Persian literature

Part of a series on the
Culture of Iran
History People Languages Symbols Festivals World Heritage Sites
Mythology Folklore
Philosophy Astronomy
Religion Irreligion
Arts
Architecture Literature Music (Dastgah) Dance Theater Cinema Gardens Visual art history (Modern art, Miniature painting)
Handicrafts
Embroidery Calligraphy Carpet Pottery, Jewelry
Cuisine
Balochi cuisine Caspian cuisine Kurdish cuisine
Iran portal
v t e

This article contains Persian text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.

History of literature by era
Ancient (corpora)
Bronze Age Ancient Egyptian Akkadian Elamite Hattic Hittite Hurro-Urartian Luwian Lydian Sumerian Ugarit Classical Ancient Greek Ancient Hebrew Ancient Prakrit Aramaic Classical Chinese Classical Latin Parthian Phrygian Old Persian Old Tamil Sanskrit Syriac
Early medieval
Arabic Armenian Bactrian Byzantine Greek Coptic Gandhari Prakrit Geʽez Georgian Japanese Kannada Maharashtri Prakrit Pre-Proto-Mongolic Old Church Slavonic Old English Old German Old Khmer Old Malay Old Turkic Norse Pali Sabaic Saka Sogdian Telugu Tibetan Tocharian Welsh
Medieval by century
10th 11th 12th 13th 14th
Early modern by century
15th 16th 17th
Modern by century
18th 19th
Contemporary by century
20th 21st
Literature portal
v t e

Persian literature^[a] comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Persian language and is one of the world's oldest literatures.^[1][2][3] It spans over two-and-a-half millennia. Its sources have been within Greater Iran including present-day Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and Turkey, regions of Central Asia (such as Tajikistan), South Asia and the Balkans where the Persian language has historically been either the native or official language.

For example, Rumi, one of the best-loved Persian poets, born in Balkh (in modern-day Afghanistan) or Wakhsh (in modern-day Tajikistan), wrote in Persian and lived in Konya (in modern-day Turkey), at that time the capital of the Seljuks in Anatolia. The Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from Iran, Mesopotamia, Azerbaijan, the wider Caucasus, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia, as well as the Balkans. Not all Persian literature is written in Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic Persians or Iranians in other languages, such as Greek and Arabic, to be included.

At the same time, not all literature written in Persian is written by ethnic Persians or Iranians, as Turkic, Caucasian, Indic and Slavic poets and writers have also used the Persian language in the environment of Persianate cultures.

Described as one of the great literatures of humanity,^[4] including Goethe's assessment of it as one of the four main bodies of world literature,^[5] Persian literature has its roots in surviving works of Middle Persian and Old Persian, the latter of which dates back as far as 522 BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Behistun Inscription. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Muslim conquest of Persia c. 650 CE. After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic Caliphate and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian language literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons, early Iranian dynasties of post-Islamic Iran such as the Tahirids and Samanids being based in Khorasan.^[6]

Persian poets such as Ferdowsi, Saadi, Hafiz, Attar, Nezami,^[7] Rumi^[8] and Omar Khayyam^[9][10] are also known in the West and have influenced the literature of many countries.

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).