TEHRAN – The Iranian Culture Center in Lahore, Pakistan, plans to hold the webinar “Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and the Secret of Persian Language Eternality” on Sunday.    

The webinar, which will commence at 11 a.m., will be held one day after the nationwide celebration of Ferdowsi Day in Iran.

Experts on Ferdowsi from Iran, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, England, Uzbekistan and Pakistan will share the latest studies during the online colloquium.

Nimet Yildirim of Ataturk University in Turkey, Elham Haddadi of Sadi Foundation in Iran, Muhammad Nasir of the University of the Punjab in Pakistan and Jaimee Comstock-Skipp of Leiden University in the Netherlands are among the scholars.

In addition, Abbas Behmanesh from Iran is scheduled to enrich the virtual meeting with a naqqali, a dramatic style of storytelling dedicated to stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and other epic Persian stories.

Iranian celebrates Ferdowsi, the composer of the Persian epic masterpiece Shahnameh (The Book of Kings), on a special day that falls on May 15 this year.

A Shahnameh verse reading “I toiled much over thirty years, By the Persian language I remade Iran”, which refers to the fact that Ferdowsi spent 30 years writing the Shahnameh over a millennium ago.

The Iran Book and Literature House in Tehran also organized two virtual meetings on Saturday to observe Ferdowsi Day.

The topics “Importance of the Expansion of Persian Literature and Language in Modern World” and “Persian Language’s Long Life from Ancient Times to Today” were discussed during the meetings.   

Many movies and artistic productions have been made based on stories from the Shahnameh.

Young director Ashkan Rahgozar’s 2019 animated movie “The Last Fiction” is one of the latest of numerous artistic productions inspired by the Shahnameh.

It is about Zahak’s treacherous rise to the throne of Jamshid in Persia. The young and naive hero Afaridoun wants to save the kingdom and its people from darkness. But he must first conquer his own demons in this portrayal of Persian mythology that reveals human nature.

Photo: Tomb of Ferdowsi, Tus.

MMS/YAW