Iran / Persia: Isfandiyar fights with a dragon. From the Sarai Albums, Tabriz, second half of 14th century CE

Isfandiyar, son of Gushtasp (the 5th Kayanian King) Battles Simurgh, the Fantastic Bird. From the Shah-nama (Book of Kings) the Epic of Medieval Persia by Firdawsi, a 10th century poet. Shiraz, 1330.

The Shahnameh or Shah-nama is an enormous poetic opus written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi around 1000 AD and is the national epic of the cultural sphere of Greater Persia. Consisting of some 60,000 verses, the Shahnameh tells the mythical and historical past of (Greater) Iran from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century.

The work is of central importance in Persian culture, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of ethno-national cultural identity of Iran. It is also important to the contemporary adherents of Zoroastrianism, in that it traces the historical links between the beginnings of the religion with the death of the last Zoroastrian ruler of Persia during the Muslim conquest.

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Supplier: CPA Media Co. Ltd.

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