Persian poem at a glance

Poetry is a famous form of literature in the Persian language, Farsi. Persian language is soft and expressive and a poet can use a combination of words in many ways to express his real thought. Perhaps this is a reason that over the centuries Persian and non-Persian poets have written their poems in the Persian language.

Persian and non-Persian poets express their creativity in different forms and styles. The earliest poetry was of two types. One was the ballad and the other was the epic. The epic poem is an enlarged ballad. Lyric, hymn, satire and panegyric are the different forms of ballad.

The Arab conquest influenced the Persian vocabulary causing an even smoother poetic verse. Poetry, nursed for 200 years by the care of three dynasties (Tahirid, Saffarid, Samanid). Therefore, it was during ninth century when the new form of Persian poetry began which is found today.

One of the early forms of poetry was qasida in royal courts. Qasida are poems of more than 100 couplets that do not rhyme. Anvari was one of the poets who used qasida.

Ghazal from about 12 th century is another form of lyric. Ghazal poems were a much shorter form, 10 couplets that do not rhyme and mainly used to express love, both human and mystic. Hafez and saadi mastered this form of poetry.

Rubai and dobaty are both four lines poems which are distinguished from each other by their rhythm. They may express mystical, romantic or philosophical themes. Omar khayam is one of the pioneers in writing Rubai and his books are translated into many languages.

Masnavi with its unique rhyming couplets was utilized for epic poems. Ferdosi wrote the Shahname (Book of Kings) which is a finished form of epic poetry with 50000 couplets. The narrative form of Masnavi was used by Nezami. Masnavi was also used by the mystic poets such as Attar who wrote The Conference of the Birds and Rumi who wrote the Masnavi Manavi.