Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    An Anthology of Persian Stories & Anecdotes
    An Anthology of Persian Stories & Anecdotes
    An Anthology of Persian Stories & Anecdotes
    Ebook219 pages1 hour

    An Anthology of Persian Stories & Anecdotes

    By Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Persian literature is the reflection of a glorious culture and civilization adorned with gems of wisdom, art and imagination of Persians over many centuries. It is one of the world's oldest literatures. spanning about two-and-a-half millennia, Persian literature has its roots in surviving works of Old and Middle Persian dating back as far as 522 BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Bisotun Inscription. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language. Persian literature has significantly influenced the literatures of Ottoman Turkey, Muslim India and Turkic Central Asia and has been a source of inspiration for Goethe, Emerson, Matthew Arnold and Jorge Luis Borges among so many others.
    This anthology contains about one hundred stories and anecdotes in English recreated out of the greatest works of Persian literature such as Masnavi (rhyming couplets) by Rumi (also Mawlana), Gulistan (the rose garden), by Sa'di, and Shahnameh (the book of kings) by Ferdowsi. The present stories are miniatures of the original ones in many aspects, serving the same purpose of delighting and instructing the readers. They are really reader-friendly both in terms of the time needed to be read and the level of language mastery required. This hopefully makes this collection readable for even those many people nowadays who can devote only little time to reading literature or have little mastery over English as an international language.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza
    Release dateOct 17, 2015
    ISBN9781311424563
    An Anthology of Persian Stories & Anecdotes
    Author

    Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza

    Dr. Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza holds a PhD in applied linguistics and TESOL. He is an applied linguist, a researcher, and a university professor. He has authored articles and books published by Routledge, Springer, Wiley, SAGE, Taylor & Francis, Rowman & Littlefield, etc. He is particularly interested in language, humor, literature, wisdom and an integrated approach to science.

    Related to An Anthology of Persian Stories & Anecdotes

    Related ebooks

    Anthologies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Folk Tales of Asia

      Jun 8, 2020

      Folk Tales of Asia
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Melancholy Of The Hedgehog

      Jul 20, 2018

      The Melancholy Of The Hedgehog
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Clue Is In The Couplet

      Mar 13, 2021

      The Clue Is In The Couplet
      2 min read

    • Article

      Story Time

      Oct 21, 2023

      Story Time
      2 min read

    • Article

      Poetry and Intrigue in Uzbekistan: On Hamid Ismailov’s ‘The Devil’s Dance’

      Aug 8, 2018

      In Hamid Ismailov’s book The Devil’s Dance, one Uzbek prisoner says to another, “It’s time for afternoon prayers, I think. Are you a believer, or one of the moderns?”—a familiar and false dichotomy that intellectuals in Muslim countries have had to c

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Great Escape

      Oct 30, 2021

      The book’s scenario begins with early 18th century Delhi. Qaraar and Abeerah meet and blossom. Then Nadir Shah sounds the death knell of the Mughal empire in 1739, taking 700 elephants, 4,000 camels, 12,000 horses and palanquins loaded with Delhi’s t

      2 min read

    • Article

      Wrinkles In Time

      Aug 9, 2020

      Wrinkles In Time
      17 min read

    • Article

      The Story with No End

      May 8, 2019

      The Story with No End
      2 min read

    • Article

      Great Hymns Abide With Me

      Jan 10, 2024

      I was chatting to my Iranian fishmonger the other day about the oral tradition in poetry. His grandfather had lived in a small village, with no electricity or running water, and only dust roads. Being one of the only literate people in the community,

      3 min read

    • Article

      The First Fairy Tales

      Nov 2, 2023

      The First Fairy Tales
      8 min read

    • Article

      On Memory and Literature

      Jun 30, 2021

      Now we're all possessors of personal supercomputers that can instantly connect us to whole libraries — there can seem little sense to make iambs and trochees part of one's soul. The post On Memory and Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      18 min read

    • Article

      The Wisdom of Women Shines in Najla Jraissaty Khoury’s ‘Pearls on a Branch: Oral Tales’

      Oct 22, 2018

      Long, long ago These things happened or maybe no. Let’s start with the image on the cover. Three women sit in a courtyard. One holds a long-handled pan over a coal brazier; the other two, one of whom has her back to us, hold small cups. They wear ide

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Griffin

      Nov 4, 2020

      The Griffin
      3 min read

    • Article

      Road To Perdition

      Jun 11, 2022

      Road To Perdition
      4 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: September 2019

      Sep 5, 2019

      Eight new and notable collections you want on your nightstand this month, including work by a lost Catalan master and the latest from our new poet laureate. The post Must-Read Poetry: September 2019 appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Solving Riddles, Reading Poems

      Nov 28, 2017

      Solving Riddles, Reading Poems
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Ayşe Papatya Bucak

      Dec 2, 2019

      I guess I believe reading generates empathy. I feel pretty sure it offers readers experiences they would not otherwise have. But does it change how we act? The post A Year in Reading: Ayşe Papatya Bucak appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Her Line In The Sand

      Mar 29, 2020

      Her Line In The Sand
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Spinner Of Yarns

      Feb 18, 2023

      The Spinner Of Yarns
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for An Anthology of Persian Stories & Anecdotes

    4.5/5

    3 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      A beautiful book and professionally written. Each story carries a heavy load of moral lessons. I feel so sorry that these anecdotes were not part of the curriculum when I was a student in secondary school in my country. Believe me, I would have become wiser at a younger age. It is always better to be wise from a young age to avoid mistakes and be kind to everything and everybody. I am really impressed how much wise these people were who have written these anecdotes and how much they have contributed to collective awareness. I hope that this book is translated into different languages so that everybody enjoys reading it and making it a leading guide in everyday interaction

    Book preview

    An Anthology of Persian Stories & Anecdotes - Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza

    Preface

    Persian literature is the reflection of a glorious culture and civilization adorned with gems of wisdom, art and imagination of Persians over many centuries. It includes a great number of anecdotes and stories, in varying length and genres both in prose and verse which instruct and delight at the same time. The main incentive behind the present anthology was to make Persian literature accessible for a wide range of readers all around the world. Although the outstanding works of Persian literature have already been translated into English and some other languages, these translations mainly suit only an elite number of literary experts who are completely familiar with Persian language and culture. This, in turn, is in contrast with the fact that literature should serve all people from all walks of life.

