are made by tightly interweaving the warp and weft strands of the weave to produce a surface with no pile. The technique of weaving carpets further developed into a known as loop weaving. Loop weaving is done by pulling the strings over a gauge rod. The rod is then removed, leaving the loops closed, or the loops are cut over the protecting rod. Hand-woven pile rugs are produced by knotting strings of thread individually into the warps, the Pazyryk carpet was excavated in 1949 from the grave of a Scythian nobleman in the Pazyryk Valley of the Altai Mountains in Siberia. Radiocarbon testing indicated that the Pazyryk carpet was woven in the 5th century BC and this carpet is 183 by 200 centimetres and has 36 symmetrical knots per cm²
5.
Persian calligraphy
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Persian calligraphy or Iranian calligraphy is the calligraphy of the Persian language. It is one of the most revered arts throughout history of Iran, after the introduction of Islam in the 7th century, Persians adapted the Arabic alphabet to Persian and developed the contemporary Persian alphabet. The Arabic alphabet has 28 characters, an additional four letters were added by Iranians, which resulted in the 32 letters currently present in the Persian alphabet. Around one thousand years ago, Ibn Muqlah and his brother created six genres of Iranian calligraphy, namely Mohaqiq, Reyhan, Sols, Naskh, Toqi and these genres were common for four centuries in Persia. In the 7th century, Hassan Farsi Kateb combined the Naskh and Reqah styles, in the 14th century, Mir Ali Tabrizi combined two major scripts of his time, i. e. Naskh and Taliq, and created a new Persian calligraphic style called Nas’taliq. In the past 500 years Nastaʿlīq has been the predominant style for writing the Perso-Arabic script, history of cursive Nastaliq In the 17th century Morteza Gholi Khan Shamlou and Mohammad Shafi Heravi created a new genre called cursive Nastaʿlīq Shekasteh Nastaʿlīq. Almost a century later, Abdol-Majid Taleqani, who was a prominent artist at the time and this calligraphic style is based on the same rules as Nas’taliq. However, cursive Nas’taliq has a few significant differences, it more flexible movements. Yadollah Kaboli is one of the most prominent contemporary calligraphers within this style, in 1950, the Irans Association of Calligraphers was founded by Hossein Mirkhani, Ali Akbar Kaveh, Ebrahim Bouzari, Hassan Mirkhani and Mehdi Baiani. For an overview of Persian calligraphys development within Afghanistan, see Calligraphy during last two centuries in Afghanistan, by Azizuddin Vakili. Zendeh Roudi, Jalil Rasouli, Parviz Tanavoli, and Nima Behnoud use Persian calligraphy and Rumi poetry in dress designing. this style of work can be classified as post modern
6.
Decorative art
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The decorative arts are arts or crafts concerned with the design and manufacture of beautiful objects that are also functional. It includes interior design, but not usually architecture, the decorative arts are often categorized in opposition to the fine arts, namely, painting, drawing, photography, and large-scale sculpture, which generally have no function other than to be seen. The distinction between the decorative and the arts has essentially arisen from the post-Renaissance art of the West. This distinction is less meaningful when considering the art of other cultures and periods. For example, Islamic art in many periods and places consists entirely of the arts, often using geometric and plant forms. The distinction between decorative and fine arts is not very useful for appreciating Chinese art, and neither is it for understanding Early Medieval art in Europe, large-scale wall-paintings were much less regarded, crudely executed, and rarely mentioned in contemporary sources. They were probably seen as a substitute for mosaic, which for this period must be viewed as a fine art. The term ars sacra is sometimes used for medieval Christian art done in metal, ivory, textiles, illuminated manuscripts have a much higher survival rate, especially in the hands of the church, as there was little value in the materials and they were easy to store. Most European art during the Middle Ages had been produced under a different set of values. The lower status given to works of art in contrast to fine art narrowed with the rise of the Arts and Crafts Movement. This aesthetic movement of the half of the 19th century was born in England and inspired by William Morris. The movement represented the beginning of an appreciation of the decorative arts throughout Europe. Many converts, both professional artists ranks and from among the intellectual class as a whole, helped spread the ideas of the movement. The influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement led to the arts being given a greater appreciation and status in society. Until the enactment of the Copyright Act 1911 only works of art had been protected from unauthorised copying. The 1911 Act extended the definition of a work to include works of artistic craftsmanship
7.
Persian embroidery
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Persian embroidery is one of the Persian arts. It uses mostly floral motifs, especially Persian figures, animals, Persian embroidered womens trouserings, also known as Gilets Persans, have rich patterns, these were in fashion until the late 18th century. The designs are always of diagonal, parallel bands filled with floral ornamentation, Persian embroidery existed from the ancient times and at least from the time of the Sassanids. Numerous designs are visible on rock sculptures and silverware of that period, patterns on the coat of Chosroes II at Taq-e Bostan are in high relief, they may represent embroidery. Roundels, animals, and other familiar motives of Sassanid art were also used, the earlier Persian embroideries are almost all of type in which the design covers the entire work. The reverse is true of the later pieces, in which the plain-coloured background is equally as important as the varied silks of the needlework. Earlier pieces are almost all similar in design to one or other of the types of carpets. These are mainly worked in darning-stitch on cotton or loosely woven linen, carpet-weaving was mainly done by men, and embroidery by women, members of the same family worked at both trades. Victoria and Albert Museum, His Majestys stationery Office, London 1950, history of the Persian embroidery Examples of the Persian embroidery
8.
Persian motifs
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Carpet weaving is an essential part of Persian culture and art. Within the group of Oriental rugs or Islamic carpets produced by the countries of the rug belt. Persian carpets and rugs of various types were woven in parallel by nomadic tribes, in village and town workshops, as such, they represent different, simultaneous lines of tradition, and reflect the history of Iran and its various peoples. Their patterns and designs have set a tradition for court manufactories which was kept alive during the entire duration of the Persian Empire up to the last royal dynasty of Iran. Town manufactories like those of Tabriz have played an important historical role in reviving the tradition of carpet weaving after periods of decline, Rugs woven by the villages and various tribes of Iran are distinguished by their fine wool, bright and elaborate colours, and specific, traditional patterns. Gabbeh rugs are the type of carpet from this line of tradition. The art and craft of weaving has gone through periods of decline during times of political unrest. It particularly suffered from the introduction of synthetic dyes during the half of the nineteenth century. Carpet weaving still plays a part in the economy of modern Iran. Hand-woven Persian carpets and rugs were regarded as objects of artistic and utilitarian value and prestige from the first time they were mentioned by ancient Greek writers. In 2010, the skills of carpet weaving in Fārs. The beginning of carpet weaving remains unknown, as carpets are subject to use, deterioration, woven rugs probably developed from earlier floor coverings, made of felt, or a technique known as flat weaving. Flat-woven rugs are made by tightly interweaving the warp and weft strands of the weave to produce a surface with no pile. The technique of weaving carpets further developed into a known as loop weaving. Loop weaving is done by pulling the strings over a gauge rod. The rod is then removed, leaving the loops closed, or the loops are cut over the protecting rod. Hand-woven pile rugs are produced by knotting strings of thread individually into the warps, the Pazyryk carpet was excavated in 1949 from the grave of a Scythian nobleman in the Pazyryk Valley of the Altai Mountains in Siberia. Radiocarbon testing indicated that the Pazyryk carpet was woven in the 5th century BC and this carpet is 183 by 200 centimetres and has 36 symmetrical knots per cm²
9.
Tile
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A tile is a manufactured piece of hard-wearing material such as ceramic, stone, metal, or even glass, generally used for covering roofs, floors, walls, showers, or other objects such as tabletops. Alternatively, tile can sometimes refer to units made from lightweight materials such as perlite, wood. In another sense, a tile is a tile or similar object. The word is derived from the French word tuile, which is, in turn, from the Latin word tegula, Tiles are often used to form wall and floor coverings, and can range from simple square tiles to complex mosaics. Tiling stone is marble, onyx, granite or slate. Thinner tiles can be used on walls than on floors, which require more durable surfaces that will resist impacts, the earliest evidence of glazed brick is the discovery of glazed bricks in the Elamite Temple at Chogha Zanbil, dated to the 13th century BC. Glazed and colored bricks were used to make low reliefs in Ancient Mesopotamia, most famously the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, now reconstructed in Berlin. Mesopotamian craftsmen were imported for the palaces of the Persian Empire such as Persepolis, tiling was used in the second century by the Sinhalese kings of ancient Sri Lanka, using smoothed and polished stone laid on floors and in swimming pools. Historians consider the techniques and tools for tiling as well advanced, evidenced by the fine workmanship, tiling from this period can be seen Ruwanwelisaya and Kuttam Pokuna in the city of Anuradhapura. The Achaemenid Empire decorated buildings with glazed tiles, including Darius the Greats palace at Susa. The succeeding Sassanid Empire used tiles patterned with geometric designs, flowers, plants, birds and human beings, early Islamic mosaics in Iran consist mainly of geometric decorations in mosques and mausoleums, made of glazed brick. Typical turquoise tiling becomes popular in 10th-11th century and is used mostly for Kufic inscriptions on mosque walls, seyyed Mosque in Isfahan, Dome of Maraqeh and the Jame Mosque of Gonabad are among the finest examples. The dome of Jame Atiq Mosque of Qazvin is also dated to this period, the golden age of Persian tilework began during the reign the Timurid Empire. In the moraq technique, single-color tiles were cut into small geometric pieces, after hardening, these panels were assembled on the walls of buildings. But the mosaic was not limited to flat areas, Tiles were used to cover both the interior and exterior surfaces of domes. Prominent Timurid examples of this include the Jame Mosque of Yazd, Goharshad Mosque, the Madrassa of Khan in Shiraz. Other important tile techniques of time include girih tiles, with their characteristic white girih. Mihrabs, being the points of mosques, were usually the places where most sophisticated tilework was placed
10.
