Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings

From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Well, good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. And I'm delighted to see you all here. It's wonderful. A number of you are new faces, and we always like to welcome you to our division to let you know that we have a great many programs. I'm Mary-Jane Deeb, the Chief of the African and Middle East Division. And I'm also part of a division that has 20 people. And we represent, well, we're responsible for 78 countries. 78 countries that cover all of the Middle East, the Near East, the Arab world, Iran, Turkey, Israel. And we also cover all of Africa, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central Asia. And we go to Georgia, to Armenia. And we go as far as Afghanistan in our area of responsibility. These countries are here in a tangible way, in books, in periodicals, in this division, in the vernacular, in the languages of the countries themselves. They're also in the rest of the library, in English, French, German, Italian, and other languages. They're here at the library in film, in plays, in photos, in music. So when we say the Library of Congress has an international collection, which is larger, actually, than its American collection, this English language collection, American and English language collection, it means that we have more than simply books. And today's program, in a way, reflects the way we collect in many formats. And as we're moving forward in the new digital age, we have a huge digital collection, including materials from this division as well, on Iran, and on Afghanistan, and on the Muslim world. That is a part of the much larger collection that is being digitized and made available to people around the world. We're here to let our collections speak for themselves, to researchers, and we bring the researchers to speak about our collections and the work we have. And today, we have the greatest Persian work, the Shahnameh, the Book of Kings, which is being celebrated on Nowruz by a most original and creative person, Hamid Rahmanian, who's being ably helped by his wife, Melissa, and the 13-month-old baby, who is part of this work. And so I would like now to have Hirad Dinavari, our Persian specialist, to talk a little bit about Nowruz and to introduce the speaker and the work. And again, welcome to the afternoon distribution of the library. Thank you very much, Mary-Jane. I personally want to thank each and every one of you for coming, especially to those of you who celebrate Nowruz. I know that today is a day that you stay home with family and friends, and it's really hard for you to get away. It's a very auspicious day. Usually, we have Nowruz events every year. I try to do cultural events every year to celebrate this age-old tradition. This year, it has happened to fall on Nowruz itself. 7.03 AM this morning, the Vernal Equinox happened, and we now have the first day of spring. So happy Nowruz and happy spring to you all. A small note on the Shahnameh. As you know, it's the most seminal of Persian works in the 10th century. It was crucial in shaping the literary trends, both poetic and also, you can argue, historiography in the Persian tradition that then followed beyond Iran itself into the larger Iranian world. And in addition to that, Nowruz is another wonderful day to be celebrating this. It's a tradition celebrated as far west as the Balkans and as far east as Uyghurs of China, specifically Iranians, Afghans, Tajiks, Turkic peoples of Central Asia, the Kurds, Azerbaijanis really celebrate this. And it really is an honor to be having this event on this day and to speak and present an amazing work that celebrates, in English, an amazing, crucial work of Persian literature that goes back to the 10th century. I'm going to take a minute to introduce our speaker, Hamid Rahmanian. His bio is pretty distinguished, and the list is long, so I'll try to keep it short. Hamid Rahmanian is a filmmaker and graphic artist. He holds a BFA from the University of Tehran in graphic design and earned an MFA in computer animation in 1997 from the Pratt Institute in New York City. He received the first-placed college award, a student Emmy, from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and was nominated for a Student Academy Award for his animation. The seventh day, among other awards in 1997, which he received several, his first 35-millimeter film, a 19-minute short, An Eye Within, received Kodak's Best Cinematography Award and Best American Short from the LA International Short Film Festival. Mr. Rahmanian then went on to make three documentaries on video, Breaking Bread in 2000, Sir Alfred of Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2001, and Shahar Banu in 2002, all of which have been well-received by the media and worldwide audiences. In 2003, Mr. Rahmanian co-founded and was the president of Arte East, an organization committed to promoting the arts and culture of the Middle East and the United States and abroad. In 2005, he completed his first feature-length narrative film entitled Daybreak, which previewed at the Toronto International Film Festival and was the recipient of several prestigious awards. He completed the feature-length documentary, The Glass House, in the fall of 2008 that premiered at IDFA and Sundance Film Festival. It was the winner of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Human