DUSHANBE, March 11, Asia-Plus — An international conference dedicated to the gem of Tajik-Persian classical literature, a poetic opus Shahname (The Book of Kings), will be held in Almaty, Kazakhstan on April 21-22, Asia-Plus has learned from Safar Abdullo, the head of Kazakhstan’s Center for Central Asian and Iranian Studies.
According to him, known orientalists from Tajikistan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Russia have been invited to take part at the conference. “We hope this conference will give a new impulse to study of interrelation between Tajik-Persian literature and literatures of Slavonic and Turkic peoples,” Safar Abdullo said.
Shahname is an enormous poetic opus written by the classic of Tajik-Persian literature Firdavsi around 1000 CE and is the national epic of the Persian-speaking world. The Shahname tells the mythical and historical past of Iran from the creation of the world up until the Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th century.
Aside from its literary importance the Shahname, written in almost pure Persian, has been pivotal for reviving the Persian language subsequent to the influence of Arabic. This voluminous work, regarded by Persian speakers as a literary masterpiece, also reflects Iran”s history, its cultural values, its ancient religions
, and its profound sense of nationhood. Firdavsi completed the Shahname at the point in time when national independence had been compromised. While there are memorable heroes and heroines of the classical type in this work, the real, ongoing hero is Iran itself. It”s thus an important book for all Persian speakers of the Iranian world, including Afghanistan and Tajikistan, to other Persian speakers of Central Asia, Pakistan, India and as far as China.