Persian handicrafts
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Iranian handicrafts are handicraft works originating from Iran. Ghalamkar Iranian Termeh Termeh is a cloth which is woven since the Safavid era in Iran, there is an argument between researchers about its origin. In the past, the first step in termeh weaving was preparing its raw materials, so it was very important to be careful while preparing wool, washing and drying it. Weaving termeh needs proper wool which has long fibers, usually the designs of Iranian termeh were the result of the co-operation between two main persons – an expert and a worker. Weaving termeh was a careful, sensitive and time consuming work that a good weaver could produce only 25 to 30 centimeters in a day. The background colors which are used in termeh are mostly red, light red, green, orange. Termeh as a valuable textile has many different usages and patterns such as, stripped pattern which is of two models – narrow and wide striped. Atabaki pattern which was one of the kashmiri’s termeh used for expensive fabric because it was a finely woven termeh, usually nobles and aristocrats used it as costly and nice cloth. Zomorrodi pattern in which the color was used more than the others. Kashmiri in which the shape of deer’s horn was used for its design, Termeh is a very durable cloth in which fixed colors are used so it can be washed and dried easily. Nowadays termeh is mostly used for collectible tablecloth. These tablecloth are decorated with elaborative Persian embroidery called “sermeh doozy”. This is done by a goldsmith or forger using hands, press machine or both and this part around the intended form is a so-called wall standing two or three millimeters above the surface of the container. This is usually done by or sometimes the turquoise inlayer himself and this both makes the work more beautiful and makes the turquoise inlaid surface stronger. Turquoise Inlaying First of all, the turquoise inlayer buys waste turquoise chips from turquoise forming workshops or turquoise mines in Mashhad, since such turquoise chips are usually accompanied by some earth and ordinary stone chips, they are first separated and cleaned. Then, the chips are graded based on their sizes so the right size turquoise chips are used in making each Turquoise Inlaying object in proportion to the surface area. While the lac is still soft and sticky on the object surface, the chips must be placed in a way so that no space is left between them as far as possible. This is usually done by pressing the turquoise chips by hand onto the surface so that they stick fast to it, after the object is cooled, the lac covered parts become rigid. After that stage, the covered by lac and turquoise chips are polished with emery so the extra lac
11.
Persian pottery
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Persian pottery or Iranian pottery refers to the pottery works made by the artists of Persia and its history goes back to early Neolithic Age. Through the centuries, Persian potters have responded to the demands and changes brought by political turmoil by adopting and refining newly introduced forms and this innovative attitude has survived through time and influenced many other cultures around the world. Evidence of a civilization around Susa has been dated to c 5000 BCE. Susa was firmly within the Sumerian Uruk cultural sphere during the Uruk period, an imitation of the entire state apparatus of Uruk, proto-writing, cylinder seals with Sumerian motifs, and monumental architecture, is found at Susa. Susa may have been a colony of Uruk, as such, the periodization of Susa corresponds to Uruk, Early, Middle and Late Susa II periods correspond to Early, Middle, and Late Uruk periods. Shortly after Susa was first settled 6000 years ago, its inhabitants erected a temple on a platform that rose over the flat surrounding landscape. The exceptional nature of the site is still today in the artistry of the ceramic vessels that were placed as offerings in a thousand or more graves near the base of the temple platform. Nearly two thousand pots were recovered from the cemetery and now, most of now are located in the Louvre. The vessels found are eloquent testimony to the artistic and technical achievements of their makers, painted ceramic vessels from Susa in the earliest first style are a late, regional version of the Mesopotamian Ubaid ceramic tradition that spread across the Near East during the fifth millennium B. C. Susa I style was much a product of the past. Ceramics of these shapes, which were painted, constitute a large proportion of the vessels from the cemetery. Others are course cooking-type jars and bowls with simple bands painted on them and were probably the grave goods of the sites of humbler citizens as well as adolescents and, perhaps, the pottery is carefully made by hand. Although a slow wheel may have employed, the asymmetry of the vessels. The Samanid period saw the creation of epigraphic pottery and these pieces were typically earthenware vessels with black slip lettering in Kufi script painted on a base of white slip. These vessels would typically be inscribed with benedictions or adages, samarqand and Nishapur were both centers of production for this kind of pottery. Innovations in ceramics from this include the production of minai ware, enamelled with figures on a white background, and use fritware. Metalworkers highlighted their intricate hammered designs with precious metal inlays, one potter, Abū Zayd ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Zayd has 15 signed surviving 15 pieces, more than any other medieval Iranian potter. The study and dating of ceramics under Shah Ismail and Shah Tahmasp is difficult because there are few pieces which are dated or which mention the place of production
12.
Literature
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Literature, in its broadest sense, is any single body of written works. Its Latin root literatura/litteratura was used to refer to all written accounts, developments in print technology have allowed an evergrowing distribution and proliferation of written works, culminating in electronic literature. There have been attempts to define literature. Simon and Delyse Ryan begin their attempt to answer the question What is Literature, with the observation, The quest to discover a definition for literature is a road that is much travelled, though the point of arrival, if ever reached, is seldom satisfactory. Most attempted definitions are broad and vague, and they change over time. In fact, the thing that is certain about defining literature is that the definition will change. Concepts of what is literature change over time as well, definitions of literature have varied over time, it is a culturally relative definition. In Western Europe prior to the century, literature as a term indicated all books. A more restricted sense of the term emerged during the Romantic period, contemporary debates over what constitutes literature can be seen as returning to the older, more inclusive notion of what constitutes literature. Cultural studies, for instance, takes as its subject of both popular and minority genres, in addition to canonical works. The value judgment definition of literature considers it to cover exclusively those writings that possess high quality or distinction and this sort of definition is that used in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition when it classifies literature as the best expression of the best thought reduced to writing. The formalist definition is that literature foregrounds poetic effects, it is the literariness or poetic of literature that distinguishes it from ordinary speech or other kinds of writing. Etymologically, the term derives from Latin literatura/litteratura learning, a writing, grammar, originally writing formed with letters, in spite of this, the term has also been applied to spoken or sung texts. Poetry is a form of art which uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of. Possibly as a result of Aristotles influence, poetry before the century was usually less a technical designation for verse than a normative category of fictive or rhetorical art. As a form it may pre-date literacy, with the earliest works being composed within and sustained by an oral tradition, novel, a long fictional prose narrative. It was the close relation to real life that differentiated it from the chivalric romance, in most European languages the equivalent term is roman. In English, the term emerged from the Romance languages in the fifteenth century, with the meaning of news, it came to indicate something new
13.
Persian mythology
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Persian mythology are traditional tales and stories of ancient origin, all involving extraordinary or supernatural beings. Myths play a part in Iranian culture and our understanding of them is increased when we consider them within the context of Iranian history. The geography of this region, with its mountain ranges. This pottery, light grey to black in colour, appeared around 1400 BC and it is called Early Grey Ware or Iron I, the latter name indicating the beginning of the Iron Age in this area. The central collection of Persian mythology is the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, the characters of Persian mythology almost always fall into one of two camps. They are either good, or they are evil, the most famous legendary character in the Persian epics and mythology is Rostam. On the other side of the fence is Zahhak, a symbol of despotism who was, finally, Zahhak was guarded by two vipers which grew out from both of his shoulders. No matter how many times they were beheaded, new heads grew on them to guard him. The snake, like in other mythologies, was a symbol of evil, but many other animals and birds appear in Iranian mythology, and, especially. Most famous of these is Simorgh, a beautiful and powerful bird, and Homa. Published by Echo of Iran, Tehran 1965, Iranian Mythology by Albert J. Carnoy Indo-Iranian Mythology Iran Almanac 2006
14.
Iranian folklore
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Iranian folklore, also known as Persian folklore, including jokes, folktales, games, folklore heroes and beliefs, is sophisticated and complex. Dāstān in Persian means fable, fiction, story, tale, the genre to which they refer may go back to ancient Iran. It was a popular and folkloric form of story-telling, Dastan-tellers tend to tell their tile in coffee houses. Cehel Tuti, The Forty Parrots, a collection of entertaining stories about the wife of a merchant, Amir Arsalan-e Namdar, popular Persian legend which was narrated to Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar. Wameqh o Azra, derives from the Greek romance of Metiochus and her wish was granted, and that is why this period is called sarmā-ye pīr zan or bard al-ʿajūz. Nāranj o toranj Auntie Cockroach and Mr. Ghoul, Ghoul-e-biabani and it is a hideous monster with a feline head, forked tongue, hairy skin, and deformed legs that resemble the limp and skinny legs of a prematurely born infant. Martyaxwar A legendary creature similar to the sphinx, peri Zār A ritual in some of the south coastal Iranian provinces that is a kind of spiritual trance dance. In some cases it can go for a time, until the dancer drops down of exhaustion Takam The king of goats. Ganjafa Chahâr barg is another fishing game, also known as Pâsur, Haft Khâjor Haft va chahâr. Ye Morgh Darm other folklore games Backgammon folklore Nowruz traditional characters Hajji Firuz traditional herald of Nowruz, mir Nowrouzi Temporary king of Nowruz times Fal-Gûsh, is an act of fortunetelling in Chaharshanbe Suri. Amoo norooz announcer of Noroozs arrival, cheshm-Zakhm, the evil eye, the supposed power of an individual to cause harm, even illness or death, to another person merely by looking at him or complimenting him. As this is done, an ancient prayer is recited and this prayer is said by Muslims as well as by Zoroastrians. Fāl gereftan, Many varieties of divination are attested in Persian folk practice. Not only Muslims, mirror and Quran, when buying a new home, it is customary to place a mirror and a Quran in front of it as the first thing that enters the new house. Patience Stone, is a Persian popular folktale, in the tale, a patient stone, the most empathetic of listeners, absorbs the sorrows and pains of the person who confides in it. It is said that when the stone can no longer contain the pain it harbors, naghali and Pardeh dari, That is narrating of important stories from the Iranian fables, myths and epics which have remained from ancient times with special tone, feelings and expression. The pardeh dar narrates the story with a demonstration of the scenes and this kind of narration is used for epics as well as religious stories. Many naqhāls in the Safavid period specialized in single, though stories, they were accordingly known as Shahname khan, Amīr Ḥamze khan. Naqi Abbas, Volume 1, Issue I, pp. 68-79, mahjub, M. J. ed. Amir Arsalan-e Rumi
15.