Rights Award and Best Documentary from Spain's Urban TV. He has recently completed illustrating a new edition of the Persian poet Ferdowsi's Shahnameh to be published by Quantic Lane Press entitled Shahnameh, The Epic of the Persian Kings, to be released this month in 2013. The list goes on. I will end here and ask Hamid to please join us and start his presentation. I also want to say behind every powerful man, there is a very powerful woman. This wouldn't be happening without Melissa Hibbard and her hard work. She is a mom, and I know she's busy with Sophie right now somewhere in the halls. So if you see a young lady with a kid, you'll see Melissa and go up to her and say hello. Thank you. Thank you and happy Nowruz. Thank you, Hirad. Thank you, Mary-Jane, for the kind introduction. And it's such an honor to be in this space that in the memory of Mr. Thomas Jefferson, to be able to establish this entity. OK, so I'm going to very briefly talk about Shahnameh, very briefly, and then I'm going to go to the presentation because it's fun and it's also a lot of slides. Around 1,003 years ago, to be exact, Ferdowsi of Tours collected a millennium-old oral tradition of the Iranian plateaus into heroic verses, 60,000 of them, and made Shahnameh. This arguably is the longest poem written by a single poet, 60,000 verses. It was a tradition of illustrating Shahnameh even before Ferdowsi put this oral tradition into Shahnameh the way that we see it today. And this tradition reached its climax in Zinef around 17th century, and it almost died out mid-19th century. And since then, except few sporadic folios, it's never been illustrated since then. And so my goal was to revive this tradition, to actually start recreating and illustrating Shahnameh, and also give the new audience a chance to become familiar with these stories, and also give the opportunity to Western English speaker audience to not only learn about the epic and mythology of the Iranian plateaus, but also learn about 500 years of visual history of that area. Because this visual element I'm going to show you, it's not been explored in the Western world, unless you go to the museum or some corner of a gallery somewhere in some museum, you will never expose to these visuals. So because America is my second home, I thought because I have a responsibility to build a culture, and I like to do that, it gives me a lot of fun and pleasure to involve with this kind of endeavors. So I feel my life is not just satisfying my ego as an artist to create something, so I actually give back something to the society. This book that I created for the last almost close to four years has some unique attributes. One of them is this book has over 500 pages of illustrations, and also this illustration is called together from the thousands of thousands of miniatures from 15th century to mid-19th century. Any illustration, any painting that influenced by Persian or Iranian school of paintings from Mongol India, Central Asia, and all the territory of Ottoman empires. The translation of this edition is also very special. We focus on the first 2 3rd of the Shahnameh from the mythology part to the end of the epic part, which is the end of the family of Zol and the death of Rustam. We created, because I have a cinema, I made film, I have a very cinematic approach to the translation, which we wanted to make the translation is a character based stories, not the event based stories. It's very important this, because you don't lose track of any characters in this edition. And it's very easy to navigate through the story. And also what we did, we also foreground the narrator of the story, which is the Ferdowsi. This is something that has never happened in other translation before, because in the original text, the Ferdowsi, it's not like a Homer that the muse is coming and telling all the story. Ferdowsi, as a human, as a real human being, is there to tell his own dilemma of like he's getting old, he has a back pain, or he has no money, or his child is sick. And all his sort of interject in the middle of the story comes and say, oh, look and see what's happening in the story. And see what the father and the son is fighting together without knowing it. So the narrator very much exists in the story. So we foreground this into our translation. So I'm going to show you a few works. This is the passage of Fereydun from the Arvand route. This image that you see is created from the over 78 images put together from the various different styles. I work like a DJ. Like DJ is collect sound and music that has already been existed before, and recombine and recompose the new piece of work. I did this with the miniature and lithographs from a specific time frame and a specific geographical place. This is, for instance, this C-morph is actually created from another three C-morphs. And in this edition also, there is nothing is repeating from page to page except the natural elements, such as rocks, flowers, trees, clouds. Each character, when it comes, sits in the page. It's for that specific page. The next page, I have to search for another piece. Even as you can see here, these layout elements, there are around, to be exact, 460 layout elements to make the book give some sort of traditional look. This is the passage of Giv from the Oxus River. This is one of the stories actually is skipped through other translation in English, which actually