    This anthology contains about one hundred stories and anecdotes recreated out of the following works of Persian literature.

    1. Masnavi (rhyming couplets) by Rumi (also Mawlana), the great Persian poet, scholar and Sufi mystic, 13th century.

    2. Gulistan (the rose garden), by Sa'di, the great Persian poet and literary man, 13th century.

    3. Akhlaq-al-Ashraf (ethics of the aristocracy) and Risala-i-Dilgusha (joyous treatise), by Ubayd Zakani, the great Persian poet and satirist, 14th century.

    4. Kelileh o Demneh (Kelileh and Demneh), by Nasr Allah Munshi, 13th century, Persian author and translator, originally from Panchatantra, an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables in verse and prose, 3rd century BCE.

    5. Marzban-Nama (the book of Marzban), by Saʿd-al-Din Varavini, Persian author and translator, 13th century originally by Marzban b. Rostam, a Persian prince, 4th century.

    6. Haft-Paykar (seven beauties), Makhzan al-Asrar (the treasury of mysteries), Khosrow o Shirin (khosrow and Shirin), and Layli o Majnoun (Layli and Majnoun) by Nizami Ganjavi, great Persian poet, 12th century.

    7. Shahnameh (the book of kings) by Ferdowsi, great Persian poet, 10th century.

    8. Manteq-ot-Tayr (the conference of the birds), Mosibat-Nameh (the book of suffering) and Ilahi-Nameh (the divine book) by Attar, the great Persian poet and suphist, 12th century.

    9. Sindbad-Nameh (the book of Sindbad) by Zahiri-Samarqandi, the Persian author and translator, 12th century.

    10. Qabus-Nameh (the book of Qabus) by Keikavus, the Persian king and author, 11th century.

    It is, in essence, a free translation of old Persian stories in varying length, from a few lines of prose to several thousands lines of poetry, into simple prose with an atmosphere of a more familiar world than that of ancient times. Some stories have been originally short as it is often the case with stories from Gulistan by Sa'di or from Risala-i-Dilqusha by Ubayd Zakani. However, in case of long stories (i.e. more than a few pages of prose), such as the ones from Shahnameh by Ferdowsi or Layli and Majnoun by Nizami, the stories have been summarized into not more than three pages of prose, keeping its essence and message intact as far as possible. Therefore, all stories in this anthology are really reader-friendly both in terms of the time needed to be read and the level of language mastery required. This hopefully makes this collection readable for even those many people nowadays who can devote only little time to reading literature or have little mastery over English as an international language. Moreover, almost all stories in this anthology have been directly recreated out of perusing the original works. Yet, some online resources and available Persian books have inspired me to include or exclude some stories among which I would like to acknowledge the series Good Stories for Good Children in Persian by Mehdi Azar-Yazdi that won a UNESCO prize in 1966 and was selected as Iran’s best book of the year in 1967. In addition, while the stories in this anthology do not follow any specific order, they are hopefully arranged in the most amusing way, avoiding overlapping themes in successive stories.

    Finally, it's worth noting that some of the selected stories have originally had various layers of meaning covering a wide range of concepts from everyday issues to sophisticated ideologies. In case of some stories especially the longer ones, the brevity and simplicity of the present anthology may have been reached at the cost of defocusing some notions. Defensibly speaking, however, the gains are worth the loss. Therefore, the present stories are miniatures of the original ones in terms of the main plot, theme and moral.

    Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza,

    July, 04, 2015,

    Shahreza, Iran.

    Bald parrot

    Once upon a time there lived a shop keeper who had a talking parrot. The parrot could speak quite a lot of words. So the shop keeper loved it a lot. One day, however, a cat entered the store while the man was away. The parrot was trying to escape the cat when accidentally it dropped down and broke bottles of oil and vinegar. Before long, his owner came back just to see what a mess his store was. The man got angry and hit the parrot on the head. The bird's head got injured and it became bald. The poor bird that saw there was no feather on its head, got very depressed and stopped talking any more. The shopkeeper did everything to cheer it up and encourage it to talk again but it didn't work.

    One day, a bald man happened to enter the man's store to buy some groceries.

    He used to have lots of hair on his head. But now he's bald. I don't know why? the shop keeper said after the shopper had left the store.

    He has definitely broken bottles of oil and got hit on the head. The parrot began to talk.

    Everyone there burst into laughter because of the parrot's false comparison.

    From Masnavi (rhyming couplets), by Rumi (also Mawlana), the great Persian poet, scholar and Sufi mystic, 13th century.

    White lie

    In one of the wars, several captives were brought to the victorious king. He ordered the soldiers to behead one of them. The helpless captive who was about to be killed began cursing and blaming the king. As it's said, when you have nothing to lose, words pour out of your heart.

    What is he saying? The king asked.

    A triumphant king forgives the inferiors and is kind with them. One of the wise commanders replied.

    The king smiled and forgave the captive. But, another commander stepped forward and told the truth about what the captive had really said.

    "That

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1