|
|
|
Lithographic Shahnameh published in Iran CHN
A
collection of lithographic illustrations of “Shahnameh”, a
masterpiece by prominent Iranian epic poet Ferdowsi, hit the market
in Iran. The work has been compiled by German scholar Ulrich Marzolph and came out by the Chista Publications.
Entitled “Shahnemeh Album”, the book features illustrations which were printed during Qajar era in Iran and India and Marzolph has gathered them from various libraries across the world.
He met Iranian journalists and reporters at Tehran’s Titr Café last year.
The professor of Islamic studies at Georg-August University in Goettingen, Germany, has conducted 20 years of research on Iranian folk tales, about which he has written many articles in Farsi and German.
He is also a senior member of the editorial committee of the “Enzyklopaedie des Maerchens”, an international handbook of comparative folk narrative research.
Marzolph’s “Narrative Illustration in Persian Lithographed Books” introduces the history of printing in Iran and surveys the investigated sources.
The study supplies basic data on genres of illustrated books, artists active in lithographic illustration, and aspects germane to this particular field of art.
The documentation includes bibliographical references for 116 illustrated books in a total of 351 particular editions and 150 plates with several hundred single illustrations.
He has written several other books, including “The Arabian Nights Reader”, “Persian Popular Literature in the Qajar Period”, and “The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia”. Greek writer’s new book sheds light on Alexander in Iranian poetry
The book, entitled “Alexander the Great in the Works of the Great Iranian Poets Ferdowsi and Nizami Ganjavi”, was introduced during a special ceremony at the Parnassus Literary Society in Athens on February 15.
Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Theodoros Kassimis, Iranian Ambassador to Athens Mehdi Mohtashami, and a number of Greek academics attended the ceremony.
Kassimis described Theodoridou’s work as comprehensive, saying, “The book will provide a good opportunity for Greeks to become familiar with great Iranian poets’ viewpoints on Alexander.”
The book is based on Ferdowsi’s “Shahnameh” and Nizami Ganjavi’s “Eskandarnameh” or “The Sikandarnameh” (“Book of Alexander the Great”).
“Iran’s long history has witnessed many stars that shone so bright that only one of them could culturally enrich the history of a country, but Ferdowsi is even more unique. He played a key role in Iran’s cultural destiny as well as in the eternity of the Persian language,” Iranian cultural attaché in Athens Mohammadreza Darbandi said at the ceremony.
“I’m happy that the book was published. I became familiar with the Persian language when I was working at the Greek Embassy in Tehran, and I enlisted many Iranian scholars for the research into Alexander the Great in the poetry of Iranian poets,” said Theodoridou.
The 780-page book also includes a number of Persian miniatures.
|
