First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This study surveys a distinctive type of the “Islamic” book which has been largely neglected in previous scholarship: the genre of illustrated lithographed books produced in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran. In addition to introducing the history of printing in Iran and surveying the investigated sources, the study supplies basic data on genres of illustrated books, artists active in lithographic illustration, and aspects germane to this particular field of art. The documentation includes bibliographical references for 116 illustrated books in a total of 351 particular editions and 150 plates with several hundred single illustrations. Lithographic illustration in Iran constitutes the legitimate successor to manuscript illustration, both in content and style. Contrasting with the latter’s refinement, lithographed illustrations were produced in large numbers and served as a powerful medium of popular iconography.

Humanism has mostly considered the question “What does it mean to be human?” from a Western perspective. Dabashi asks it anew from a non-European perspective, in a groundbreaking study of 1,400 years of Persian literary humanism. He presents the unfolding of this vast tradition as the creative and subversive subconscious of Islamic civilization.

Alexander the Great (356-333 BC) was to capture the imagination of his contemporaries and future generations. His image abounds in various cultures and literatures - Eastern and Western - and spread around the globe through oral and literary media at an astonishing rate during late antiquity and the early Islamic period. The first Iskandarnama, or 'The Book of Alexander', now held in a private collection in Tehran, is the oldest prose version of the Alexander romance in the Persian tradition. Thought to have been written at some point between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries by an unknown author, the lively narrative recasts Alexander as Iskandar, a Muslim champion - a king and prophet, albeit flawed but heroic, and remarkably appropriated to Islam, though the historic Alexander lived and died some 1,000 years before the birth of the faith. This new English translation of the under-studied text is the first to be presented unabridged and sheds fresh light onto the shape and structure of this vital document.In so doing it invites a reconsideration of the transformation of a Western historical figure - and one-time mortal enemy of Persia - into a legendary hero adopted by Iranian historiographic myth-making. Evangelos Venetis, the translator, also offers a textual analysis, providing much-needed context and explanations on both content and subsequent reception. This landmark publication will be invaluable to students and scholars of classical Persian literature, ancient and medieval history and Middle East studies, as well as to anyone studying the Alexander tradition.

"Within the pantheon of world literature, the Persian poet Hafiz (born in around 1320 in the city of Shiraz) occupies an exalted position, and his poems have long been translated and studied in the West. However, the degree of the English language's "interaction" with the work of Hafiz has often been underestimated. Parvin Loloi's contribution has been to collect and analyse the entire body of translations of Hafiz in English and to identify the specific problems which his writing presents to translators, together with varying strategies adopted by translators to surmount these difficulties. Her book includes a comprehensive first-line index of English translations of individual poems of Hafiz: a rich resource for students of comparative literature or translation studies, which demonstrates widespread and long-established interest in one of the major poets of Persia. It points to cultural encounters which the debate on Orientalism has largely ignored and highlights a significant influence on English poets of the 19th century, including Byron and Tennyson."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

"Abu Raihan Mohammad Ibn Ahmad (973-1053 C.E.) was an Iranian scholar, also known as Biruni, whose extraordinary achievements include predicting the existence of landmasses on the opposite side of the Earth (North and South America) and calculating the radius of the Earth five centuries before the European Renaissance. Biruni was more than just a great scholar - he was a humanitarian and a man of honor. For the first time, a complete list of Biruni's numerous books on cartography, mathematics, astronomy, history, and geology is presented in a single volume." "Divided into five parts, A Bio-Bibliography for Biruni gives general background information on Biruni's time, his world, and his life, providing the complete names of his 183 books as well as documentation of Internet sites providing biographical information. The titles of these books are given in Arabic, Persian, and English, and they are all annotated and, where possible, the number of folios is given. A list of articles, bibliographies, books, and Internet sites in English completes this volume. This selected research bibliography is for those individuals who are interested in the history of science, scientific research, and scholarship."--BOOK JACKET.