Shahnameh: The Persian national epic.

A tale of the book in Iran by Azar Mahloujian.

The history of the book in Iran is a story of a rich culture’s resilience, of its ability to endure and even flourish through periods of devastation, political chaos, hardship and oppression. It is a story that stretches far back in time, yet even as you read this, that story is still being written.

The earliest Iranian written work to be found thus far consists of a cuneiform inscription dating back to the time of Darius I (522 BCE-486 BCE), the third Achaemenid king. Carved on a rock face at the foot of the Zagros Mountains, in the Kermanshah region of Iran. The inscription is in three languages: Babylonian, Old Persian and Elamite. The deciphering of this inscription provided an important key for the study of the cuneiform script.

Iran’s oldest book is the Avesta, a collection of sacred Zoroastrian writings. It comprises the teachings of prophet Zoroaster, as well as writings on cosmogony, law and liturgy. The text – in Avestic, an ancient language of the region – is divided into five main parts, each composed in a different time and place.

Iran’s first significant library was established in Estakhr, the capital of the Achaemenid kings. In 331 BCE, when the city fell to the armies of Alexander the Great, the library was destroyed by fire. There is still a question as to whether the fire was set accidentally by drunken soldiers or deliberately as revenge for the destruction of Athens by the Persian king Xerxes.

At the order of Alexander, most of the scientific and literary works that survived were removed from the ruins and taken to Greece, where they were translated and the originals then destroyed. Following Alexander’s conquest, Iranians lived under the rule of his successors, the Macedonian Selucids. The Hellenistic culture they brought dominated life in Iran’s cities. But Greek influence led to the stagnation of Iran’s own culture.

The destruction of libraries is an unfortunate but frequent occurrence in Iran’s history. At the site of the ruins of the library of Rostaghji, now the city of Isfahan, archaeologists have discovered that Iranian kings anticipated the need to save books during times of military invasion. Their solution was to bury important volumes, like works on astronomy, beneath the library building itself.

During the Sassanid dynasty, from the third century of the Common Era to the seventh, Iran experienced a flourishing of its literary culture. New libraries were built and literature – both religious and secular – was collected. Along with religious commentary, the Avesta was reassembled from remnants and standardised during this period. Nonreligious writings included works on astronomy, mathematics, history, medicine, politics, warfare and music. During the reign of Khosrow I, foreign works of entertainment – including Hellenistic romance literature and Indian tales, such as the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat – were brought into Iran and translated. But all this was to change.

The single most significant event in Iranian history was the Arab invasion and the arrival of Islam in the seventh century. Islam’s victory in Iran marked a dramatic break with the country’s past. In 637, following his defeat in the battle of al-Qadisiyya, Yazdegerd III – the last Sassanid king – was forced to flee from his winter capital, Taysafun. The city and its treasures were left to the mercy of the Arab conquerors. Like much of the city, its library was destroyed.

The Arabs forbade Iranians to use the Persian language. Arabic became the language of law and culture. For two centuries no books – at least no surviving books – were written in Persian. Despite Arab censorship, Iranians never stopped speaking their own language. The spoken word became a means of creating and preserving literature. This oral tradition is still alive today.

When one Arab commander was asked by his men what they should do with the Iranian books. He answered that since the Quran was the only book worth reading and preserving, all books in Persian should be destroyed. Other Arab commanders apparently had similar feelings. Persian works of science, poetry and prose were judged to be immoral and were banned. Arab soldiers set fire to libraries, burning books or throwing them into rivers. All to destroy the written literature, which bore witness to the defeated people’s past. Some Zoroastrian priests were able to save parts of the Avesta. Another group immigrated to India, taking with them the Avesta and other books. Today only a small part of the Avesta remains.

The Samanid period (819-999) brought a renaissance of Iranian literature. In their struggle against the Arabs for power and independence, the Samanids used the Persian language as a political weapon. They renewed Persian as a language of literature. This period saw the emergence of Modern Persian – Farsi – which uses the Arabic alphabet and incorporates many Arabic words. Poet Rudaki revived Persian lyrical poetry. Persian books on administration, history, science and religion were written and published. Commentaries on the Quran were translated from Arabic to Persian.

