The Survey of Nezami Ganjavi’s Role in Revival of the Iraqi’s Style of the Persian Poem

Outline of the Topic

A) Introduction

The Persian language has endured for more than a millennium in its present form. The main reason for this is the rich Persian literature and, especially, poetry. Persian speaking people today can read poems written more than 1000 years ago and understand and enjoy it as was done then. Perhaps, the best-known Persian poets in the West are Khayyam, Rumi, Nezami and Saadi. Although they deserve the fame, Persian poetry is so much more. I’ll try to give a glimpse into the vast treasure of Persian poetry. The present-day Persian language, which the native speakers call Farsi, is derived from the Indo- Iranian branch of Indo-European languages. An old form of this language, called Pahlavi, prevailed in the Persian Empire as early as 6th century BC, when it was written in cuneiform. Incidentally, you may have noticed that I am calling the language under discussion “Persian” and not “Farsi” as some people are recently calling it, regrettably including some of the Persians. I think this is an unfortunate choice. Dear as “Farsi” is to us when we speak or write Persian, “Persian” in English, and its likes in Western languages, are fairly well known names resulting from the long history of Persia and its political and cultural achievements and its relationships with other nations. One talks of Persian art, Persian miniatures, Persian carpets, Persian poetry, Persian blue, Persian gardens, the Persian Empire, and Greco-Persian wars, not to mention Persian cats. The Bible speaks of “the laws of the Medes and the Persians” as examples of strictly enforced laws. These are all, unless one is a cat hater, pleasant and useful associations. Of course, not all such associations are complimentary. For instance, one talks about the wars of the Greeks and the Persians as the war between democracy and arbitrary rule, reflecting the view of the Greeks who understandably were hardly fond of the Persians. Later, in the 2nd century BC, a new alphabet was created, known also as Pahlavi, which remained in use until the Arab invasion in the 7th century. Since the 10th century, Persian has been written in Arabic script, using the 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet, itself derived from the Aramaic alphabet, and 4 more letters (p, ch, zh, and g). Also, some Arabic words have been injected into Persian. However, Persian is different from Arabic, which is a Semitic language. So, the Persian language has had the same structure for more than 1300 years. It is also spoken in some parts of former Soviet Union (Azarbaijan, Tajikstan, and Uzbakestan), as well as Afghanistan, and parts of China, India, Pakistan, and Turkey.