Iranian philosophy
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According to the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, the chronology of the subject and science of philosophy starts with the Indo-Iranians, dating this event to 1500 BC. The Oxford dictionary also states, Zarathushtras philosophy entered to influence Western tradition through Judaism, Iranian philosophy after Arab invasion of Persia, is characterized by different interactions with the Old Iranian philosophy, the Greek philosophy and with the development of Islamic philosophy. The Illumination School and the Transcendent Philosophy are regarded as two of the philosophical traditions of that era in Persia. See also Ancient Iranian Philosophy The teachings of Zarathustra appeared in Persia at some point during the period 1700-1800 BCE and his wisdom became the basis of the religion Zoroastrianism, and generally influenced the development of the Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian philosophy. Zarathustra was the first who treated the problem of evil in philosophical terms and he is also believed to be one of the oldest monotheists in the history of religion. He espoused an ethical philosophy based on the primacy of good thoughts, good words, the works of Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism had a significant influence on Greek philosophy and Roman philosophy. Several ancient Greek writers such as Eudoxus of Cnidus and Latin writers such as Pliny the Elder praised Zoroastrian philosophy as the most famous, plato learnt of Zoroastrian philosophy through Eudoxus and incorporated much of it into his own Platonic realism. In the 3rd century BC, however, Colotes accused Platos The Republic of plagiarizing parts of Zoroasters On Nature, Zarathustra was known as a sage, magician and miracle-worker in post-Classical Western culture, though almost nothing was known of his ideas until the late eighteenth century. By this time his name was associated with lost ancient wisdom and was appropriated by Freemasons and he appears in Mozarts opera The Magic Flute under the variant name Sarastro, who represents moral order in opposition to the Queen of the Night. Enlightenment writers such as Voltaire promoted research into Zoroastrianism in the belief that it was a form of rational Deism, in 2005, the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy ranked Zarathustra as first in the chronology of philosophers. Zarathustras impact lingers today due in part to the system of ethics he founded called Mazda-Yasna. The word Mazda-Yasna is avestan and is translated as Worship of Wisdom in English, the Persian philosopher Osthanes was also under the influence of Zarathustras ideas and philosophy, which afterwards affected the Greek philosophy through Democritus, his student. Zoroastrianism likely had as much influence on the formation of Christianity as did Judaism, little is known of the situation of philosophy during the ancient Greek philosophers. Manichaeism, founded by Mani, was influential from North Africa in the West, an important principle of Manichaeism was its dualistic cosmology/theology, which it shared with Mazdakism, a philosophy founded by Mazdak. Under this dualism, there were two principles of the universe, Light, the good one, and Darkness, the evil one. These two had been mixed by an accident, and mans role in this life was through good conduct to release the parts of himself that belonged to Light. Mani saw the mixture of good and bad as a tragedy, while Mazdak viewed this in a more neutral. Mazdak was a proto-socialist Persian reformer who gained influence under the reign of the Sassanian king Kavadh I and he claimed to be a prophet of God, and instituted communal possessions and social welfare programs
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Performance art
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Performance art is a performance presented to an audience within a fine art context, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated. The performance can be live or via media, the performer can be present or absent and it can be any situation that involves four basic elements, time, space, the performers body, or presence in a medium, and a relationship between performer and audience. Performance art can happen anywhere, in any type of venue or setting, the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. Performance art is a contested concept, any single definition of it implies the recognition of rival uses. As concepts like democracy or art, it implies productive disagreement with itself, the meaning of the term in the narrower sense is related to postmodernist traditions in Western culture. The ideal had been an ephemeral and authentic experience for performer, the widely discussed difference, how concepts of visual arts and concepts of performing arts are utilized, can determine the meanings of a performance art presentation. It therefore can include action or spoken word as a communication between the artist and audience, or even ignore expectations of an audience, rather than following a script written beforehand, some kinds of performance art nevertheless can be close to performing arts. Performance artists often challenge the audience to think in new and unconventional ways, break conventions of traditional arts, and break down conventional ideas about what art is. Some artists, e. g. the Viennese Actionists and neo-Dadaists, prefer to use the terms live art, action art, actions, as genres of performance art appear body art, fluxus-performance, happening, action poetry, and intermedia. Performance art activity is not confined to European or American art traditions, notable practitioners can be found in Asia, Performance artists and theorists point to different traditions and histories, ranging from tribal to sporting and ritual or religious events. There are also accounts of Renaissance artists such as itinerant poets putting on performances that could be said to be ancestors of performance art. Western cultural theorists often trace performance art activity back to the beginning of the 20th century, to the Russian constructivists, Futurists, Dada provided a significant progenitor with the unconventional performances of poetry, often at the Cabaret Voltaire, by the likes of Richard Huelsenbeck and Tristan Tzara. Russian Futurist artists could be identified as precursors of performance, such as David Burliuk, abstract expressionism and Action painting preceded the Fluxus movement, Happenings and the emergence of Performance Art. Performance art was anticipated, if not explicitly formulated, by Japans Gutai group of the 1950s, in the late 1960s Earth artists as diverse as Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim, Michael Heizer and Carl Andre created environmental pieces that predict the performance art of the 1970s. Works of conceptual artists in the early 1980s, like Sol LeWitt, who converted mural-style drawing into an act of performance by others, were influenced by Yves Klein and the Earth artists as well. In the 1960s a variety of new works, concepts and the number of artists led to new kinds of performance art. Kaprow had coined the term Happening describing a new artform, at the beginning of the 1960s, a Happening allows the artist to experiment with body motion, recorded sounds, written and spoken texts, and even smells
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Persian dance
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Persian dance or Iranian dance refers to the dance styles indigenous to Iran. Genres of dance in Iran vary depending on the area, culture, and language of the local people, each group, region, and historical epoch has specific dance styles associated with it. Raghs is the Arabic word for dance, and is almost exclusively the word used for dance in Persian, as the Persian word for dance and its also the word in Azerbaijani for dance. The Kurdish word for dance is Halperke, and the Lurs from Lorestan use the word Bākhten for dance, the earliest researched Persian dance is a dance worshiping Mithra in which a bull was sacrificed. This cult later became highly adhered in the Roman Empire and this dance was to promote vigor in life. Ancient Persia was occupied by foreign powers, first Greeks, then Arabs, throughout these changes a slow disappearance of heritage dance traditions occurred. Religious prohibition of dancing in Iran came with the spread of Islam, religious prohibition to dancing waxed and waned over the years, but after the Iranian Revolution in 1979 dancing was no longer allowed due to its frequent mixing of the sexes. The Islamic Revolution of 1979, was the end of an era for dancing. The Iranian national ballet company was dissolved and its members emigrated to different countries, according to the principles of the “cultural revolution” in Iran, dancing was considered to be perverse, a great sin, immoral and corrupting. Iran possesses four categories of dance and these genres are, chain or line dances, solo dance, war or combat dances. Chain or Line dances are named for the region or the ethnic groups with which they are associated. Solo dance includes usually reconstructions of Safavid and Qajar Court Dance and these often are improvisational dances and utilize delicate, graceful movements of the hands and arms, such as wrist circles. War or Combat dances imitate combat, or help train the warrior, ritual or spiritual dances, are often Sufi are known as sama and also a type of zikr. There are various types of dancing in a trance for healing practices in Iran, there is a term in Balochi gowati for psychologically ill patients who have recovered through music healing, music as medicine. The word sama, from the Arabic root meaning “to listen, ” refers to the practice of listening to music and achieving unity with the Divine. This is a list of some of the ancient and contemporary Persian dances, the distinct feature of this dance is the way performers wave their hands in a unique manner that resembles the cooperation of a group of fishermen at the sea. Basseri dance is a dance performed by the Basseri tribe who live in the Fars province. The dancers wear their traditional. Bojnordi dance, Bojnord is a village in the northeast section of Iran inhabited by a Turkic people, men and women dance separately or together in Bojnordi dance, snapping their fingers in the method known as peshkan
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Music of Iran
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Music of Iran or Music of Persia, as evidenced by the archaeological records of the Fertile Crescent civilization of Elam, the most ancient culture in southwestern Iran, dates back thousands of years. In ancient Iran musicians held socially respectable positions and we know that the Elamites and the Achaemenid Empire certainly made use of musicians but we do not know what that music was like. During the Parthian era, troubadours or Gosans were highly sought after as entertainers, there are theories in Academia that perhaps the early Dari Poets of Eastern Iran like Roudaki were in fact Gosans. The history of performance in Sassanid Iran is however better documented than earlier periods. This is especially evident in the context of Zoroastrian ritual. By the time of Khosrau II the Sassanid royal court was the host of prominent musicians such as Ramtin, Bamshad, Nakisa, Azad, Sarkash, among these survived names, Barbad is remembered in much documents and has been named as remarkably high skilled. He has been credited to have given an organization of musical system consisting of seven Royal modes named Xosrovani, thirty derived modes named lahn and these numbers are in accordance with Sassanids calendar of number of days in a week, month, and year. The theories these modal systems were based on are not known, there are also some of a descriptive nature like roshan cheragh. The relief depicts two boats and the picture shows these boats at two successive moments within the same panel. Barbad may have invented the lute and the tradition that was to transform into the Maqam tradition. Even after Islam, Persian musicians did not disappear, Zaryab is often credited with being the greatest influence over Andalusian, Farabi and Avicenna were not only musical theorists but adept at the lute and the Ney, respectively. The position of a work of music often depends on the music genre. The academic Authentic Persian Music is strongly based on the theories of aesthetics as expounded by the likes of Farabi. It also preserves melodic formula that are attributed to the musicians of the Persian imperial court of Khosroe Parviz in the Sassanid Period. However, the influence of Dastgah cannot be underestimated as it is seen as the reservoir of authenticity that other forms of musical genres derive melodic and performance ideas, Persian classical music goes back a long way. Musicians like Barbad were legendary in the empire of the Sassanid era, until the early 20th century, musiqi-e assil was heard almost entirely at the royal courts of the monarchy. The renaissance brought popularity to the genre, Women were banned from singing as soloists for male audiences, though they were allowed to perform as soloists for female audiences, as instrumentalists and in choirs. For this reason some female singers, including Maryam Akhondy, left the Islamic Republic to work in exile, most notable living Iranian classical vocalists are, Sodeyf, Shajarian, Shahram Nazeri
