The classical music of Iran is based on the Radif, which is a collection of old melodies that have been handed down by the masters to the students through the generations. Over time, each master's own interpretation has shaped and added new melodies to this collection, which may bear the master's name.
The preservation of these melodies greatly depended on each successive generations' memory and mastery, since the interpretive origin of this music was expressed only through the oral tradition.
To truly learn and absorb the essence of the Radif, many years of repetition and practice are required. A master of the Radif must internalize the Radif so completely to be able to perform any part of it at any given time.
The Radif contains several different maqam's which are distinguished from each other by their relationship of note intervals and the form of the movement of the melodies within them. A maqam portrays a specific sonic space. A dastgah may contain approximately from 10 to 30 gousheh's (melodies). The principle gousheh's of the dastgah specify the different maqams within that dastgah. The note, upon which the gousheh is based and often is the center of the gousheh, is called the shahead. The shahead moves when we modulate between principle gousheh's, and this movement creates a new sonic space. Rhythm in these melodies takes three different forms: symmetric, asymmetric(lang), and free form. The rhythm is greatly influenced by the rhythm and meter of the Persian poetry. The instrumental and vocal Radif are different from the rhythmical point of view; however, their melodic structures are the same. The name of the different dastgah's in the Radif are on the left list, click on each dastgah to see gushehs and maghaams. and view the music sheets (notes).

 Complete list of dastgahs and their gushehs and maghaams
| Shur | Bayat-e Kord | Dashti | Bayat-e Tork | Abu ata | Afshari | Segah |
| Nava | Homayun | Esfehan | Chahargah | Mahur | Rastpanjgah |

Jalal Zolfonun received his earliest musical training from his father, Habib Zoufonoun, and his older brother, Mahmoud Zoufonoun on the tar.

At the age of 13, Zolfonun enrolled the National School for Iranian Music to study musical theory, composition and technique under Ruhollah Khaleghi and Musa Khan Maroufi. While he immediately fell in love with setar, the instrument was not taken seriously in those times. He instead decided to study the tar, while also learning the violin from his brother Mahmoud Zoufonoun.

In 1967, Jalal Zolfonun was accepted into the faculty of the Fine Arts department of Tehran University, where he would further study the setar with Master Noor Ali Boroumand and Daryoush Saffat.

From then on, he dedicated himself to the delicate instrument. He began combining the techniques of the older masters of setar with his own ingenuity and mystic sensitivity. And for the first time, Jalal Zolfonun introduced an ensemble of only setar players, creating the best selling album of traditional Persian music, Golehsadbarg (which means, "100 petal flower").

At the same time, Jalal also composed for the setar in mind and would prove one of the most expressive, while technically virtuosic players of the instrument. Perhaps most notable of Jalal Zolfonun's contributions to this music is that he showed for the first time the power and versatility of the setar as an ensemble and solo instrument that could fully express the nuances of Traditional Persian music in any setting. In fact, since Golehsadbarg's success, the setar evolved from the least to the most popular instrument in Iran.

Following the success of Golesadbarg, Jalal Zolfonun continues to record a number of other albums on which he is featured as lead soloist, composer and/or ensemble player with a number of well-known singers and musicians with whom he has also toured worldwide.

Zolfonun has also written a seminal book on "Setar Playing / Teaching Method". He lives in Iran, but tours outside in Europe, the US, Canada and Japan with his son, Soheil, and other musicians.

Persian literature (Persian: ادبیات پارسی) spans two and a half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources often come from far-flung regions beyond the borders of present-day Iran, as the Persian language flourished and survives across wide swaths of Central Asia. For instance, Rumi, one of Persia's (and Islam's) best-loved poets, wrote in Persian but lived in Konya, now in Turkey and then the capital of the Seljuks. The Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from areas that are now part of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Central Asia. Not all this literature is written in Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic Persians in other languages, such as Greek and Arabic, to be included.

Surviving works in Persian languages (such as Old Persian or Middle Persian) date back as far as 650 BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscriptions. The bulk of the surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Islamic conquest of Persia circa 650 CE. After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Persians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic empire and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. Persians wrote both in Arabic and Persian; Persian predominated in later literary circles. Persian poets such as Sa'di, Hafiz, Rumi and Omar Khayyam are well known in the world and have influenced the literature of many countries.

Pre-Islamic Iranian literature

See also: Pahlavi literature

Very few literary works remain from ancient Persia. Most of these consist of the royal inscriptions of Achaemenid kings, particularly Darius I (522–486 BC) and his son Xerxes. Zoroastrian writings mainly were destroyed in the Islamic conquest of Persia. The Parsis who fled to India, however, took with them some of the books of the Zoroastrian canon, including some of the Avesta and ancient commentaries (Zend) thereof. Some works of Sassanid geography and travel also survived albeit in Arabic translations.

