Persian Poets & Literature
For a thousand years Persian was the literary language of a region stretching from the Bosphorus to Bengal. This hub organises its canon by poet, by form and by manuscript.
Read this hub in PersianPersian poetry is built from a small set of highly disciplined forms: the ghazal (a lyric of rhyming couplets on one rhyme), the qasida (a formal ode), the masnavi (rhymed couplets for narrative, used for epics of 50,000 lines), and the rubāʿi (a quatrain). Mastery is measured in how much a poet can compress into an inherited shape.
The tradition is also a manuscript tradition: the same texts were copied, illuminated and painted for six centuries, and the surviving books are among the world's most valuable objects.
Quick answers
- Who is the national poet of Iran?
- Ferdowsi (c. 940–1020), whose Shāhnāmeh of roughly 50,000 couplets is the national epic.
- Which Persian poet sells most in English?
- Rumi — versions of his verse have been the best-selling poetry in the United States for three decades.
- What is a ghazal?
- A short lyric of five to fifteen couplets sharing a single rhyme and refrain, with the poet's pen-name in the final line. Hafez is its supreme practitioner.
- What is fāl-e Hāfez?
- The practice of opening Hafez's Divan at random for guidance — still ordinary in Iranian homes, especially on Yalda night and Nowruz.
Explore the hub
The canon
Five poets who define the tradition.
Text, script and book
How the poems were written down and made beautiful.
- OverviewPersian literature
Forms, periods and the full poet index.
Read - ScriptsCalligraphy
Nastaʿlīq, shekasteh and the hierarchy of the written line.
Read - c. 1524–40Shāhnāmeh of Shah Tahmasp
The supreme illuminated manuscript — 258 paintings.
Read - 3,000 yearsPersian language
Old, Middle and New Persian, and the loanwords in English.
Read
Frequently asked questions
Why is Persian poetry so central to Iranian identity?
Because it carried the language through political rupture. After the Arab conquest and again after the Mongol invasion, poetry — memorised, recited, copied — preserved Persian when the state did not.
Was Rumi Persian or Turkish?
He wrote in Persian and was born in Balkh in the Persianate world; he spent his adult life in Konya, in present-day Turkey. Both Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey claim him; his language is unambiguously Persian.
What is the Shāhnāmeh about?
The mythological and historical kings of Iran from creation to the Arab conquest, in roughly 50,000 couplets — including the tragedy of Rostam and Sohrab.
Which illuminated manuscript is the most famous?
The Shāhnāmeh of Shah Tahmasp (c. 1524–1540), 759 folios with 258 paintings by the Tabriz masters.