we spend a lot of time. It's a very fun story that Giv goes to Turan and find a new king, Kay Khosrow, bringing him back to Iran. This is the story of Zol and Rudabeh, which is very lovely and a fun story. This is the first battle of Rostam and Afrasiab. This is, as you can see, it's like 400 years of paintings. It sits together. Like the face of Rostam you see here came from like four different pieces, even like a mustache of Rostam. It came from one folio. And the face is from another. The helmet is from another folio. And this is another one of those examples that have a very cinematic feeling into it. This is the night attack of the Turanian to Iranian after the tragedy of Furood. This is, as you can see, as if the audience is sitting in the back stage and see the silhouette and what's happening inside the plot. This construction that you see here is built from five other constructions. What I did also, it's kind of like I unraveled the fabric of the visual history of Iranian plateau. And without manipulating much and being respectful to the art of the old masters, I re-weaved it together to create these kind of images. So every images, every pieces that you see in this book has actually existed before, but none of the pieces existed the way it existed in this book. Also, I depict, illustrate images, the plots that have never been illustrated before. For instance, the occultation of Kay Khosrow. It's based on my research, this folio, this plot, somehow it's never illustrated before. Or for instance, the inner dialogue or dialogue or the thoughts of the character. Here, Siavash sitting with the Piran, and he's predicting his doomed future about the war and his beheading and all the sort of unfortunate events that is going to be unfolding in the story. And oh, here is the birth of Shoggat, is the stepbrother of Rustam, which eventually destroyed the clan of Zal and killed Rustam. And also, one thing is very exciting here, and I had so much fun with it when I found out. The nightmares and dreams in Shahnameh, it's never been illustrated before. And I don't know why, because there's so many of them. It's up for research for academics, why through the last 1,000 years, no one illustrates dreams and nightmares in Shahnameh. This is 61 images, and this is the nightmare of Siavash. He woke up in the middle of the night, the night before he got martyred. And his wife, Pang, is there, and he explains his nightmare. And what you see is his nightmare that he's explaining. This is after the death of Siavash. Siavash comes to the dream of Piran, and he's telling Piran that the Khehosrow is born. This is the angel Suruj comes to the Mudars and tell him to send your son to bring Khehosrow back from Turan. There is a very cool nightmare in Shahnameh. It's the nightmare of Afrosyab, the villain of the story. The king of Turanian. This happened twice in the story. So he has a dream that his standard is broken, and the army of Kay Khabus is coming and is destroying him. And there is a prince is coming and beheading him, and he wake up from the pain of beheading. So he sees this event twice. So all the elements that you see here actually comes here, but I sort of try to give it a different kind of look. Because I want to have every page of this book have its own surprise, so you can actually predict what the next page would be. This is also the lie that Bijan tells to Afrosyab in the story of Bijan-o-Manijeh. This is a very beautiful love story. So this plot, that Bijan is caught by the Gersivas, bring to the court of Afrosyab. And Afrosyab says, what are you doing in my court with my daughter? And he said, I don't know, I was hunting boars, and the genie came and took me on top of the elephant. And I opened up my eyes, I was next to this beautiful woman. And next one, next, I was partying in your court with almost like 200 women and consorts. So I don't know what happened. So he's telling that lie. Now I'm going to tell you about the process of making these images. These are really fun parts. This is the Nightmare of Jarire. I don't know, I think the background of the time over there is kind of pixelated. So here, as you saw, is 61 images here. The story is that in the tragedy of Furud, in the middle of the tragedy, the story, when it's unfolding, Jarire, the mother of the Furud, had a nightmare that his castle is burning fire, and all the people are committing suicide. So pay attention to the castle in the background. I'm going to come back to it, but now I'm going to show you how I built this part. So this part, when I read the story, I felt, OK, I need a lady sitting in the middle of the mattress and having this dream. So the only thing I found among my collections was this piece from Shahnameh Shah Tahmas. So I'm going to show you how I sort of make it one person. So I cut down the main characters out. And on the right, as you can see, this is all the layers. It's part of the layers that you see of the images. And then I recreate the mattress, because she's going to sit and sleep in the middle of the mattress. So I have to have the rest of the mattress ready. And then bring back the image of the character. And then bring the rest of the blanket, getting rid of the guy. And then we've seen Jarire before. One of the things about this Shahnameh, you don't lose the track of the facial characteristic of all the characters. So we've seen Jarire before in previous chapter, when