Shahnama Studies I

The first volume in the series Studies in Persian Cultural History is the edited volume based on the papers from the Second Shahnama round-table, held in 2003 in Cambridge and published by Charles Melville in 2006 (The Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge). This volume brings together a collection of papers exploring many different aspects of the Shahnama, both as literature and as the object of royal patronage. It focuses particularly on the manuscripts in which the poem has been preserved from the thirteenth century onwards, and the relationships between Firdausi's text and the rich variety of the miniature paintings created to illustrate it.

This volume explores different aspects of the reception of Firdausi’s Shahnama or ‘Book of Kings’, both within Iran and in neighbouring lands.

Shahnama Studies III offers new insights into the reception of the Shahnama or Book of Kings, composed by the Persian poet Firdausi in the 10th-11th century in eastern Iran.

This volume explores different aspects of the reception of Firdausi's Shahnama or 'Book of Kings', both within Iran and in neighbouring lands.

Drawing on studies of kings from Cyrus to Shah Abbas, this volume provides a rich variety of readings on royal authority and its limitations in medieval societies in both Europe and the Middle East, exemplified especially in the case of Alexander the Great, God and King, and the persistence of his legend in later eras.