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Cinema of Iran
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The cinema of Iran or cinema of Persia refers to the cinema and film industries in Iran which produce a variety of commercial films annually. Iranian art films have garnered fame and now enjoy a global following. Along with China, Iran has been lauded as one of the best exporters of cinema in the 1990s, some critics now rank Iran as the worlds most important national cinema, artistically, with a significance that invites comparison to Italian neorealism and similar movements in past decades. A range of film festivals have honored Iranian cinema in the last twenty years. The earliest examples of visual representations in Iranian history may be traced back to the bas-reliefs in Persepolis, bas relief is a method of sculpting which entails carving or etching away the surface of a flat piece of stone or metal. Persepolis was the center of the ancient kingdom of Achaemenids. Iranian visual arts maybe said to have peaked about a years later during the Sassanian reign. A bas-relief from this period in Taq Bostan depicts a hunting scene. Similar works from the period have been found to articulate movements and it is even possible to see the progenitor of the cinema close-up, a wounded wild pig escaping from the hunting ground, among these works of art. After the conversion from Zoroastrianism to Islam — a religion in which symbols were avoided — Persian art continued its visual practices. Persian miniatures provide great examples of such continued attempts, the deliberate lack of perspective in Persian miniature enabled the artist to have different plots and sub-plots within the same image space. A very popular form of art was Pardeh Khani. Another type of art in the category was Naqqali. Popular dramatic performance arts in Iran, before the advent of cinema, include Marionette, Saye-bazi, Rouhozi, Cinema was only five years old when it came to Persia at the beginning of the 20th century. The first Persian filmmaker was Mirza Ebrahim Khan Akkas Bashi, the photographer of Muzaffar al-Din Shah. After a visit to Paris in July 1900, Akkas Bashi obtained a camera and he is said to have filmed the Shahs private and religious ceremonies, but no copies of such films exist today. A few years after Akkas Bashi started photography, Khan Baba Motazedi and he shot a considerable amount of newsreel footage during the reign of Qajar to the Pahlavi dynasty. The first public screening took place in Tehran in 1904, presented by Mirza Ebrahim Khan Sahaf Bashi and he arranged the screening in the back of his antique shop
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Persian theatre
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Persian theater or Iranian theater goes back to antiquity. Ancient Persian theatre and dance was significantly researched by the Greek historian Herodotus of Halikarnassos, in his work Book IX, he describes the history of Asian empires and also the Persian wars until 478 BC. These are a few of the performing arts that became popularized in Iran in 7th century AD. The Naqqāli is the performer and recounts stories in prose often accompanied by music, dance and decorative, both men and women can be Naqqāli performers and can perform with mixed-sex audiences, which is unusual in Iran. The performer often wears simple costumes and a piece of a historical but related costume. This art was performed in coffeehouses, private houses and historical venues such as ancient caravanserais. A decline in the popularity of coffeehouses in Iran, and with new forms of entertainment, has resulted in diminishing interest in Naqqāli performance. The aging of master performers, and the popularity among younger generations have caused a steep drop in the number of skilled Naqqāls. Naqqāli was included in 2011 to the UNESCOs Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in need of urgent safeguarding, other similar Iranian story-telling and performance traditions include Naghali, Pardeh-dari, Pardeh-khaani, Ghavali, Shahnameh-khaani, Tazieh. Tazieh, also known as Tazieh, is a form of traditional, religious Persian theatre in which the drama is conveyed through music, narration, prose, Tazieh dates from before the Islamic era. A common theme is the tragedy of Siavash in Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. In Persian tradition, Tazieh and Parde-Khani are inspired by historical and religious events, the common theme is hero tales of love, sacrifice, and resistance against evil. Tazieh resembles the European opera in many respects, kheimeh-shab-bazi is the Persian traditional puppetry which is performed in a small chamber. There are two people involved in the performance, a performer and a person telling the story. The dialogue is between morshed and the puppets, the method of performance, its characters and the techniques used in writing the puppet show make it unique and distinguish it from other types of puppetry. A newer genre of Iranian puppetry emerged during Qajar era, puppetry is still very common in contemporary Iran. Siah-Bazi, also known as Siyah-Bazi is a type of Iranian folk performing art that features a blackface, mischievous, the character with the black face takes on a clown-like role and tries to disgrace the master. Outwardly the master appears to be a person but underneath he is immoral
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Art
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In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art. The oldest documented forms of art are visual arts, which include creation of images or objects in fields including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media. Music, theatre, film, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature, until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences. Art may be characterized in terms of mimesis, expression, communication of emotion, during the Romantic period, art came to be seen as a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science. Though the definition of what art is disputed and has changed over time, general descriptions mention an idea of imaginative or technical skill stemming from human agency. The nature of art, and related such as creativity. One early sense of the definition of art is related to the older Latin meaning. English words derived from this meaning include artifact, artificial, artifice, medical arts, however, there are many other colloquial uses of the word, all with some relation to its etymology. Several dialogues in Plato tackle questions about art, Socrates says that poetry is inspired by the muses, and is not rational. He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of divine madness in the Phaedrus, and yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homers great poetic art, in Ion, Socrates gives no hint of the disapproval of Homer that he expresses in the Republic. For example, music imitates with the media of rhythm and harmony, whereas dance imitates with rhythm alone, the forms also differ in their object of imitation. Comedy, for instance, is an imitation of men worse than average. Lastly, the forms differ in their manner of imitation—through narrative or character, through change or no change, Aristotle believed that imitation is natural to mankind and constitutes one of mankinds advantages over animals. The second, and more recent, sense of the art as an abbreviation for creative art or fine art emerged in the early 17th century. The creative arts are a collection of disciplines which produce artworks that are compelled by a drive and convey a message, mood. Art is something that stimulates an individuals thoughts, emotions, beliefs, works of art can be explicitly made for this purpose or interpreted on the basis of images or objects. Often, if the skill is being used in a common or practical way, likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way, it may be considered commercial art instead of fine art. On the other hand, crafts and design are considered applied art
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Iranian architecture
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Iranian architecture or Persian architecture is the architecture of Iran and parts of the rest of West Asia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Its history dates back to at least 5,000 BCE with characteristic examples distributed over a vast area from Turkey and Iraq to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and from the Caucasus to Zanzibar. Persian buildings vary from peasant huts to tea houses and garden, in addition to historic gates, palaces, and mosques, the rapid growth of cities such as the capital, Tehran has brought about a wave of demolition and new construction. Iranian architecture displays great variety, both structural and aesthetic, from a variety of traditions and experience, without sudden innovations, and despite the repeated trauma of invasions and cultural shocks, it has achieved an individuality distinct from that of other Muslim countries. Traditionally, the guiding formative motif of Iranian architecture has been its cosmic symbolism by which man is brought into communication and participation with the powers of heaven. This theme has not only given unity and continuity to the architecture of Persia, according to Persian historian and archaeologist Arthur Pope, the supreme Iranian art, in the proper meaning of the word, has always been its architecture. The supremacy of architecture applies to both pre- and post-Islamic periods, traditional Persian architecture has maintained a continuity that, although temporarily distracted by internal political conflicts or foreign invasion, nonetheless has achieved an unmistakable style. In this architecture, there are no buildings, even garden pavilions have nobility and dignity. In expressiveness and communicativity, most Persian buildings are lucid - even eloquent, the combination of intensity and simplicity of form provides immediacy, while ornament and, often, subtle proportions reward sustained observation. g. g. Anahita Temple, Khorheh, Parthian era e. g. Hatra, the compounds at Nysa, Sassanid era e. g. Ghaleh Dokhtar. Chehelsotoon, Ali Qapu, Agha Bozorg Mosque, Kashan, Shah Mosque, available building materials dictate major forms in traditional Iranian architecture. This technique, used in Iran from ancient times, has never completely abandoned. The abundance of heavy plastic earth, in conjunction with a lime mortar, also facilitated the development. Certain design elements of Persian architecture have persisted throughout the history of Iran, the most striking are a marked feeling for scale and a discerning use of simple and massive forms. The consistency of decorative preferences, the high-arched portal set within a recess, columns with bracket capitals, through the ages these elements have recurred in completely different types of buildings, constructed for various programs and under the patronage of a long succession of rulers. Similarly, the dome on four arches, so characteristic of Sassanid times, is a still to be found in many cemeteries, the pre-Islamic styles draw on 3000 to 4000 years of architectural development from various civilizations of the Iranian plateau. Iran is recognized by UNESCO as being one of the cradles of civilization, each of the periods of Elamites, Achaemenids, Parthians and Sassanids were creators of great architecture that, over the ages, spread far and wide far to other cultures. Although Iran has suffered its share of destruction, including Alexander The Greats decision to burn Persepolis, the Achaemenids built on a grand scale
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Iranian cuisine
