Persian literature is the jewel in the crown of Persian culture. It has profoundly influenced the literatures of Ottoman Turkey, Muslim India and Turkic Central Asia. It has been a source of inspiration for Goethe, Emerson, Matthew Arnold and Jorge Luis Borges among others and praised by William Jones, Tagore, E. M. Forster and many more. Yet although in the past few years the poems of Rumi have attracted the kind of popular attention enjoyed by Omar Khayyam in the 19th century, Persian literature has never received the attention it truly deserves.

A History of Persian Literature...