The Iranian World

Persia first grabbed the attention of the historic world in the sixth century B.C. with the exploits and conquests of the near-legendary Cyrus the Great, conqueror of the Medes, and of his successors Darius and Xerxes, so strikingly described in the renowned fifth-century B.C. classical Greek works of the historians Herodotus and Xenophon. Powerful rulers dominated the Iranian world and influenced the great ancient cultures that surrounded it, until the native dynasties succumbed to the unrelenting push of Islam in the early seventh century A.D. Persian culture and society were then fundamentally altered, yet the interplay between the older era and the Islamic era yielded a new, uniquely Iranian amalgamation.

The growth of a new and strong dynasty under the Azerbaijani Safavids (A.D. 1501-1736), with the backing of Anatolian and Syrian Turkomen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the importance of Iran to European mercantile interests, especially under the British East India Company, explain the growth of materials about Iran and the countries held within its empire. The foreign relationships which arose in that era, with the Ottoman Empire and Russia to the north and the European countries of the west, still influence contemporary events in Iran.

This accounts for the need for a comprehensive repository of materials in Persian and in its related Indo-European languages--Pushto and Dari in Afghanistan and Kurdish in Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. These collections, allied with multiformat research collections housed elsewhere in the Library of Congress, form an invaluable treasury of knowledge on the religions, society, culture, art, and architecture of the past and present Iranian worlds.

The growth of interest in Iranian studies in the United States and the development of the collection at the Library of Congress began almost simultaneously in the late nineteenth century. Persian monographs collected by American missionaries in Persia were donated to the Library in 1872-73. After United States and Persian diplomatic relations were established in 1883, Persian citizens, too, began to donate their works to the Library. Then, in 1945 the Near East Section came into being, and staff were hired to ensure more systematic acquisition of Persian, Afghan, Pushto, Kurdish, and other Iranian-language research materials.

The collection of Persian classical materials includes the literary monuments of Firdawsi (A.D. 940-1020), author of the influential Shahnamah (Book of kings), and the poetry of Omar Khayyam (d. 1123) and of the moralist Sadi of Shiraz (1184-1291). The Iranian rare book collection has many important modern publications as well, such as the Ariyana Almanac from the 1920s, the Safarnamah of the Qajar shah Nasir al-Din (1848-96), and a thirteen-volume commentary on the Masnavi of Jalal al-Din al-Rumi (A.D. 1207-73) by Muhammad Taqi Jafari. Afghan rarities are represented by the Pushto Armaghan of Khwushhal Khan, an anthology of seventeenth-century literary works.

Legends surrounding the fourthcentury B.C. Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great were transmitted by many Mediterranean peoples from antiquity to the present in variants of the work titled The Alexander Romance. These illustrations are from volume 4 of a lithographic edition from Bombay, India (1767), of the Persian-language Iskandernamah (The book of Alexander). In the first, the hero Alexander is shown fighting a dragon. Displayed in the other is a typically Persian decorative device, which combines the artistry of the Persian past with the detailing of the Islamic period. (Near East Section)

The section possesses many Persian manuscripts, comprising all disciplines, but dominated by the historical. Many of these are exquisitely illuminated in the peculiarly beautiful amalgam which is identifiably Iranian, especially copies of the previously mentioned Shahnamah of Firdawsi. The collection also includes numerous anthologies of poets that are remarkable for the beauty of their calligraphy and miniatures as well as for their exquisite Persian bindings. Indeed, a great number of the Islamic book bindings acquired from Kirkor Minassian are Persian. These are both treats for the eyes and important for what they tell us about early book and manuscript production in the Islamic world.

The Library's collection is strong, too, in monographs having to do with contemporary Iranian political life. From works about the Tudah (Communist Party movement) in the 1940s, to the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and through the dissident movements during and after the reign of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, these works document political movements of half a century. Well represented are the revolutionary works of the Ayatollah Khomeini, of Bani-Sadr, and of many others who became well known to the Western world during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Especially important is a collection of Islamic revolutionary photographs from that era taken, both in Iran and abroad, by Sharok Hatami. This collection is now housed in the Prints and Photographs Division, which is also home to the intricate, beautiful, yet wickedly satirical political cartoons about the same revolutionary era drawn by Ardeshir Mohassess.

Persian serial titles number in the hundreds and are both historical and contemporary. The Library holds important runs from the early twentieth century, such as Salnamah-i Ariyan, Salnamah-i Pars, and Armaghan. The importance of Persian serials and newspapers manifested itself with the fall of the shah in 1979 and the need for accurate knowledge about the country, about Khomeini and his revolutionary movement, and about the Iranian people both in their native land and in exile. Not surprisingly, much of the material from twentiethcentury Iran itself deals with Islamic topics, among which are Itilaat (1926-present), Kayhan (1941-present), and Jumhur-i Islam-i (1979-present). Those from outside Iran deal also with secularism and democracy. These, together with Iranian, Afghan, and Kurdish dissident materials of all formats, written by expatriates and assiduously acquired by the Near East Section since 1979, form an impressive and especially potent part of the Persian collection.

[Left] An elaborate display of brightly enameled flowers highlights this lush eighteenth- century Islamic book binding from the Kirkor Minassian collection. (Near East Section) [Right] A grand array of styles of scripts and Islamic ornamental and iconographic motifs adorns this exquisite calligraphic sampler from the Iranian world, which was executed by Husayn Qayin in 1797. (Near East Section)

The collection also includes important Afghani titles from the twentieth century, among them Adab (Kabul, 1930s), Ariyana (Kabul, 1930s), and Pushto Almanac (Kabul, 1930), as well as works of the Afghani Mujahidin starting with the early 1980s. The Kurdish collection, though spare, includes various materials that underscore the contemporary importance of this ancient Iranian people.

The nonvernacular collections, including papers of United States ambassadors and ministers in Iran such as Lloyd C. Griscom (1872-1959) and Loy W. Henderson (1892-1986), are maintained in the Manuscript Division and allow the researcher to examine the growth and nature of United States foreign policy vis à vis Iran. The Persian collection is also complemented in the Library's General Collections by the ubiquitous travelogues, historical and political works in Western languages, and art and archaeological treatises--such as Erich Friedrich Schmidt's unsurpassed discussion of the Achaemenid Persian capital, Persepolis. Other such materials are retained in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, while numerous antique and modern maps can be found in the Geography and Map Division. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division acquired movies from Iran by important Iranian cinematographers, both for their aesthetic value and for the light they shed on contemporary Iranian society.

Researchers of the complex Iranian world from the days of Cyrus to the present are extremely well served by the comprehensive scope of this custodial collection and the ancillary collections that support it.