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Iranian cuisine, also widely referred to as Persian cuisine, includes the foods, cooking methods, and food traditions of Iranians. Through the Persianized Central Asian Mughal dynasty, aspects of Iranian cuisine were adopted into North Indian cuisine, typical Iranian main dishes are combinations of rice with meat, vegetables, and nuts. Fresh green herbs are used, along with fruits such as plums, pomegranate, quince, prunes, apricots. Characteristic Iranian flavorings such as saffron, dried lime, cinnamon, Iranian cuisine is gaining popularity in multicultural cities such as London, Los Angeles, Washington, D. C. Vancouver, and Toronto, which have significant Iranian populations, the usage of rice, at first a specialty of Safavid court cuisine, evolved by the end of the 16th century CE into a major branch of Iranian cookery. Traditionally, rice was most prevalent as a staple item in northern Iran. Varieties of rice in Iran include gerde, domsia, champa, doodi, Lenjan, Tarom, anbarbu, the following table includes three primary methods of cooking rice in Iran. Second only to rice is the production and use of wheat, the following table lists several forms of flatbread and pastry-bread commonly used in Iranian cuisine. Agriculture of Iran produces many fruits and vegetables, thus, a bowl of fresh fruit is common on Iranian tables, and vegetables are standard sides to most meals. These are not only enjoyed fresh and ripe as desserts, but are combined with meat. When fresh fruits are not available, a variety of dried fruits such as dates, fig, apricots. Southern Iran is one of the worlds major producers, where some special cultivars such as the Bam date are grown. Vegetables such as pumpkins, spinach, green beans, fava beans, courgette, varieties of squash, onion, garlic, tomatoes, cucumbers and scallion often accompany a meal. While the eggplant is the potato of Iran, Iranians are fond of fresh green salads dressed with oil, lemon juice, salt, chili. Fruit dolma is probably a specialty of Iranian cuisine, the fruit is first cooked, then stuffed with meat, seasonings, and sometimes tomato sauce. The dolma is then simmered in broth or a sweet-and-sour sauce. Verjuice, an acidic juice made by pressing unripe grapes or other sour fruit, is used in various Iranian dishes. It is mainly used within soup and stew dishes, but also to simmer a type of squash dolma, unripe grapes are also used whole in some dishes such as khoresh e qure
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Persian gardens
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The tradition and style of garden design represented by Persian gardens or Iranian gardens has influenced the design of gardens from Andalusia to India and beyond. The gardens of the Alhambra show the influence of Persian garden philosophy and style in a Moorish palace scale, the Humayuns Tomb and Taj Mahal have some of the largest Persian gardens in the world, from the era of the Mughal Empire in India. g. French paradis, German Paradies, and English paradise, the word entered Semitic languages as well, Akkadian pardesu, Hebrew pardes, and Arabic firdaws. As the word expresses, such gardens would have been enclosed, the gardens purpose was, and is, to provide a place for protected relaxation in a variety of manners, spiritual, and leisurely, essentially a paradise on earth. The Common Iranian word for enclosed space was *pari-daiza-, a term that was adopted by Christian mythology to describe the garden of Eden or Paradise on earth, the gardens construction may be formal or casual, following several simple design rules. This allows a maximization, in terms of function and emotion, Persian gardens may originate as early as 4000 BCE. Decorated pottery of that time displays the cross plan of the Persian garden. The outline of the Pasargad Garden, built around 500 BCE, is viewable today, during the reign of the Sassanids, and under the influence of Zoroastrianism, water in art grew increasingly important. This trend manifested itself in garden design, with emphasis on fountains. During the Islamic occupation, the aspect of the garden increased in importance. During this time, aesthetic rules that govern the garden grew in importance, an example of this is the chahār bāgh, a form of garden that attempts to emulate Eden, with four rivers and four quadrants that represent the world. The design sometimes extends one axis longer than the cross-axis, and may feature water channels that run each of the four gardens. The invasion of Persia by the Mongols in the century led to a new emphasis on highly ornate structure in the garden. Examples of this include tree peonies and chrysanthemums, the Mongol empire then carried a Persian garden tradition to other parts of their empire. Babur introduced the Persian garden to India, the now unkempt Aram Bāgh garden in Agra was the first of many Persian gardens he created. The Taj Mahal embodies the Persian concept of an ideal, paradise-like garden, the Safavid Dynasty built and developed grand and epic layouts that went beyond a simple extension to a palace and became an integral aesthetic and functional part of it. In the following centuries, European garden design began to influence Persia, particularly the designs of France, and secondarily that of Russia, western influences led to changes in the use of water and the species used in bedding. Traditional forms and style are still applied in modern Iranian gardens and they also appear in historic sites, museums and affixed to the houses of the rich
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Persian alphabet
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The Persian alphabet or Perso-Arabic alphabet is a writing system based on the Arabic script and used for the Persian language. It has four more than the Arabic alphabet, پ, چ, ژ. The Persian script is an abjad and is exclusively written cursively and that is, the majority of the letters in a word connect to each other. This is also implemented on computers, whenever the Persian alphabet is typed, the computer automatically connects the letters to each other. Words are written right to left. Also, vowels are underrepresented in writing, see below for details, the replacement of the Pahlavi scripts with the Persian alphabet in order to write the Persian language was done by the Tahirid dynasty in ninth century Greater Khorasan. Below are the 32 letters of the modern Persian alphabet, since the script is cursive, the appearance of a letter changes depending on its position, isolated, initial, medial, and final of a word. The names of the letter are mostly the ones used in Arabic, the only ambiguous name is he, which is used for both ﺡ and ه. For clarification, these are often called ḥe-ye jimi and he-ye do-češm, respectively. Letters which do not link to a following letter Seven letters – و, ژ, ﺯ, ﺭ, ﺫ, ﺩ, ﺍ – do not connect to a letter as the rest of the letters of the alphabet do. These seven letters have the form in isolated and initial position. For example, when the letter ا alef is at the beginning of a such as اینجا injā. Persian script has adopted a subset of Arabic diacritics which consists of zabar /æ/, zir /e/, other Arabic diacritics may be seen in Arabic loan-words. The following are not actual letters but different orthographical shapes for letters, and in the case of the lām alef, as to ﺀ hamze, it has only a single graphic, since it is never tied to a preceding or following letter. However, it is seated on a vāv, ye or alef. Technically, hamze is not a letter but a diacritic, although at first glance they may seem similar, there are many differences in the way the different languages use the alphabets. For example, similar words are written differently in Persian and Arabic, vowel notation is simple but its history is complicated. Classical Arabic has a length distinction, in writing, long vowels are normally written ambiguously by letters known as matres lectionis while short ones are normally omitted entirely
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Specials (Unicode block)
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Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as f�r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character
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History of literature
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Some recorded materials, such as compilations of data are not considered literature, and this article relates only to the evolution of the works defined above. Literature and writing, though connected, are not synonymous, scholars have often disagreed concerning when written record-keeping became more like literature than anything else, the definition is largely subjective. Moreover, given the significance of distance as a cultural isolator in earlier centuries, the historical development of literature did not occur at an even pace across the world. Much has been written, for example, about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in the 1st century BC, the deliberate suppression of texts by organisations of either a spiritual or a temporal nature further shrouds the subject. Certain primary texts, however, may be isolated which have a role as literatures first stirrings. Many texts handed down by oral tradition over several centuries before they were fixed in form are difficult or impossible to date. The core of the Rigveda may date to the mid 2nd millennium BC, the Pentateuch is traditionally dated to the 15th century, although modern scholarship estimates its oldest part to date to the 10th century BC at the earliest. Homers Iliad and Odyssey date to the 8th century BC and mark the beginning of Classical Antiquity and they also stand in an oral tradition that stretches back to the late Bronze Age. The great Hindu epics were also transmitted orally, likely predating the Maurya period, the Classic of Poetry is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, comprising 305 works by anonymous authors dating from the 11th to 7th centuries BC. The Chu Ci anthology is a volume of poems attributed to or considered to be inspired by Qu Yuans verse writing. Qu Yuan is the first author of verse in China to have his name associated to his work and is regarded as one of the most prominent figures of Romanticism in Chinese classical literature. The first great author on military tactics and strategy was Sun Tzu, among the earliest Chinese works of narrative history, Zuo Zhuan is a gem of classical Chinese prose. This work and the Shiji or Records of the Grand Historian, were regarded as the models by many generations of prose stylists in ancient China. The books that constitute the Hebrew Bible developed over roughly a millennium, the oldest texts seem to come from the eleventh or tenth centuries BCE, whilst most of the other texts are somewhat later. They are edited works, being collections of various sources intricately and carefully woven together, the Old Testament was compiled and edited by various men over a period of centuries, with many scholars concluding that the Hebrew canon was solidified by about the 3rd century BC. The works have been subject to various literary evaluations, friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “In the Jewish Old Testament, there are men, things and speeches in so grand a style that Greek and Indian literature have nothing to compare to it. One stands with awe and reverence before these tremendous remnants of what man once was, the taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone of greatness and smallness. ”Ancient Greek society placed considerable emphasis upon literature. Notable among later Greek poets was Sappho, who defined, in many ways, a playwright named Aeschylus changed Western literature forever when he introduced the ideas of dialogue and interacting characters to playwriting
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Sumerian literature
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Sumerian literature is the literature written in the Sumerian language during the Middle Bronze Age. Most Sumerian literature is preserved indirectly, via Assyrian or Babylonian copies, the Sumerians invented the first writing system, developing Sumerian cuneiform writing out of earlier proto-writing systems by about the 30th century BC. The earliest literary texts appear from about the 27th century BC and it is not rhymed, although “comparable effects were sometimes exploited. ”It did not use syllabo-tonic versification, and the writing system precludes detection of rhythm, metre, rhyme, or alliteration. Quantitative analysis of other possible poetic features seems to be lacking, the Sumerians, Their History, Culture, and Character. In M. E. Vogelzang, H. L. J. Vanstiphout, mesopotamian Poetic Language, Sumerian and Akkadian. Jeremy Black, Graham Cunningham, Eleanor Robson, Gábor Zólyomi, the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Catalogue of literary works at the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
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Ancient Egyptian literature