they got married with Siavash. So I bring this face to here. And then, because she's dreaming, I close the eyes. So, see? And then, now go back to the castle. This castle is also from Shahnameh Shah Tahmas. This castle, I manipulated, became this castle. So entirely, this castle is actually built from this castle. And this castle is repeating a different part of the story, because the whole story is happening around this location in the book. Now I'm just concentrating in this plot. And then it comes, sits in the back. And then you have these people, adjust them in the background. But some of them are not very, their face is not very attractive. I put a different face, so make it more people who are familiar with the comic books and familiar with the 21st century aesthetics, have more fun with it. And then the rest of the pieces put together became this one. This one is another story, the Army of Zahhak. This whole panel is built from the only three pieces. One is this part, which came from the lithograph by Ustad Sattar in 1985. And then this one from Ali Gholi Khoei from later on, almost 1860s. And these two put together, plus these banners from Shahnameh Shah Juki, and became this. So the entire, this is happening from only these three pieces. And this is my last presentation. And this is, it's a very complicated piece. The story of Manucheh and Tur. Tur was the uncle of Manucheh. He kills Iraj and start all the war. And the story is this way, that in the middle of the battlefield, Manucheh saw his uncle Tur, and he jumped on his horse and chased after Tur and slayed him with his lance. So in order to create this crescendo of him chasing, going through the battlefield, I need to create this sort of crescendo that you see here. This thing has never existed before, so I had to sort of chop up from the four different lithographs to create just only this bottom part. So here, the first one, which is the bottom part of this lithograph, I cut it out, plus the top, and put it together. And sort of stitch it together, and go piece by piece, clean them so you don't see where it's actually cut together. And the third one comes here. Again, the part below, I cut it out. And sometimes they have extra pieces, so I have to go and find another piece to cover them, to make sure that everything is spotless. The entire 600 pages, I'm sure you cannot find any flaws of production, because I felt I'm responsible for like 500, 600 years of paintings and traditions. So I had to be very careful on how I'm manipulating this tradition and this culture. So I'm playing with the colors and putting back the silhouette. The silhouette in the background is very complicated. It's 91 pieces that you see here, which is actually the cover of the regular edition. So what you see here is over 100 pieces that I put together just for this one page. This is another fun part, is that this map is built in 17th century, but not like this. It was four latitudes towards west. I dismantled the pieces, the map, and recreated, bring four latitudes towards west. So you have the map of the Shahanami the way I want. This is over 140 pieces that you see, this map. Each page actually has from seven, except this map, the illustration from seven to 120 pieces. Another interesting part about this edition of Shahanami, I create the genealogy of the characters so you don't lose track of each character. Because when you start reading Shahanami, there's so many stories. There's so many characters. And sometimes, even as a native speaker, it's hard to keep track of the characters. So I create all these guides to make Shahanami as friendly as possible. So you read it, you enjoy it, and it also enters to the overall culture of the American society or Western society. Oh, in terms of layout, also the way I select the font, the font is Janssen, but we manipulate the font to change the dots and F and Qs and Rs to have the feeling of actually scripted. And also, over the 48 pieces of the original text, I include it so people, the original speaker, they can read it or they can read it for their children so you understand the music of the Ferdowsi's poems. This is also treatments of the letters in the book. There's a lot of letters. The characters send to each other in the Shahanami. So I have a different treatment of that in the layout so you have a friendly way to connect. There is 460 pieces of this kind of layout that I explained before. It comes in the book. Oh, every chapter, there's 15 chapters in the book. Every chapter starts with the voice of Ferdowsi. The translator, what he did, when Ferdowsi talks, we put it in the poem. So when the story tells, it's just the prose. So you know where Ferdowsi actually start talking. This is the beginning of each chapters and the end. Sometimes Ferdowsi comes and sits and talks about his state of being. And this is the end of the book that he comes and says, I spent 30 years and 60,000 verses, and I finished this. And this work that I created is going to last for millennia. He actually predicted it's going to be a masterpiece. It's never going to die. Imagine how many books you have after 1,000 years still get this much attention. I don't know any. And still, Persian actually can read the original language and understand it. If you read Homer in the original language, you would not understand it. Or Shakespeare, after 500 years, the English is so complicated. But in Shahnameh, you