Before long, Persian became the second major language of Islamic high culture. The intellectual vitality of the Samanid capital, Bukhara, attracted leading scholars and poets, both Persian and Arabic, and the city rivalled Baghdad as the cultural capital of Islam. Many of Bukhara’s writers were bilingual and wrote their books in both languages.

The greatest literary achievement of this period was the composition of the Persian national epic, the Shahnameh (Book of Kings), a book that even today is of signal importance in Iranian cultural life. The Shahnameh was written for Mahmud of Ghazna by poet Ferdowsi, who completed the work in 1010. He gathered and set to verse different prose versions – written in Pahlavi or Middle Persian – of the histories of the kings of Persia. The epic, which was thirty-five years in the writing, consists of nearly 60,000 couplets, and its story spans several thousand years. It begins in mythical times and concludes with the Arab conquest.

The impact of the Shahnameh was immense. It reminded Iranians of the country’s glorious past. Even today, nearly a thousand years after its completion, this legendary masterwork is read and recited by Iranians from all walks of life, from urban intellectuals to simple village farmers. Islamic fundamentalists do not, of course, honour the Shahnameh, because to them Iran’s pre-Islamic history does not merit such regard. But even as they hate it, they are nonetheless affected by it, often in ways they are not even aware of. Its influence is pervasive in the idioms of Iranian life – in the names, words, tales and ideas.

Over time, Arab hostility to Persian culture abated and was transformed into its opposite. In The History of Islamic Culture, Lebanese historian Jurji Zaydan discusses the great interest the Arabs developed in learning from other nations. They translated Greek works in science and philosophy and Persian texts in astronomy, history and music into Arabic. Historians know of more than seventy Persian texts that were translated into Arabic in the eleventh century alone.

In the thirteenth century, the Mongol army swept through Iran. The invading forces of Genghis Khan visited terror, death and destruction on the country. The ensuing lack of order left Iran divided, with Mongol agents controlling some districts and Iranian profiteers ruling others.

The Mongol invasion was soon followed by another catastrophe. In the fourteenth century, Turkish armies under the command of Lame Timur – better known in the West as Tamerlane – invaded Iran. Even today, the name Lame Timur is synonymous, in Iran as well as in Europe, with barbarity.

These invasions entailed not only the conquest of people and territory but also of culture. The Mongols destroyed much of Iran’s cultural life, especially the cultural life of ordinary people. The same can be said of the Turks. Under Turkish rule, Iranian scholars served at the pleasure of Turkish-speaking emirs and sultans. Once again, Persian literature fell into decline.

But, in the remote province of Fars, the Persian literary tradition was kept alive. In 1257, poet Sadi, of the city of Shiraz, composed the Bustan (Orchard), and the following year he wrote the Golestan (Rose Garden). These two works combine prose and verse in a flowing style that is still admired for its achievement of harmony of sound, imagery and content. And this admiration extends beyond Iran, for Sadi has been translated into many Western languages.

Following Sadi, Shiraz produced another fine lyric poet, the Sufi mystic Hafiz (1325-1389). Hafiz’s most famous work, the Divan, can be found today in nearly every Iranian home. The extraordinary popularity of Hafiz’s poetry stems from his simple and musical language, his love of humanity, and his contempt for hypocrisy and mediocrity.

Another significant book from this period was the Masnavi-ye Manavi (Spiritual Couplets), a didactic epic of 26,000 verses by Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273). Rumi is one of Sufism’s most revered figures, and his influence on Islamic mystical thought and literature is profound. He is also generally regarded as the greatest poet to write in the Persian language. In Muslim countries, the Masnavi is considered by some to be a religious work second in importance only to the Quran. His writings have been translated into many languages. He has, in recent years, become one of the most popular poets in the United States.

Over the following centuries, Persian literature and the book culture of Iran continued to flower and decline as the country’s political fortunes changed. One of the great achievements during this time was in the art of bookbinding, which began to flourish in the fifteenth century and continued for several centuries. The ornamental designs and miniature illustrations that adorn many Persian books from this period are still renowned for their beauty.