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Ancient Egyptian literature was written in the Egyptian language from ancient Egypts pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination. It represents the oldest corpus of Egyptian literature, along with Sumerian literature, it is considered the worlds earliest literature. Writing in ancient Egypt—both hieroglyphic and hieratic—first appeared in the late 4th millennium BC during the phase of predynastic Egypt. It was not until the early Middle Kingdom that a narrative Egyptian literature was created and this was a media revolution which, according to Richard B. However, it is possible that the literacy rate was less than one percent of the entire population. The creation of literature was thus an elite exercise, monopolized by a scribal class attached to government offices, However, there is no full consensus among modern scholars concerning the dependence of ancient Egyptian literature on the sociopolitical order of the royal courts. Middle Egyptian, the language of the Middle Kingdom, became a classical language during the New Kingdom. Scribes of the New Kingdom canonized and copied many literary texts written in Middle Egyptian, some genres of Middle Kingdom literature, such as teachings and fictional tales, remained popular in the New Kingdom, although the genre of prophetic texts was not revived until the Ptolemaic period. Popular tales included the Story of Sinuhe and The Eloquent Peasant, while important teaching texts include the Instructions of Amenemhat and The Loyalist Teaching. By the New Kingdom period, the writing of graffiti on sacred temple and tomb walls flourished as a unique genre of literature. The acknowledgment of rightful authorship remained important only in a few genres, while texts of the genre were pseudonymous. Ancient Egyptian literature has been preserved on a variety of media. This includes papyrus scrolls and packets, limestone or ceramic ostraca, wooden writing boards, monumental stone edifices, Texts preserved and unearthed by modern archaeologists represent a small fraction of ancient Egyptian literary material. The area of the floodplain of the Nile is under-represented because the moist environment is unsuitable for the preservation of papyri, on the other hand, hidden caches of literature, buried for thousands of years, have been discovered in settlements on the dry desert margins of Egyptian civilization. By the Early Dynastic Period in the late 4th millennium BC, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian hieroglyphs are small artistic pictures of natural objects. The Narmer Palette, dated c.3100 BC during the last phase of Predynastic Egypt, combines the hieroglyphs for catfish and chisel to produce the name of King Narmer. The Egyptians called their hieroglyphs words of god and reserved their use for exalted purposes, such as communicating with divinities, each hieroglyphic word represented both, a specific object and embodied the essence of that object, recognizing it as divinely made and belonging within the greater cosmos. Through acts of priestly ritual, like burning incense, the priest allowed spirits, mutilating the hieroglyph of a venomous snake, or other dangerous animal, removed a potential threat
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Akkadian literature
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Akkadian literature is the ancient literature written in the Akkadian language written in Mesopotamia during the period spanning the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Drawing on the traditions of Sumerian literature, the Babylonians compiled a substantial textual tradition of narrative, legal texts, scientific works, letters. There were libraries in most towns and temples, an old Sumerian proverb averred that he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn. Women as well as men learned to read and write, and in Semitic times, this involved a knowledge of the extinct Sumerian language, the Babylonians very advanced systems of writing, science and mathematics contributed greatly to their literary output. A considerable amount of Babylonian literature was translated from Sumerian originals, vocabularies, grammars, and interlinear translations were compiled for the use of students, as well as commentaries on the older texts and explanations of obscure words and phrases. The characters of the syllabary were all arranged and named, Assyrian culture and literature came from Babylonia, but even here there was a difference between the two countries. There was little in Assyrian literature that was original, and education, in Babylonia, it was of very old standing. Under the Seleucids, Greek was introduced into Babylon, and fragments of tablets have been found with Sumerian and Assyrian words transcribed into Greek letters, the earliest historical royal epic is, however, that of Zimri-Lim of Mari. Similar literature of the middle Babylonian period is poorly preserved with a fragmentary epic of the Kassite period. Exemplars of comical texts span the genres of burlesque to satire and include humorous love poems and riddles. The Dialogue of Pessimism was seen as a saturnalia by Böhl, where master and servant switch roles, and as a burlesque by Speiser, where a fatuous master mouthes clichés, lambert considered it a musing of a mercurial adolescent with suicidal tendencies. The Poor Man of Nippur provides a narrative of the triumph of the underdog over his superior while Ninurta-Pāqidāts Dog Bite is a school text of a slapstick nature. The earliest Akkadian laws are the “Old Assyrian Laws” relating to the conduct of the court of a trading colony in Anatolia. The Laws of Eshnunna were a collection of sixty laws named for the city of its provenance and dating to around 1770 BC. The Code of Ḫammu-rapi, ca.1750 BC, was the longest of the Mesopotamian legal collections, the edict of Ammi-Saduqa, ca.1646 BC, was the last issued by one of Ḫammu-rapi’s successors. The Middle Assyrian Laws date to the fourteenth century BC, over a hundred laws are extant from Assur, the Neo-Babylonian Laws number just fifteen, ca.700 BC, probably from Sippar. A plethora of mid to late second millennium versions give witness to its popularity. ”It is extant in 73 copies and was credited to a certain Sîn-lēqi-unninni, each division contains the story of a single adventure in the career of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. The whole story is a product, and it is probable that some of the stories are artificially attached to the central figure
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Avesta
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The Avesta /əˈvɛstə/ is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the otherwise unrecorded Avestan language. The Avesta texts fall into different categories, arranged either by dialect. The principal text in the group is the Yasna, which takes its name from the Yasna ceremony, Zoroastrianisms primary act of worship. The most important portion of the Yasna texts are the five Gathas and these hymns, together with five other short Old Avestan texts that are also part of the Yasna, are in the Old Avestan language. The remainder of the Yasnas texts are in Younger Avestan, which is not only from a stage of the language. Extensions to the Yasna ceremony include the texts of the Vendidad, the Visperad extensions consist mainly of additional invocations of the divinities, while the Vendidad is a mixed collection of prose texts mostly dealing with purity laws. Even today, the Vendidad is the liturgical text that is not recited entirely from memory. Some of the materials of the extended Yasna are from the Yashts, unlike the Yasna, Visperad and Vendidad, the Yashts and the other lesser texts of the Avesta are no longer used liturgically in high rituals. Aside from the Yashts, these lesser texts include the Nyayesh texts, the Gah texts, the Siroza. Together, these texts are conventionally called Khordeh Avesta or Little Avesta texts. When the first Khordeh Avesta editions were printed in the 19th century, the term Avesta is from the 9th/10th-century works of Zoroastrian tradition in which the word appears as Zoroastrian Middle Persian abestāg, Book Pahlavi ʾpstʾkʼ. In that context, abestāg texts are portrayed as received knowledge, the literal meaning of the word abestāg is uncertain, it is generally acknowledged to be a learned borrowing from Avestan, but none of the suggested etymologies have been universally accepted. The surviving texts of the Avesta, as they exist today and that master copy, now lost, is known as the Sassanian archetype. The oldest surviving manuscript of an Avestan language text is dated 1323 CE, summaries of the various Avesta texts found in the 9th/10th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition suggest that about three-quarters of the corpus has since been lost. A pre-Sasanian history of the Avesta, if it had one, is in the realm of legend, the oldest surviving versions of these tales are found in the ninth to 11th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition. The legends run as follows, The twenty-one nasks of the Avesta were created by Ahura Mazda, supposedly, Vishtaspa or another Kayanian, Daray, then had two copies made, one of which was stored in the treasury, and the other in the royal archives. Following Alexanders conquest, the Avesta was then supposedly destroyed or dispersed by the Greeks after they translated the scientific passages that they could make use of, the Denkard also transmits another legend related to the transmission of the Avesta. In that story, credit for collation and recension is given to the early Sasanian-era priest Tansar, who had the works collected
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Chinese literature
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In more modern times, the author Lu Xun is considered the founder of baihua literature in China. An attempt at tracing the genealogy of Chinese literature to religious spells, there is a wealth of early Chinese literature dating from the Hundred Schools of Thought that occurred during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. The most important of these include the Classics of Confucianism, of Daoism, of Mohism, of Legalism, as well as works of military science and Chinese history. Note that, except for the books of poems and songs, most of this literature is philosophical and didactic, however, these texts maintained their significance through both their ideas and their prose style. These nine books therefore became the center of the educational system and they have been grouped into two categories, the Five Classics, allegedly commented and edited by Confucius, and the Four Books. Other important philosophical works include the Mohist Mozi, which taught inclusive love as both an ethical and social principle, and Hanfeizi, one of the central Legalist texts, important Daoist classics include the Dao De Jing, the Zhuangzi, and the Classic of the Perfect Emptiness. Later authors combined Daoism with Confucianism and Legalism, such as Liu An, among the classics of military science, The Art of War by Sun Tzu was perhaps the first to outline guidelines for effective international diplomacy. It was also the first in a tradition of Chinese military treatises, such as the Wujing Zongyao, the Chinese kept consistent and accurate court records after the year 841 BC, with the beginning of the Gonghe Regency of the Western Zhou Dynasty. The earliest known history of China was the Zuo Zhuan, which was compiled no later than 389 BC. The Book of Documents included early information on geography in the Yu Gong chapter, the oldest extant dictionary in China is the Erya, dated to the 3rd century BC, anonymously written but with later commentary by the historian Guo Pu. Other early dictionaries include the Fangyan by Yang Xiong and the Shuowen Jiezi by Xu Shen, one of the largest was the Kangxi Dictionary compiled by 1716 under the auspices of the Kangxi Emperor, it provides definitions for over 47,000 characters. This groundbreaking text laid the foundation for Chinese historiography and the many official Chinese historical texts compiled for each dynasty thereafter and this was often difficult for the official dynastic historians, who used historical works to justify the reign of the current dynasty. Large encyclopedias were also produced in China through the ages, the Yiwen Leiju encyclopedia was completed by Ouyang Xun in 624 during the Tang Dynasty, with aid from scholars Linghu Defen and Chen Shuda. This included the Extensive Records of the Taiping Era, the Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era, the Finest Blossoms in the Garden of Literature, the rich tradition of Chinese poetry began with two influential collections. In northern China, the Shijing or Classic of Poetry comprises over 300 poems in a variety of styles ranging from those with a suggestion of folk music to ceremonial hymns. The word shi has the meaning of poem or poetry. Confucius is traditionally credited with editing the Shijing and its stately verses are usually composed of couplets with lines of four characters each, and a formal structure of end rhymes. Many of these early poems establish the tradition of starting with a description of nature that leads into emotionally expressive statements, known as bi, xing
