More modern stuff like Rumi I know of but what about ancient stuff
I know there are one or two Persianists who browse this board.
But I can tell you even as a relative pleb that it's not much that truly survives from the Achaemenid, Arsacid, and even Sasanian periods. Most of what we know is mediated through Islamic civilisation, which subsumed the Persian (or the other way around, depending on your perspective; whole complex sometimes called Perso-Islamic).
I remember having to dredge huge sections of Ye Olde Persian writings from al-Tabari, who wove them together really frustratingly.
I think more Philhellenic stuff probably survives if only because it spread West, and I think (Nestorian e.g.) Christianity survives a bit better in the Sasanian records for the same reason. But again I don't know much here. I would be grateful if a Persiapro would explain a bit why the Philhellenic/neo-Persian empires didn't leave as much material. I know the Achaemenids were ruthlessly sacked in terms of their material culture, but is it just the case that they didn't foster as much intellectual writings? Is it an issue of archaeology or culture?
Interesting, although the Greek stuff survived THROUGH the Islamic caliphates- Aristotle was being studied in Baghdad long after it was forgotten in the west (St Augustine declared that curiostity acts like a page on the mind). Perhaps the fact that aristotle and Plato' works are (usually) areligious whereas early Persian writing was Zoroastrian (not even an Abrahamic religion) played a role in the loss of its literature under Muslim rule
I know Spengler claimed that the Aryans began first around 1400 B.C., then the Chinese and then Greece.
What sort of corroboration is he relying on?
For pre-islamic lit, there were some intresting books that most of them are lost, but some of them was adopted by some poets and writers afterwards, for example there was a book called Khodaynama that some authors refrenced it in their books, but some were translated to arabic and then from arabic to Persian, for example 1001 nights, it was inspired from Hezarafsan (thousand legends) which it self was a translation of an indian book. But if you want to know about ancient persia and aryans in general, read Shahnama, Shanama also is inspired by ancient pre-islamic texts.
>>7667066
The Shah Nameh is a Persian epic written in the tenth century by Ferdowsi and includes parts relating the story of mythological versions of the Achaemenids,Alexander the Great, the Arsacids and the Sassanids, which are generally assumed to be to based on older legends. Its sources are indigenously Persian and predate islamisation, but the stories themselves are probably not 'original' and aren't necessarily indicative of how pre-islamic Persians viewed themselves, their empires or the world.
There are also some clay tables dating back to the Achaemenids - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_Administrative_Archives
But those are generally administrative recordings, not really 'lit'.
There is also a considerable body of Zoroastrian religious literature which dates back to the Sassanian era, but that's already a millenium after the Greeks and maybe not what you're looking for. If you're interested in that there are a few other works of Pahlavi literature preserved.
Iirc, when I read Ibn Warraq's Why I Am Not a Muslim, he mentioned some dope-sounding Persian poet(s?) who wrote about drinking lots of wine, fucking around and loving the good life.
Can't remember if it was after Islam or before.
Anyone know who I'm talking about? And if so, how much Persian poetry is translated into English?
>>7667489
That's Omar Khayyam, a part-time astrologer who wrote the Rubaiyat. But he lived in the eleventh century, almost 400 years after the Islamic conquest of Persia.
There's quite a lot of Persian poetry translated, including some pretty gud modern stuff. I've been trying to learn some Persian to read the Rubaiyat in the original but I keep not working on it and forgetting most of what I learned.
>>7667489
Omar Khayam it's not about drinking wine and fucking woman, there are some Rubayis that suggest that drink wine but none suggest to fuck, also the wine in persian poetry is a metaphor, Even ayt. Khomeini and some clerics talk about wine in their poems.
>>7667539
Yeah, like
>>7667489
says, it's best to be wary of taking everything Khayyam says at face value, and certainly to see some kind of anti-Islam message in it which was not what he was trying to say at all. There is a lot of discussion about what pretty much anything in the quatrains means. Persian poetry as a whole deals a lot in specific metaphors. Several later Persian poets like Hafiz and Saadi do similar things like talk about wine while also being explicitly religious, but they were Sufis which is a whole tradition of its own.
>>7667577
Fuck, switched the links around, my bad
Bumping.
I've got you, senpai; can drop rec's in approx. 40 min.
>>7667102B-dog, check your email within the next 48 hours. For real this time; my shit's been fucked up.
Also, what the fuck happened to Warosu?
>>7668806
Rec's incoming.
