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Persian passion play or ta`ziya depicts the role of the Prophets granddaughter Zeynab during the tragic death of the third Shiite Imam Hoseyn in Karbala in 680. This book depicts how Zeynab has become a role model in modern Iranian society, especially during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War.Mahnia A. Nematollahi Mahani worked as an editor at the Center for International Cultural Studies in Tehran, before she started her academic career in Persian Studies at Leiden University.

"For us non-Iranian readers of Hafiz's 14th-century ghazal poems, Iranianattitudes toward the premier lyric poet in the 1,000-year history of Persianliterature, are almost as intriguing as Hafiz's poetry itself. First is theinclination of Iranian readers to find deep, spiritual meaning in that poetry.Second is their personal identification with what they perceive as Hafiz'sphilosophy. Third is their linking of Iranian cultural identity with Hafiz's life and works to the point where some educated Iranians define part of theirIranianness by referencing Hafiz and even consider him a relevant politicalvoice. These features of Iranian appreciation of Hafiz come alive on pageafter page in The Reception of Hafiz in Nineteenth and Twentieth-CenturyPersia, while author Bahman Solati himself epitomizes Iranian love of andidentification with the poet's stances and themes in his poems."Michael Craig Hillmann, The University of Texas at Austin-Bahman Solati is Assistant Professor in Persian Language. He is the authorof several publications, including Rubaiyyat-i-Hakim Umar Khayyam, andPersian Proverbs in three volumes.

Agreement Restrictions in Persian is the first comprehensive attempt to tackle the issue of verbal agreement in Persian from a cross-linguistic point of view. Persian is a field of research within theoretical linguistics that is yet to be sufficiently explored. This book adopts the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1995-2004) which is at the forefront of recent theories of formal syntax and applies it to the Persian language.Although it is commonly believed that in Persian the verb agrees with the subject, several constructions seem to constrain this obligatory rule. Adopting the framework of Distributed Morphology, the author argues that agreement is in fact obtained with the plural inanimate subjects but a morphological rule may block the result. Unlike the previous analyses which consider the experiencer as the subject of the psychological constructions, the author argues that the psychological state is the subject of the sentence. The findings of this book not only contribute to better understanding of Persian syntax, but also have important implications for grammar theory.Anousha Sedighi is assistant professor of Persian and director of the Persian Program at Portland State University.

Abu ¿Abdollâh' Jafar ibn Mohammad Rudaki (c. 880 CE-941 CE) was a poet to the Samanid court which ruled much of Khorâsân (northeastern Persia) from its seat in Bukhara.He is widely regarded as "the father of Persian poetry, for he was the first major poet to write in New Persian language, following the Arab conquest in the seventh and eighth centuries, which established Islam as the official religion, and made Arabic the predominant literary language in Persian-speaking lands for some two centuries.In the tenth century the Caliphate power, with headquarters in Bagdad, gradually weakened. The remoteness of Khorâsân, where Rudaki was based, provided a hospitable atmosphere for a "renaissance" of Persian literature. Persian poetry¿now written in the Arabic alphabet¿flourished under the patronage of the Samanid amirs, who drew literary talent to their court. Under the rule of Nasr ibn Ahmad II (r. 914-943), Rudaki distinguished himself as the brightest literary star of the Samanid court.This book presents Rudaki as the founder of a new poetic aesthetic, which was adopted by subsequent generations of Persian poets. Rudaki is credited with being the first to write in the rubâi form; and many of the images we first encounter in Rudaki's lines have become staples of Persian poetry.