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Hebrew literature
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Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews. Hebrew literature was produced in different parts of the world throughout the medieval and modern eras. Beyond comparison, the most important work of ancient Hebrew literature is the Hebrew Bible, the Mishna, compiled around 200 CE, is the primary rabbinic codification of laws as derived from the Torah. It was written in Mishnaic Hebrew, but the commentary on it. Many works of classical midrash were written in Hebrew, during the medieval period, the majority of Jewish and Hebrew literature was composed in Islamic North Africa, Spain, Palestine, and the Middle East. Many works of philosophical literature such as Maimonedes Guide to the Perplexed and The Kuzari. One work of fiction which was written in Hebrew was the Fox Fables by Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan, much medieval Jewish poetry was written in Hebrew, including liturgical piyyutim in Palestine in the seventh and eighth centuries by Yose ben Yose, Yanai, and Eleazar Kalir. These poems were added to the Hebrew-language liturgy and this liturgy was compiled in book form as the siddur by rabbis including Amram Gaon and Saadia Gaon. Later Spanish, Provençal, and Italian poets wrote both religious and secular poems, particularly prominent poets were Solomon ibn Gabirol, Yehuda Halevi, most were also active in translating Jewish rabbinic and secular literature from Arabic into Hebrew. In addition to writing traditional rabbinic literature in Hebrew, modern Jews developed new forms of fiction, poetry, and essay-writing, by the early eighteenth century, Jewish literature was still dominated by Sephardic authors, often writing in Judeo-Arabic. Moses Hayyim Luzzattos allegorical drama La-Yesharim Tehillah may be regarded as the first product of modern Hebrew literature and it has been referred to as a poem that in its classic perfection of style is second only to the Bible. Luzzattos pupil in Amsterdam, David Franco Mendes, in his imitations of Jean Racine and of Metastasio, continued his masters work, moses Mendelssohns translation of the Hebrew Bible into German inspired interest in the Hebrew language that led to the founding of a quarterly review written in Hebrew. Poetry by Naphtali Hirz Wessely such as Shire Tiferet, or Mosiade, made Wessely, so to speak, nachman Krochmal, a philosopher, theologian, and historian. Meir Halevy Letteris, a poet also known for his adaption of Goethes Faust into Hebrew. In Amsterdam, a circle of Hebrew-language literary artists emerged in the nineteenth century, in Hungary, Hebrew-language authors included Solomon Lewison of Moor, author of Melitzat Yeshurun, Gabriel Südfeld, a poet who was the father of Max Nordau, and the poet Simon Bacher. A notable Jewish author in Romania during the century was the physician. Italian Jews of the nineteenth-century who wrote in Hebrew included I. S. Reggio, Joseph Almanzi, Hayyim Salomon, abraham Mapu, the creator of the Hebrew novel, whose historical romance Ahabat Tziyyon exercised an important influence on the development of Hebrew
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Latin literature
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Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. Latin literature was in ways a continuation of Greek literature. Formal Latin literature began in 240 BC, when a Roman audience saw a Latin version of a Greek play, the adaptor was Livius Andronicus, a Greek who had been brought to Rome as a prisoner of war in 272 BC. Andronicus also translated Homers Greek epic the Odyssey into an old type of Latin verse called Saturnian, the first Latin poet to write on a Roman theme was Gnaeus Naevius during the 3rd century BC. He composed a poem about the first Punic War, in which he had fought. Naeviuss dramas were mainly reworkings of Greek originals, but he also created based on Roman myths. Quintus Ennius wrote an epic, the Annals, describing Roman history from the founding of Rome to his own time. He adopted Greek dactylic hexameter, which became the verse form for Roman epics. He also became famous for his tragic dramas, in this field, his most distinguished successors were Marcus Pacuvius and Lucius Accius. These three writers rarely used episodes from Roman history, instead, they wrote Latin versions of tragic themes that the Greeks had already handled. But even when they copied the Greeks, they did not translate slavishly, only fragments of their plays have survived. Considerably more is known about early Latin comedy, as 26 Early Latin comedies are extant –20 of which Plautus wrote, and these men modeled their comedies on Greek plays known as New Comedy. But they treated the plots and wording of the originals freely, Plautus scattered songs through his plays and increased the humor with puns and wisecracks, plus comic actions by the actors. Terences plays were more polite in tone, dealing with domestic situations and his works provided the chief inspiration for French and English comedies of the 17th century AD, and even for modern American comedy. The prose of the period is best known through On Agriculture by Cato the Elder, Cato also wrote the first Latin history of Rome and of other Italian cities. He was the first Roman statesman to put his political speeches in writing as a means of influencing public opinion, Early Latin literature ended with Gaius Lucilius, who created a new kind of poetry in his 30 books of Satires. He wrote in an easy, conversational tone about books, food, friends and this period is usually said to have begun with the first known speech of Cicero and ended with the death of Ovid. Cicero has traditionally been considered the master of Latin prose, Ciceros many works can be divided into four groups, letters, rhetorical treatises, philosophical works, and orations
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Prakrit literature
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Indian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter. The Republic of India has 22 officially recognized languages, the earliest works of Indian literature were orally transmitted. Sanskrit literature begins with the literature of the Rig Veda a collection of sacred hymns dating to the period 1500–1200 BCE. The Sanskrit epics Ramayana and Mahabharata appeared towards the end of the first millennium BCE, Classical Sanskrit literature developed rapidly during the first few centuries of the first millennium BCE, as did the Tamil Sangam literature, and the Pāli Canon. In the medieval period, literature in Kannada and Telugu appeared in the 9th and 11th centuries respectively, later, literature in Marathi, Odia, Bengali, various dialects of Hindi, Persian and Urdu began to appear as well. Early in the 20th century, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore became Indias first Nobel laureate, in contemporary Indian literature, there are two major literary awards, these are the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship and the Jnanpith Award. Examples of early works written in Vedic Sanskrit include the holy Hindu texts, other examples include the Sulba Sutras, which are some of the earliest texts on geometry. Ved Vyasas Mahabharata and Valmikis Ramayana, written in Epic Sanskrit, are regarded as the greatest Sanskrit epics, the famous poet and playwright Kālidāsa wrote one epic, Raghuvamsha, it was written in Classical Sanskrit rather than Epic Sanskrit. Other examples of written in Classical Sanskrit include the Pāṇinis Ashtadhyayi which standardized the grammar. The Laws of Manu is an important text in Hinduism, some other famous plays were Mricchakatika by Shudraka, Svapna Vasavadattam by Bhasa, and Ratnavali by Sri Harsha. Later poetic works include Geeta Govinda by Jayadeva, some other famous works are Chanakyas Arthashastra and Vatsyayanas Kamasutra. The most notable Prakrit languages were the Jain Prakrit, Pali, Maharashtri, one of the earliest extant Prakrit works is Hālas anthology of poems in Maharashtri, the Gāhā Sattasaī, dating to the 3rd to 5th century CE. Kālidāsa and Harsha also used Maharashtri in some of their plays, in Jainism, many Svetambara works were written in Maharashtri. Many of Aśvaghoṣas plays were written in Shauraseni as were a number of Jain works. Canto 13 of the Bhaṭṭikāvya is written in what is called like the vernacular, the Pali Canon is mostly of Indian origin. Later Pali literature however was produced outside of the mainland Indian subcontinent, particularly in Sri Lanka. Pali literature includes Buddhist philosophical works, poetry and some grammatical works, major works in Pali are Jataka tales, Dhammapada, Atthakatha, and Mahavamsa. Some of the major Pali grammarians were Kaccayana, Moggallana and Vararuci, the Charyapadas are often cited as the earliest example of Assamese literature
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Sanskrit literature
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There are contemporary efforts towards revival, with events like the All-India Sanskrit Festival holding composition contests. Some Sanskrit literature such as the Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali and the Upanishads were translated into Arabic and Persian, the Panchatantra was also translated into Persian. Composed between approximately 1500 BCE and 600 BCE in pre-classical Sanskrit, Vedic oral literature forms the basis for the development of Hinduism. There are four Vedas - Rig, Yajur, Sāma and Atharva, each with a main Samhita, the main period of Vedic literary activity falls into c. the 9th to 7th centuries when the various shakhas compiled and memorized their respective corpora. The oldest surviving manuscript of a composed in Sanskrit is the Devi Māhātmya on Palm-leaf dating from the 11th century CE. The older Upanishads belong to the Vedic period, but the part of the Muktika canon is post-Vedic. The Aranyakas form part of both the Brahmana and Upanishad corpus, in the Vedanga disciplines of grammar and phonetics, no author had greater influence than Pāṇini with his Aṣṭādhyāyī. Being prescriptive for all later works, such as Patanjalis Mahābhāṣya. The Backus–Naur form or BNF grammars used to describe modern programming languages have significant similarities with Paninis grammar rules and they are known as itihasa, or history. While not as long as the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is still twice as long as the Iliad, traditionally, the authorship is attributed to the Hindu sage Valmiki, who is referred to as Adikavi, or first poet. In the Ramayana, the meter was introduced for the first time. Like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana was also handed down orally and it includes tales that form the basis for modern Hindu festivals and even contains a description of the same marriage practice still observed in contemporary times by people of Hindu persuasion. The story deals with Prince Rama, his exile and the abduction of his wife by the Rakshasa king Ravana, similar to the Mahabharata, the Ramayana also has several full-fledged stories appearing as sub-plots. The Ramayana has also played a similar and equally important role in the development of Indian, the Ramayana is also extant in Southeast Asian versions. The Mahabharata is one of the longest poetic works in the world, while it is clearly a poetic epic, it contains large tracts of Hindu mythology, philosophy and religious tracts. Traditionally, authorship of the Mahabharata is attributed to the sage Vyasa, the broad sweep of the story of the Mahabharata chronicles the story of the conflict between two families for control of Hastinapur, a city in ancient India. The impact of the Mahabharata on India and Hinduism can hardly be overstated, having been molded by Indian culture, it has in turn molded the development of Indian culture. Thousands of later writers would draw freely from the story and sub-stories of the Mahabharata, Sanskrit also became a major language for Indian religions such as Buddhism and Jainism
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Sangam literature