No single text devoted to literary criticism has survived from pre-Islamic Persia. However, some essays in Pahlavi such as ‘’Ayin-e name nebeshtan" and "Bab-e edteda’I-ye" (Kalile va Demne) have been considered as literary criticism (Zarrinkoub, 1959).^[1] Some researchers have quoted the Sho’ubiyye as asserting that the pre-Islamic Persians had books on eloquence, such as Karvand. No trace remains of such books. There are some indications that some among the Persian elite were familiar with Greek rhetoric and literary criticism (Zarrinkoub, 1947).

 Persian literature of the medieval and pre-modern periods

While initially overshadowed by Arabic during the Umayyad and early Abbasid caliphates, modern Persian soon became a literary language again of the Central Asian lands. The rebirth of the language in its new form is often accredited to Ferdowsi, Unsuri, Daqiqi, Rudaki, and their generation, as they used pre-Islamic nationalism as a conduit to revive the language and customs of ancient Persia.

In particular, says Ferdowsi himself in his Shahnama:

بسی رنج بردم در این سال سی
عجم زنده کردم بدین پارسی

"For thirty years, I endured much pain and strife,
with Persian I gave the Ajam verve and life".

Poetry

So strong is the Persian aptitude for versifying everyday expressions that one can encounter poetry in almost every classical work, whether from Persian literature, science, or metaphysics. In short, the ability to write in verse form was a pre-requisite for any scholar. For example, almost half of Avicenna's medical writings are in verse.

Works of the early era of Persian poetry are characterized by strong court patronage, an extravagance of panegyrics, and what is known as سبک فاخر "exalted in style". The tradition of royal patronage began perhaps under the Sassanid era and carried over through the Abbasid and Samanid courts into every major Persian dynasty. The Qasida was perhaps the most famous form of panegyric used, though quatrains such as those in Omar Khayyam's Ruba'iyyat are also widely popular.

"Khorasani style", whose followers mostly were associated with Greater Khorasan, is characterized by its supercilious diction, dignified tone, and relatively literate language. The chief representatives of this lyricism are Asjadi, Farrukhi Sistani, Unsuri, and Manuchehri. Panegyric masters such as Rudaki were known for their love of nature, their verse abounding with evocative descriptions.

Through these courts and system of patronage emerged the epic style of poetry, with Ferdowsi's Shahnama at the apex. By glorifying the Iranian historical past in heroic and elevated verses, he and other notables such as Daqiqi and Asadi Tusi presented the "Ajam" with a source of pride and inspiration that has helped preserve a sense of identity for the Iranian peoples over the ages. Ferdowsi set a model to be followed by a host of other poets later on.

The thirteenth century marks the ascendancy of lyric poetry with the consequent development of the ghazal into a major verse form, as well as the rise of mystical and Sufi poetry. This style is often called "the Eraqi style", and is known by its emotional lyric qualities, rich meters, and the relative simplicity of its language. Emotional romantic poetry was not something new however, as works such as Vis o Ramin by Asad Gorgani, and Yusof o Zoleikha by Am'aq exemplify. Poets such as Sana'i and Attar (who ostensibly have inspired Rumi), Khaqani Shirvani, Anvari, and Nezami, were highly respected ghazal writers. However, the elite of this school are Rumi, Sadi, and Hafez.

Regarding the tradition of Persian love poetry during the Safavid era, Persian historian Ehsan Yarshater notes, "As a rule, the beloved is not a woman, but a young man. In the early centuries of Islam, the raids into Central Asia produced many young slaves. Slaves were also bought or received as gifts. They were made to serve as pages at court or in the households of the affluent, or as soldiers and bodyguards. Young men, slaves or not, also, served wine at banquets and receptions, and the more gifted among them could play music and maintain a cultivated conversation. It was love toward young pages, soldiers, or novices in trades and professions which was the subject of lyrical introductions to panegyrics from the beginning of Persian poetry, and of the ghazal."^[2]

In the didactic genre one can mention Sanai's Hadiqatul Haqiqah as well as Nezami's Makhzan-ul-Asrār. Some of Attar's works also belong to this genre as do the major works of Rumi, although some tend to classify these in the lyrical type due to their mystical and emotional qualities. In addition, some tend to group Naser Khosrow's works in this style as well; however the true gem of this genre is Sadi's Bustan, a heavyweight of Persian literature.

After the fifteenth century, the Indian style of Persian poetry (sometimes also called Isfahani or Safavi styles) took over. This style has its roots in the Timurid era and produced the likes of Amir Khosrow Dehlavi.

Illustration from a copy of the Divan of Hafez. Accompanying caption reads: بزن در پرده چنگ ای ماه مطرب "pluck the notes of the harp, oh minstrel of The Moon".

Illustration from Attar's The Conference of the Birds. A popular sufi poem.

Bahram Gur and the Indian princess in the black pavilion. Depiction from Nizami's Khamsa (Quintet).

Illustration from Jami's Rose Garden of the Pious, 1553. The image blends Persian poetry and Persian miniature into one, as is the norm for many works of Persian literature.

