Nizami Ganjavi
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest romantic poets in Persian literature. Nizami Ganjavi (c1141-1209) is was born in the city of Ganja in what is now Azerbaijan and his popularity soon spread throughout the Persian-speaking lands and beyond. Nizami is best known for his Khamsa, a set of five epic poems that contains a famous retelling of the tragic love story of King Khosrow II (c570-628) and the Christian princess Shirin (unknown-628) and the legend of Layla and Majnun. Not only did he write romances: his poetry also displays a dazzling knowledge of philosophy, astronomy, botany and the life of Alexander the Great.
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Guests
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Christine van Ruymbeke No other episodes
Professor of Persian Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge - Narguess Farzad
2 episodes
Senior Lecturer in Persian Studies at SOAS, University of London -
Dominic Parviz Brookshaw No other episodes
Professor of Persian Literature and Iranian Culture at the University of Oxford
Reading list
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The Poems of Nizami
Laurence Binyon (The Studio Limited, 1928) -
Treasures of Herat: Two Manuscripts of the Khamsah of Nizami in the British Library
Barbara Brend (Gingko, 2020) Google Books → -
The Emperor Akbar's Khamsa of Nizami
Barbara Brend (British Library, 1995) Google Books → -
A Key to the Treasure of the Hakim: Artistic and Humanistic Aspects of Nizami Ganjavi's Khamsa
J-C. Burgel and C. van Ruymbeke (Leiden University Press, 2011) Google Books → -
Mirror of the Invisible World: Tales from the Khamseh of Nizami
Nizami Ganjavi (trans. P.J. Chelkowski) (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975) -
Layli and Majnun
Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Dick Davis) (Penguin Books, 2021) Google Books → -
The Story of Layla and Majnun
Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Rudolf Gelpke) (Omega Publications, 1997) Google Books → -
The Story of the Seven Princesses
Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Rudolf Gelpke) (Bruno Cassirer Ltd, 1976) Google Books → -
The Haft Paykar: A Medieval Persian Romance
Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Julie Scott Meisami) (Oxford University Press, 1995) Google Books → -
Layla and Majnun
Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Colin Turner) (Blake Publishing, 1997) Google Books → -
Hafiz and His Contemporaries: Poetry, Performance and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Iran
Dominic Parviz Brookshaw (Bloomsbury, 2019) Google Books → -
Medieval Persian Court Poetry
Julie Scott Meisami (Princeton University Press, 2014) Google Books → -
Layli and Majnun: Love, Madness and Mystic Longing in Nizami's Epic Romance
Asghar Seyed-Gohrab (Brill, 2003) Google Books → -
The Poetry of Nizami Ganjavi: Knowledge, Love, and Rhetoric
Kamran Talattof, Jerome W. Clinton, and K. Allin Luther (Palgrave, 2000) -
Science and Poetry in Medieval Persia: The Botany of Nizami's Khamsa
C. van Ruymbeke (Cambridge University Press, 2007) Google Books →
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Programme ID: m0025l1q
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0025l1q
Auto-category: 891.5511 (Persian literature)