Bibliography

Explore the references, sources, and research that support Iran's stories and cultural content.

• Literature and folktales

  Stories and Writers of the Jews of Iran

  Iranian Jews created one of the great Jewish literatures of the East, written in Persian with Hebrew letters. Its poets retold the Bible in the style of the Persian epics, and its chroniclers recorded hard times as well as good ones.

  Medieval voices

  The Bible as a Persian epic

  In the fourteenth century, the poet Mowlana Shahin of Shiraz retold the stories of Moses, Esther, and Ezra in Judeo Persian verse, in the style of the great Persian poets. A century later, the poet Imrani continued the tradition. In the 1600s, Babai ibn Lutf of Kashan wrote Kitab-i Anusi, the Book of a Forced Convert, a verse chronicle of the persecution of Iran's Jews.

  Folktales and legends

  Esther, Mordecai, and Daniel

  The Book of Esther is set in the Persian capital of Shushan, and Iranian Jews call themselves the children of Esther. For centuries they made pilgrimages to the tomb of Esther and Mordecai in Hamadan and the tomb of the prophet Daniel in Shush, and told stories of miracles that happened there. Purim, with its Persian setting, became a festival of storytelling in every home.

  Modern writers

  Stories of revolution and exile

  Since 1979, Iranian Jewish writers in the United States have told their community's story in English. Gina Nahai's novels, including Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, follow Jewish families from Tehran's old quarter to Los Angeles. Roya Hakakian's memoir Journey from the Land of No describes growing up Jewish in Tehran during the revolution, and Dalia Sofer's novel The Septembers of Shiraz imagines a Jewish family torn apart by it.

  Read with students

  Start with these

  • Esther's Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews, Houman Sarshar, editor (high school and adult)
  • A Persian Passover, Etan Basseri (picture book, elementary)

  See all books on the Jews of Iran in JIMENA's bibliography →

  Sources: Judeo-Persian literature (Encyclopaedia Iranica); Tomb of Esther and Mordechai; Gina Nahai; Roya Hakakian; Dalia Sofer.