can read it and understand it. This is another example of the treatment of the text and the Shahnameh and Ferdowsi. And this is the end of my presentation. I chose this because of the event that we have today is the Persian New Year. This is the day actually called the New Year. This is the day that, after 500 years of Kingdom of the Magnificent King Jamshid, he ordered demon and the fairies to build this throne and adorn it with a lot of beautiful jewelries and gold and took the throne to the sky. And people celebrated. And he called this day a new day. This is a no-ruse. So we have two editions of this book. It's a one luxurious limited edition and one regular edition. And there is only the 299 limited edition and plenty of regular editions. And you can also go. I don't know why it's became green. It was not part of the static look. You can go on Facebook, like the page. And also, you can go to the epic of thepersiankings.com. You can actually flip through a book, 43 pages, and also go through the process, the way I built the page. Please share with your friends, your family. I work over 10,000 hours of work. And I feel this is like a gift to the culture. And I have so much fun creating this, truly. And I had also a mantra created, because I work 17 hours a day, every day, for over two years. And I had a mantra, because after a while, it's getting to you. I had a mantra every day in the story. I'd say, Hamid, shut up and work. Don't think about anything else. So that's how I create this book. And thank you for your attention and your interest. I'm going to enter a 15-minute period for questions. I also wanted to say we have a lovely reception afterwards in our conference room. And the half scene for Persian New Year is set up there, a small version I brought from home. I personally want to start the questions myself with one for Hamid. But I also wanted to say, you're being filmed for our webcast, for future webcasts on the library sites. By asking questions and participating, you're consenting with being filmed and then broadcasted later. So be aware of that. Hamid, I have a question for you. How much of the Shahnameh is in this English translation? Is it the entire work? Or is it selections of? Thank you. Thank you, Ibrahim. This is the entire two third of Shahnameh, from the beginning of the mythology era, which is the first chapter of Shahnameh, the end of the epic part of Shahnameh, which is the end of the family of the Zal, and the death of Rostam. The entire stories and plots are translated there. This one is actually, as I said, it has more stories than other English translations that exist in the market. And also, we wanted two people who are familiar with the language of cinema to read this story and connect with it. So people who read Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, or Star Wars, read these stories and connect with it. The way they translate it is very beautifully written. As you foresee, they say it's a very fakhir, the text. But it's not very archaic. It's not very academic. So we wanted to lay back people, regular people, connect to this, not just scholars. Is it the Iranian New Year? 1392. Yeah. It's the, you know, it's some, they calculation is 2,500 and something. But the official is 1392. There's a table in the Iranian sort of world, in the region. There's a number of ceremonial tables or items that are produced for Persian New Year with a symbolic letter, a number of seven, half seen as the way Iranians do a table of items with seven things starting with the Persian letters S. They all symbolically have something to do with rebirth, renewal, and the coming of spring. The Afghans, for example, do have miw, which is seven fruits, fruits and nuts that have been soaked and what have you. So you have symbolism like this throughout the region. And sprouts, essentially, lentil, barley, or wheat sprouts tend to be a tradition that the entire region seems to embrace. This number of seven has been repeated throughout different occasions. Like in Shahnameh, it has a seven continent or seven heaven or have sahf seen. This actually linked to the Arabic that you have in the Koran. You know, this is not the topic of conversation. But this seven has a lot of significance. Or in the modern, though, in the story of, what is it? The HBO series Game of Thrones, they have a seven continent also. These are all borrowed from this tradition. Thank you. Do you have a question? Yes. Thank you. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you said. I want to be frank with you. I'm not used to talking to people when you were somewhere totally new to the history of the past. What did you say to me when I was a kid when I was in high school? When I was a kid, I was a child. I was a child. I was a teenager. When you spoke to me, I was a child. This question is going to put me into tears, Mary-Jane, because it's a very difficult process to find right. Because I don't have that much. I have only 83 books I collected. And everything comes here is from these 83 books. And nothing is repeating, as I said. So sometimes I go through, I'm not exaggerating, 12, 15 hours to just find one element. For instance, I remember there was a snake in the story of Wuxiang. I went through nine hours, I count, to just find one snake, to make that snake actually work in that environment. And today, when I'm still looking at my books, I'm just like, oh my god, I