Poetry. In A THOUSAND YEARS OF PERSIAN RUBAIYAT, Reza Saberi translates over 1,500 quatrains from more than a hundred Iranian poets from the beginning of written Persian poetry to the present. A ruba'i is a poem in four lines, which is complete in itself and expresses a single feeling or thought in a very concise and elegant language. The subjects of rubaiyat include divine love, the ecstasy of love, mystical knowledge, and the nature of life and existence.

A repository of subversive, melancholic and existentialist themes and ideas, the rubaiyat (quatrains) that make up the collected poems attributed to the 12th century Persian astronomer Omar Khayyam have enchanted readers for centuries. In this modern translation, complete with critical introduction and epilogue, Juan Cole elegantly renders the verse for contemporary readers. Exploring such universal questions as the meaning of life, fate and how to live a good life in the face of human mortality, this translation reveals anew why this singular collection of poems has struck a chord with such a temporally and culturally diverse audience, from the wine houses of medieval Iran to the poets of Western twentieth century modernism.

One of the very first Persian poets was a woman (Rabe’eh, who lived over a thousand years ago) and there have been women poets writing in Persian in virtually every generation since that time until the present. Before the twentieth century they tended to come from society’s social extremes. Many were princesses, a good number were hired entertainers of one kind or another, and they were active in many different countries – Iran of course, but also India, Afghanistan, and areas of central Asia that are now Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Not surprisingly, a lot of their poetry sounds like that of their male counterparts, but a lot doesn’t; there are distinctively bawdy and flirtatious poems by medieval women poets, poems from virtually every era in which the poet complains about her husband (sometimes light-heartedly, sometimes with poignant seriousness), touching poems on the death of a child, and many epigrams centered on little details that bring a life from hundreds of years ago vividly before our eyes. This new bilingual edition of The Mirror of My Heart – the poems in Persian and English on facing pages – is a unique and captivating collection introduced and translated by Dick Davis, an acclaimed scholar and translator of Persian literature as well as a gifted poet in his own right. In his introduction he provides fascinating background detail on Persian poetry written by women through the ages, including common themes and motifs and a brief overview of Iranian history showing how women poets have been affected by the changing dynasties. From Rabe’eh in the tenth century to Fatemeh Ekhtesari in the twenty-first, each of the eighty-four poets in this volume is introduced in a short biographical note, while explanatory notes give further insight into the poems themselves.

Text in English & Arabic. Abu Said Abil-Kheyr is revered as one of the fathers of Sufism and the rubaiyat. His philosophy of self annihilation in the path of divine love became popularised by Rumi two centuries later. His understanding of religious faith was different -- nearness and understanding of God is achieved through selflessness and love. The "I" was to be abandoned if closeness to God was to be achieved. Abu Said was born in North Eastern Persia a thousand years ago. He was educated in Islamic scholarship and lived and practised as a Muslim cleric. At a certain point he developed a revolutionary new understanding of being and presented it in the form of poetry. He used, what at first seems, simple love poems as a way to express and illumi-nate mysticism. His philosophy was sustained and propagated in a Sufi centre he founded in Nishapur.

Philosopher, astronomer and mathematician, Khayyam as a poet possesses a singular originality. His poetry is richly charged with evocative power and offers a view of life characteristic of his stormy times, with striking relevance to the present day. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The definitive history of Iran, from the ancient Persian empires to today Iran is a land of contradictions. It is an Islamic republic, but one in which only 1.4 percent of the population attend Friday prayers. Iran's religious culture encompasses the most censorious and dogmatic Shi'a Muslim clerics in the world, yet its poetry insistently dwells on the joys of life: wine, beauty, sex. Iranian women are subject to one of the most restrictive dress codes in the Islamic world, but make up nearly 60 percent of the student population of the nation's universities. In A History of Iran, acclaimed historian Michael Axworthy chronicles the rich history of this complex nation from the Achaemenid Empire of sixth century BC to the revolution of 1979 to today, including a close look at Iran's ongoing attempts to become a nuclear power. A History of Iran offers general readers an essential guide to understanding this volatile nation, which is once again at the center of the world's attention.

The poems attributed to Omar Khayyam have a universal and timeless philosophical theme: life is a meaningful journey even if brief and uncertain. They inspire an unconstrained free-thinking mindset and a wise realization that guides thinking persons: it is impossible to see the absolute truth, as the universe has its own reality that remains largely hidden, and that one must think and act accordingly. This book presents a selection of Khayyam's poems in their original Persian language along with their English translations in a faithful and modern version. By relying only on the original Persian version of Khayyam's poems, and using the author's own body of literary and linguistic knowledge, this book presents a modern translation of Omar Khayyam's poems since Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat in 1859.