The early twentieth century was another turning point for Iranian culture. A constitutional revolution in 1906 led to the institution of a parliament – the Majlis – in 1908, that curtailed the power of the monarch to an extent. Iran was making other steps toward modernisation as well.

A new school system was instituted, thus increasing the ranks of the educated while printing presses made available newspapers and journals to serve them. Many young people were sent to Europe for their university education. Having been steeped in knowledge of the Western tradition, they returned to form a new Persian intelligentsia and bring about a reawakening in the cultural life of the country.

Poetry had always been held as the foremost form of literary expression. But in the twentieth century, modern prose found its way into the hearts of the Iranian people. In 1921, Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh’s collection of short stories – Yaki bud yaki nabud (Once upon a time) – was published, ushering in a new era of Persian prose. Considered the founder of modern Persian fiction, he was the first author to write in colloquial Persian.

Poetry was changing as well. Nima Yushij, the father of modern Persian poetry, broke with tradition by using free verse. His follower Ahmad Shamlou, modern Iran’s leading poet, was as comfortable writing poems expressing his political engagement as he was composing lyrical love poems.

Modernisation also brought the opening of Iran’s first university, the construction of motorways and the Trans-Iranian railway, and the emancipation of women. Following World War II, Iranians – especially the young and educated – turned their awareness to their country’s social and political conditions.

In 1952, a nationalist movement under the leadership of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq brought about the nationalisation of the British oil holdings in Iran. Mosaddeq’s popularity was enormous. When the Shah attempted to dismiss him, people took to the streets and the wave of protests forced the Shah to leave Iran. But after only a few days, the Shah, with US support, returned to Iran and imprisoned Mosaddeq for three years. He was then placed under house arrest until his death in 1967.

Upon his return to power, the Shah outlawed Mosaddeq’s National Front, as well as the Tudeh, the Communist Party. To silence all who opposed him, the Shah, again with US help, built up his secret police force, Savak, which was infamous for the savage torture of political prisoners. An extensive censorship apparatus was created, which, despite the overthrow of the Shah by the Islamic Revolution, still functions today.

Operating under the Ministry of Information, the censorship authority controlled, and still controls, the publication of all manuscripts. Nothing can be published without a permit. Even after publication, a book can be deemed immoral or hostile to the regime and be confiscated from bookshops. Sometimes the mere popularity of a book or a writer, is cause for suspicion, and the authorities may reexamine a text to determine whether to stop publication of new editions.

Iranian writers have described how this censorship functions. After reviewing the manuscript the authorities send the writer a list of words, sentences and pages to be deleted. Before the revolution, the authorities were sensitive to such words as red and red rose which symbolised revolution and bloodshed, or black night and high walls which symbolised prison and repression.

Since the Islamic revolution, words with sexual connotations are of special concern to the censors. It is not even permissible to make mention of a woman’s breasts. In the censors’ vocabulary, this is called negative censorship. Positive censorship, on the other hand, entails suggesting words or sentences that should be added in the text to make it appear milder or more supportive of the regime.

The publication or possession of forbidden books is dangerous for all concerned — writers, readers, booksellers and publishers — so those who are not political activists will seldom risk reading them. Under the Shah, Mother by Maxim Gorki, was such a book. Having it in one’s home could lead to a three-year prison sentence.

Some bookshops, mostly those located near Tehran University sold forbidden books, but, they were not on the shelves. Those books were called white cover books because of the white dust covers they all had. To buy such a book, one would go to a trustworthy bookseller, who would wrap the book in gift paper before handing it to the buyer. This was Iran’s version of the Russian samizdat.

In 1979, the repressive regime of the Shah was overthrown and replaced by an Islamic republic. In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, millions of white cover books were sold on the pavements outside Tehran University. But some months later, groups of men and women, claiming themselves as members of Hezbollah (Party of God), took control of the streets, smashed the windows of bookshops and set fire to books they deemed immoral. Soon the new government banned books written by or about the Shah, as well as books dedicated to him or the royal family. Eventually, this censorship extended to books on Marxism, Darwinian evolution and anything else seen as contradictory to religious doctrine.