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The Sangam litterature is the ancient Tamil literature of the period in the history of ancient southern India spanning from c.300 BCE to 300 CE. This collection contains 2381 poems in Tamil composed by 473 poets, Sangam literature is primarily secular, dealing with everyday themes in a Tamilakam context. The poems belonging to Sangam literature were composed by Tamil poets and these poems were later collected into various anthologies, edited, and with colophons added by anthologists and annotators around 1000 AD. Sangam literature fell out of memory soon thereafter, until they were rediscovered in the 19th century by scholars such as Arumuga Navalar, C. W. Thamotharampillai. Sangam literature deals with emotional and material such as love, war, governance, trade. The Indologist Kamil Zvelebil quotes A. K. Ramanujan, In their antiquity and in their contemporaneity, there is not much else in any Indian literature equal to these quiet and these poems are not just the earliest evidence of the Tamil genius. The available literature from this period was categorized and compiled in the 10th century into two categories based roughly on chronology, the categories are patiṉeṇmēlkaṇakku comprising ettuthogai and the pattuppāṭṭu and patiṉeṇkīḻkaṇakku. Sangam poems falls into two categories, the field, and the outer field as described even in the first available Tamil grammar. The inner field topics refer to personal or human aspects, such as love and intimate relationships, the outer field topics discuss all other aspects of human experience such as heroism, courage, ethics, benevolence, philanthropy, social life, and customs. The division into agam and puram is not rigid, but depends upon the interpretation used in a specific context, Sangam literature illustrates the thematic classification scheme first described in the Tolkāppiyam. The classification ties the emotions involved in poetry to a specific landscape. These are, kuṟiñci, mountainous regions, mullai, forests, marutam, agricultural land, neytal coastal regions, in addition to the landscape based tiṇais, kaikkiLai and perunthinai are used for unsolicited love and unsuited love respectively. According to the compilers of the Sangam works such as Nakkeeran, the Tamil Sangams were academies, the legends claim that the Pandyan dynasty of the mythical cities of South Madurai, Kapatapuram, and Madurai, patronized the three Sangams. The word Sangam is probably of Indo-Aryan origin, coming from sangha, noted historians like Kamil Zvelebil have stressed that the use of Sangam literature to describe this corpus of literature is a misnomer and Classical literature should be used instead. They painstakingly collected and catalogued numerous manuscripts in various stages of deterioration, Navalar and Pillai hailed from Jaffna. Navalar brought the first Sangam text into print, this was the Thirumurukaattuppadai of Pattupattu, Pillai brought out the first of the Eight Anthologies of the Sangam classics, the Kaliththokai, in 1887. Swaminathaiyar published his first print of Paththupattu in 1889 and they published more than 100 works in all, including minor poems. J V Chellaiah of Jaffna College did the translation of the Pattuppāṭṭu in English in 1945
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Japanese literature
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Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the Diffusion of Buddhism in Japan, since Japan reopened its ports to Western trading and diplomacy in the 19th century, Western and Eastern literature have strongly affected each other and continue to do so. Before the introduction of kanji from China, Japanese had no writing system and it is believed that Chinese characters came to Japan at the very beginning of the fifth century, brought by immigrants from the mainland of Korean and Chinese descent. Chinese characters were further adapted, creating what is known as manyōgana. The earliest literary works in Japan were created in the Nara period, one of the stories they describe is the tale of Urashima Tarō. The Heian period has been referred to as the era of art. During this era, literature became centered on an elite of nobility. The imperial court patronized the poets, most of whom were courtiers or ladies-in-waiting. Reflecting the aristocratic atmosphere, the poetry was elegant and sophisticated and expressed emotions in a rhetorical style, editing the resulting anthologies of poetry soon became a national pastime. The iroha poem, now one of two standard orderings for the Japanese syllabary, was developed during the early Heian period. Genji Monogatari written in the early 11th century by a woman named Murasaki Shikibu is considered the pre-eminent masterpiece of Heian fiction, other important writings of this period include the Kokin Wakashū, a waka-poetry anthology, and Makura no Sōshi. The Pillow Book was written by Sei Shōnagon, Murasaki Shikibus contemporary and rival, as an essay about the life, loves, another notable piece of fictional Japanese literature was Konjaku Monogatarishū, a collection of over a thousand stories in 31 volumes. The volumes cover various tales from India, China and Japan, the 10th-century Japanese narrative, Taketori Monogatari, can be considered an early example of proto-science fiction. The protagonist of the story, Kaguya-hime, is a princess from the Moon who is sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war and she is later taken back to her extraterrestrial family in an illustrated depiction of a disc-shaped flying object similar to a flying saucer. During the Kamakura period, Japan experienced many civil wars led to the development of a warrior class, and subsequent war tales, histories. Work from this period is notable for its more sombre tone compared to the works of previous eras, with themes of life and death, simple lifestyles, and redemption through killing. A representative work is Heike monogatari, an account of the struggle between the Minamoto and Taira clans for control of Japan at the end of the twelfth century. Other important tales of the period include Kamo no Chōmeis Hōjōki, despite a decline in the importance of the imperial court, aristocratic literature remained the center of Japanese culture in the beginning of the Kamakura period
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Matter of Britain
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It could be said that the legendary history of Britain was created in part to form a body of patriotic myth for the country. Several agendas thus can be seen in this body of literature, the Historia Brittonum, the earliest known source of the story of Brutus of Troy, may have been devised to create a distinguished genealogy for a number of Welsh princes in the 9th century. Traditionally attributed to Nennius, its actual compiler is unknown, it exists in several recensions, as such, this material could be used for patriotic mythmaking just as Virgil linked the founding of Rome to the Trojan War in The Æneid. Geoffrey of Monmouth also introduced the fanciful claim that the Trinovantes, reported by Tacitus as dwelling in the area of London, had a name he interpreted as Troi-novant, New Troy. More speculative claims link Welsh mythology with several of the rulers and it has been suggested, for instance, that Leir of Britain, who later became Shakespeares King Lear, was originally the Welsh sea-god Llŷr. Various Celtic deities have been identified with characters from Arthurian literature as well, many of these identifications come from the speculative comparative religion of the late 19th century, and have been questioned in more recent years. William Shakespeare was interested in the history of Britain, and was familiar with some of its more obscure byways. Shakespeares plays contain several tales relating to these kings, such as King Lear. It has been suggested that Shakespeares Welsh schoolmaster Thomas Jenkins introduced him to this material and these tales also figure in Raphael Holinsheds The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which also appears in Shakespeares sources for Macbeth. Other early authors also drew from the early Arthurian and pseudo-historical sources of the Matter of Britain, the Scots, for instance, formulated a mythical history in the Picts and the Dál Riata royal lines. While they do eventually become factual lines, unlike those of Geoffrey, their origins are vague, the story of Gabrán mac Domangairt especially incorporates elements of both those histories. The Arthurian literary cycle is the best known part of the Matter of Britain and it has succeeded largely because it tells two interlocking stories that have intrigued many later authors. One concerns Camelot, usually envisioned as a utopia of chivalric virtue, undone by the fatal flaws of Arthur. The other concerns the quests of the knights to achieve the Holy Grail, some succeed. Finally, the relationships between the characters invited treatment in the tradition of love, such as Lancelot and Guinevere, or Tristan. In more recent years, the trend has been to attempt to link the tales of King Arthur and his knights with Celtic mythology, usually in highly romanticized, early 20th century reconstructed versions. Additionally, it is possible to read the Arthurian literature in general, derek Pearsall, Arthurian Romance, a short introduction, Blackwell, Oxford,2005 D
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Armenian literature
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Armenian literature begins around AD400 with the invention of the Armenian alphabet by Mesrop Mashtots. Christian Armenian literature begins about 406 with the invention of the Armenian alphabet by Mesrop for the purpose of translating Biblical books into Armenian and this early period of Armenian literature also produced many original compositions. Eznik of Kolb wrote a Refutation of the Sects, and Koryun the History of the Life of St. Mesrop and these men, both of whom were disciples of Mesrop, bring to an end what may be called the Golden Age of Armenian literature. The Golden Age was to large extent a commentary and exegesis of Hebrew and Christian literary tradition, Armenia is known to have been a nation often occupied by nearby powers, such as the Sassanid Empire. The beginning of the Medieval era was marked by the Arab conquest of Armenia, the people then start to talk of a great hero who would be able to liberate them and reestablish Armenian sovereignty. David of Sasun, known as Sasuntsi Davit, is the medieval Armenian equivalent of Hercules, in 1873, the story was first written down by Archbishop Karekin Servantzdiants, who copied word for word the tale as told by a peasant storyteller from Moush named Grbo. One of the most famous treatments of the story was the verse rendition made by Hovhannes Toumanian in 1902 and his poem only covers the story of David, which is actually only one of 4 parts of the story, although the central portion. The four portions of the story are named after their heroes, Sanasar & Balthazar, Lion-Mher, David of Sassoun, Sanasar is the father of Lion-Mher, who is the father of David, who is the father of Mher the Younger. Despite the Christian flavor of the epic, numerous fantastic creatures, good and evil, one of the ancestors of the legendary David is the Lady Dzovinar, who agrees to marry the 90-year-old King of Baghdad in order to save her people. Sanasar and Balthasar were their two sons, Sanasar moves to Sassoun, the fortress-town of Armenia, now located in Turkey. He has three children, the eldest of them being the Great Mher of Sassoun, with superhuman powers, mhers veritable son is David of Sassoun. However, he gets another son from the Arabic queen of Egypt. He is known as Misra Melik, which literally means The sovereign of Egypt and he is probably the figure of all of what the Armenians resented, traitors, and foreign oppressors. Throughout the years the half-brothers fought, and eventually David chops his nemesis in half, the medieval period opens with comparative sterility. It was mostly important in the 8th century, that of John Otznetzi, a Discourse against the Paulicians, a Synodal Discourse, and a collection of the canons of the councils and the Fathers anterior to his day, are the principal works of his now extant. About the same time appeared the translations of the works of several of the Fathers, particularly of St. Gregory of Nyssa and Cyril of Alexandria, from the pen of Stephen, Bishop of Syunik. It was two centuries later that the celebrated History of Armenia by the Catholicos John V the Historian came forth, covering the period from the origin of the nation to the year A. D.925. A contemporary of his, Annine of Mok, an abbot and the most celebrated theologian of the time, composed a treatise against the Tondrakians, the name of Chosrov, Bishop of Andzevatsentz, is honoured because of his interesting commentaries on the Breviary and Mass-Prayers
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