TEHRAN – Director Hassan Fat’hi has focused on Jeyran, Qajar king Nasser ad-Din Shah’s favorite in the harem, in his new series, whose shooting will start in the near future, producer Esmaeil Afifeh said on Sunday.  

“History has always been a source of inspiration for everybody and Nasser ad-Din Shah has previously been the subject of several movies and series,” he added.

The series will be produced for the home video network. “The rise in people’s regard for the platforms providing video on demand (VOD) service and the platforms’ development will help foster film productions,” he stated.     

Ehsan Javanmard, the writer of “The Lady of the Edifice”, a popular series directed by Fat’hi a few years ago, is writing the series entitled “Jeyran”.

Parinaz Izadyar, a star of Fat’hi’s popular series “Shahrzad”, will also star in the new project.

Jeyran, originally called Khadijeh, was the daughter of Mohammad-Ali, a gardener and carpenter in the village of Tajrish near Tehran during the reign of Nasser ad-Din Shah, who had 84 women in his harem.

Due to her large dark-hued eyes, the shah renamed her Jeyran, which means gazelle in the Azerbaijani language. She was then honored with the royal nickname “Forugh us-Saltaneh”, which literally means “the light of the kingdom”.

There are different stories about her first meeting with Nasser ad-Din Shah. Historian Abbas Amanat has said that Jeyran was among the dancers that were invited to the court on various special royal celebrations and the shah met her among the entourage of his mother, Mahde Olya.

In his memoir, poet Taqi Daneshvar has said that the shah met her on one of his trips for hunting around Tajrish.

Fat’hi’s latest movie “Intoxicated by Love”, a co-production between Iran and Turkey about the Persian poet and mystic Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi and Shams-i Tabrizi, the wandering sage who later became the mentor of Rumi in the 13th century CE, will be completed by the end of summer.

Photo: Director Hassan Fat’hi in an undated photo. (ISNA/Abdolvahed Mirzazadeh)

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