The famous fatwa that decreed punishment for anyone having anything to do with Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses might be regarded not as something new but as a continuation of an old heritage, passed down from the Shah, which he in turn inherited from other despots who came before him. It is worth noting that in 1988, one year before the fatwa, another book by Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, was published in Iran and was awarded as the best Persian translation of the year. After the fatwa, all copies of that book were confiscated.

Iran’s war with Iraq (1980-1988) had a catastrophic impact on Iran’s literary life. Censorship hardened as almost any word or deed could easily be interpreted as treacherous. Publishers and writers were punished for any book judged critical of government policies.

Because of the lack of foreign currency and the trade blockade imposed by many countries, paper was rationed. Paper was in abundant supply for the publication of religious books and for war propaganda, but, the authorities simply stopped distributing paper for publishing anything else. In addition to political obstacles, publishers and writers faced economic obstacles as well. Publishers were reluctant to invest in books that might be seen as subversive. Deprived of income, many writers were forced to earn a living working odd jobs.

After a long period of cultural decline, Iranian literary life is experiencing a resurgence. One only need to look at the numbers to see this. According to official statistics, the number of books published in 1986 was 3812. In 2001, the figure was 23,305.

While high prices prevent many Iranians from buying books, it does not stop them reading. Books are passed around among relatives and friends, so much so that it is said that a book that sells a thousand copies will have five thousand readers. At the annual Tehran book fair, one can see the eagerness with which Iranian readers pursue their literary interests. One year, the entire printing – 12,000 copies – of a volume of Ahmad Shamlou’s poems sold out on the first day.

A new wave of struggle for a tolerant society has paved the way for cultural renewal. But, the price has often been high. For some years, one horrific development has been the phenomenon of chain murders that entail the kidnapping and murder of a series of victims, whose bodies are then left out to be found. Mohammad Mokhtari and Jafar Pouyandeh are just two of the writers who have died in this way.

Despite the risks and a very restrained public sphere, artists and intellectuals have continued to fight for freedom of expression in Iran where the brutality of the regime goes in waves. Right now, the repression is more naked and aggressive than before, as confirmed by the disturbing headlines that routinely come out of Iran.

Before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president four years ago, he had already constructed a picture of himself that scared many. As the mayor of Tehran, he came up with the idea to replace public libraries with mosques. As he took over as president, the level of censorship increased dramatically. On the day of his inauguration, the performance of a play by the famous theatre producer Bahram Beyzaei was stopped in Tehran, where it had been already staged for twenty-one times. Soon, art galleries were forced to shut down and censorship of books became more severe and arbitrary. Writer Yaghoub Yadali was sentenced to prison, because a woman in his novel had a relationship with a man though they were not married.

A new kind of censorship of books is now being enforced in Iran. In 2008, the authorities in Isfahan introduced a literary canon: a list of 107 books classified as useful, that would replace the unuseful books at public libraries. Publication of books require permission, and, only those books that do not deal with the current situation in Iran are granted permission. Today, it takes two years to receive an answer from the Iranian censors regarding such publishing permissions. Meanwhile, many publishers are on the verge of bankruptcy. Under the Ahmadinejad regime, the number of copies per edition has decreased from 5000 to 3000. Censorship has become so extensive that the Iranian Writers Union describes it as cultural extermination.

Since June 2009, demonstrations have been staged across Iran in protest against the results of the tenth presidential election. The regime has responded to peaceful public protests with blatant violence leading to deaths, injuries and mass arrests. While suffering under the brutal culture politics of Ahmadinejad, the Iranian cultural activists have played a major role in the campaign for democracy.

Throughout Iranian history, Iranians have seen their culture attacked by one invading or despotic regime after another. From Alexander to Lame Timur to the Iranian Hezbollah to Ahmadinejad, they burn books, destroy libraries, censor the language, and rewrite the history. But, after each defeat, like the mythical bird arising from the ashes, Iranian culture regathers its strength and revives its creativity.

Azar Mahloujian is an Iranian writer, researcher and librarian, exiled in Sweden since 1982. Her website, in Swedish and English, is available at: http://www.azar.se