Cultureفرهنگ
10 entriesMythologyاسطوره
Demons bound in mountains, a bird that raises a prince, a border drawn by one arrow: the old stories of Iran, retold from the Shahnameh, the Avesta and the writers who kept them. Many of them still name children, festivals and places today.
18 entriesMusicموسیقی
The music of the Iranian world runs from the classical *radif*, learned phrase by phrase from a master, to the songs of villages, tribes, shrines and Sufi lodges. Much of it exists to carry poetry, so that a ghazal of Hafez may be heard sung before it is ever read. These pages follow its instruments, singers and traditions across Iran and its neighbours, from Tabriz to Bukhara, from Kurdistan to the Gulf.
10 entriesRugsفرش
In Persian a carpet is a *farsh*, simply ‘that which is spread’. These are stories of what has been spread on Iranian floors: how a rug is knotted and dyed, the great carpets that survive, the one that does not, and how to read the ones we live with.
15 entriesPeoplesمردمان
Persians and Azerbaijanis, Kurds and Baluch, Armenians and Hazaras: the Iranian world is made of many peoples, each with its own language, faith, music and memory. All of them are part of the Iranian identity, and each defines itself. These are their stories, told as far as possible from within.
16 entriesLanguagesزبانها
Persian is the language most outsiders hear, but the Iranian world speaks in many voices: Kurdish and Balochi, Azerbaijani Turkish and Arabic, Pashto and Ossetian, Armenian and Aramaic. Some are Iranian languages, cousins of Persian; others belong to quite different families. Persian is one language among them, and also the literary tongue that, for a thousand years, many of them have shared.
17 entriesFaithsدینها
The Iranian world has been home to many faiths, and to people of none. Some were born here and spread across continents; others arrived long ago and made Iran their home. Each is described here as its own followers understand it.
Try
Three ways in that take a minute: ask Hafez a question, see where your views sit, or find today in the Persian calendar.
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