should have used this image and I forgot. There's so many beautiful pieces there. And sometimes when you start, you got lost into the beauty of these images. And you forget, actually, you have a bigger task to accomplish. I try to make it as crazy as possible, to put things as, and try to see how far I can push it. So bring like a lithograph from the 19th century with the image from the early 15th century, to see how it works. It went to a lot of tests. Every page that you see, I spent an average of 30 to 200 hours of just creating one page. So these all came from finding the images, scanning the images, cutting the images, cleaning the images, and then start composing it to see if it works or not. Sometimes it doesn't work and I have to start from the beginning. It's a really painful project. Like, for instance, here you have an Indian, you have a Bajar, and you have a Shah Tahmaz, and you have from Khamseh, Nizami, and you have from Shahnameh, Windsor, and the flowers. And it's just different pieces put together in this. How long did it take you to create this? All above. Yeah, but mostly it's a lot of concentration. I mean, the way I work, I cut off the internet, so I didn't have internet to even check the email, and anything. And really thanks to Melissa to actually create this environment so I can actually work without interruption. Because it's not like you sit down and you create it. If you go like five, six, seven, eight hours, then you start actually seeing something. You're going to come up. Yeah. Thank you. For one reason, first of all, the historical part, which is according to the actual real event and real characters. And real characters often are boring. And so the second, we wanted to create a narrative character-based story. So from the beginning to the end that we did, you're following all the characters, who's the father, who's the son, and who's the grandson, how they're related together. When you walk into the historical part, every chapter is its own story and doesn't relate to back and forth. And it was very cumbersome and creates so many confusions. We had a lot of debates with Melissa and the translator whether we just actually maybe introduce a few parts or not. We decided just not to do it because we want to create, first of all, I think the strength of Shahnameh in the first two-thirds. And second, people read this and became like an appetizer. So if they enjoy it, they can go read the rest of the story. So what we brought here is actually a teaser, an appetizer for a new generation to go and find more stories of Shahnameh. And as I said before, I'm going to repeat this. The last one-third of the story of Shahnameh, which is the historical part, it makes this book very cumbersome. And it became like other translation that not regular people would follow because it became very unaccessible. It's too complicated. No, I couldn't. I did this project on my own money. And I had a certain amount of, I spent over $12,000 to making these 83 books. The first two and a half years of this project, I had no help, zero. And just last year, because before the birth of my child, I had basically no money. So I find a good friend, an angel in Los Angeles, and he went among his family, brought some money so I can actually survive, finish the book. So I only could actually afford to write 83 books. And these are the 83 books. Actually, it was a good encompassing all the collection around that's been printed. There's so many other pieces, folios, that I had no access, or it's never been actually in the book. And finding those, getting the permission, and going through all the bureaucracy to find those folios, to use like one piece is one flower in that piece, would be impossible to do that. So these are the books that I found in the markets I could afford to buy. Yes, good question. I create a foundation here that I can do a lot of things out of this. Animation is one of them, the performance, which is I'm really thinking about to bring Shahnameh to a sort of like a Broadway show, like a Lion King. Not just one night event in some universities, and people cheering and leaving, and don't forget about it. Something that you can actually engineer it so you can travel this. Animation, pop-up books, many different things. As I said, I have over 8,000 pieces that I can do a lot of magic with this. So this is just the beginning. I quickly wanted to say that the books will be downstairs in the bookstore after this program. If you need to look at it or buy it, you can go down there and look. Hamid has kindly brought the special edition of the book, which is leather and just a beauty, and he has it on the table over there for people to look at. Don't forget the reception and the half scene. Also, we have these little sign-in sheets. I've noticed a number of people are interested in being added to our Near East, Hebraic, or African email listserv for upcoming events. If you're interested, please fill one out so that I can add your name to our upcoming events list. The limited edition is only one, and it's going to be ready in May. So if you're interested as a gift, it's a perfect gift. And please spread the word. Go on my Facebook and tell your family and friends to basically buy the book. You're buying one for the library. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming, everybody. Thank you. This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.