Culture

Celebrities & Books of Iran

The legendary figures, timeless books and great minds that shaped Persian civilisation.

10 entries

Ferdowsi & Shahnameh — The epic 'Book of Kings', the world's longest epic poem created by a single poet, which single-handedly revived the Persian language.

Avicenna (Ibn Sina) — One of the most significant physicians, astronomers, thinkers, and writers of the Islamic Golden Age, famous for 'The Canon of Medicine'.

Rumi & the Masnavi — The poet of love and longing, whose Masnavi has been called the Quran in Persian.

Hafez & his Divan — The poet of Shiraz whose ghazals are found in nearly every Iranian home and consulted as an oracle.

Saadi: the Gulistan & Bustan — The master of Persian prose and verse, whose lines on human kinship are quoted at the United Nations.

Omar Khayyam & the Rubaiyat — Mathematician, astronomer and poet of quatrains on the brevity of life — the kuzeh, the wine, the dust.

Nizami & the Khamsa — The great storyteller of Persian romance: Khosrow and Shirin, Layla and Majnun, the Seven Beauties.

Attar & the Conference of the Birds — The perfumer-poet of Nishapur whose birds cross seven valleys in search of the Simorgh.

Al-Khwarizmi & the Birth of Algebra — The scholar from Khwarazm whose book gave the world the word algebra and whose name gave us algorithm.

Razi (Rhazes): Physician & Chemist — The physician of Rey who distinguished smallpox from measles and worked with alcohol in the laboratory.