A Picture of Us

TTCulture Desk, "Copy of oldest Hafez manuscripts unveiled in Tehran" - Tehran Times - Tehran, Iran
Wednesday, January 28, 2009

A copy of the oldest Hafez poetry manuscripts discovered at the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford was unveiled Monday in a ceremony held at the Niavaran Cultural Center.

Several cultural figures including vocalist Shahram Nazeri, musicians Farhad Fakhreddini and Homayun Khorram, calligrapher Mohammad Ehsaii and painter Aidin Aghdashlu attended the ceremony.

The ceremony began with the recitation of the message from Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s chairman of the Center for Dialogue between Civilizations and Cultures.

The priceless treasure was discovered by Iranian scholar Ali Ferdowsi. The collection is published by Dibayeh Publications and contains 49 ghazals and a single couplet along with a comparative study by scholar Ali Ferdowsi.

Scholar Hassan Anvari made the first speech about the ghazals in the recent discovered copy and stated, “The poetry by Hafez was distorted even during his lifetime, so even the oldest manuscript can not simply mean that it is a correct version of the original.” “So we must wait for opinions of other experts and scholars about the characteristics of the book,” he remarked.

The ceremony was followed by a short music video containing the explanation by Ferdowsi on the discovery of the manuscripts. Ferdowsi is Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of History and Political Science at the Notre Dame de Namur University, California.

Head of Dibayeh Publications Shahrdad Mirzaii was next and spoke about the importance of the manuscript and said, “When the small pieces of culture of this land are found one by one, they portray a picture of us and our identity; a picture of what we were and what we can be.”

Afterwards, the book was unveiled in a ceremony accompanied by a group of artists.

The original manuscript was inscribed by a contemporary named Ala Marandi during the years 1388 and 1389. All the ghazals (probably except five) were penned during the time Hafez was alive.

Vocalist Shahram Nazeri, also among the participants, was called to the stage to perform a song of Hafez ghazals, but he said he was not prepared, “If we are supposed to do something for Hafez, it must be appropriate for him.”

He decided to recite a single ghazal by Hafez that was warmly received by the audience.

Photo: A theater troupe unveils the copy of the oldest Hafez poetry manuscripts, which has been discovered at the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford, during a play directed by Mohammad Hatami at Tehran’s Niavaran Cultural Center on January 26, 2009. (Mehr/Ra’uf Mohseni).