 Essays

The most significant essays of this era are Nizami Arudhi Samarqandi's "Chahār Maqāleh" as well as Zahiriddin Nasr Muhammad Aufi's anecdote compendium Jawami ul-Hikayat. Shams al-Mo'ali Abol-hasan Ghaboos ibn Wushmgir's famous work, the Qabus nama (A Mirror for Princes), is a highly esteemed Belles-lettres work of Persian literature. Also highly regarded is Siyasatnama, by Nizam al-Mulk, a famous Persian vizier. Kelileh va Demneh, translated from Indian folk tales, can also be mentioned in this category. It is seen as a collection of adages in Persian literary studies and thus does not convey folkloric notions.

 Biographies, hagiographies, and historical works

Among the major historical and biographical works in classical Persian, one can mention Abolfazl Beyhaghi's famous Tarikh-i Beyhaqi, Lubab ul-Albab of Zahiriddin Nasr Muhammad Aufi (which has been regarded as a reliable chronological source by many experts), as well as Ata al-Mulk Juvayni's famous Tarikh-i Jahangushay-i Juvaini (which spans the Mongolid and Ilkhanid era of Iran). Attar's Tadkhirat al-Awliya ("Biographies of the Saints") is also a detailed account of Sufi mystics, which is referenced by many subsequent authors and considered a significant work in mystical hagiography.

 Literary criticism

The oldest surviving work of Persian literary criticism after the Islamic conquest of Persia is Muqaddame-ye Shahname-ye Abu Mansuri, which was written in the Samanid period. The work deals with the myths and legends of Shahname and is considered the oldest surviving example of Persian prose. It also shows an attempt by the authors to evaluate literary works critically.

Persian story writing

One Thousand and One Nights (Persian: هزار و یک شب) is a medieval Persian literary epic which tells the story of Scheherazade (Šarzād in Persian), a Sassanid queen who must relate a series of stories to her malevolent husband, King Shahryar (Šahryār), to delay her execution. The stories are told over a period of one thousand and one nights, and every night she ends the story with a suspenseful situation, forcing the King to keep her alive for another day. The individual stories were created over many centuries, by many people and in many styles, and many have become famous in their own right. Notable examples include Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.

The nucleus of the stories is formed by a Pahlavi Sassanid Persian book called Hazār Afsānah^[3] (Thousand Myths, in Persian: هزارافسانه), a collection of ancient Indian and Persian folk tales. During the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid in the eighth century, Baghdad had become an important cosmopolitan city. Merchants from Persia, China, India, Africa, and Europe were all found in Baghdad. During this time, many of the stories that were originally folk stories were thought to have been collected orally over many years and later compiled into a single book. The compiler and ninth-century translator into Arabic is reputedly the storyteller Abu abd-Allah Muhammad el-Gahshigar. The frame story of Shahrzad seems to have been added in the fourteenth century.

 Dictionaries

Dehkhoda Dictionary is the largest ever lexical compilation of the Persian language and literature.

Dehkhoda names 200 Persian lexicographical works in his monumental Dehkhoda Dictionary, the earliest, Farhang-i Avim (فرهنگ اویم) and Farhang-i Menakhtay (فرهنگ مناختای), from the late Sassanid era. The most widely used Persian lexicons in the Middle Ages were those of Abu Hafs Soghdi (فرهنگ ابو حفص سغدی) and Asadi Tusi (فرهنگ لغت فرس), written in 1092. Also highly regarded in the Persian literature lexical corpus are the works of Mohammad Moin.

In 1645, Ravius and Lugduni completed a Persian-Latin dictionary. This was followed by J. Richardson's two-volume Oxford edition (1777) and Gladwin-Malda's (1770) Persian-English Dictionaries, Scharif and S. Peters' Persian-Russian Dictionary (1869), and 30 other Persian lexicographical translations through the 1950s.

In 2002, Professor Hassan Anvari published his Persian-to-Persian dictionary, Farhang-e Bozorg-e Sokhan, in eight volumes by Sokhan Publications.

Currently English-Persian dictionaries of Manouchehr Aryanpour and Soleiman Haim are widely used in Iran.

 Persian phrases

 The influence of Persian literature on world literature

Sufi literature

Asrar al-Tawhid of Abusaeid Abolkheir is considered a significant work of Persian Sufi literature.

William Shakespeare referred to Iran as the "land of the Sophy".^[4] Some of Persia's best-beloved medieval poets were Sufis, and their poetry was, and is, widely read by Sufis from Morocco to Indonesia. Rumi (Maulānā) in particular is renowned both as a poet and as the founder of a widespread Sufi order. The themes and styles of this devotional poetry have been widely imitated by many Sufi poets. See also the article on Sufi poetry.

Many notable texts in Persian mystic literature are not poems, yet highly read and regarded. Among those are Kimiya-yi sa'ādat and Asrar al-Tawhid.

 Areas once under Ghaznavid or Mughal rule

 Afghanistan and Central Asia

Afghanistan and the Transoxiana can claim to be the birthplace of Modern Persian. Most of the great patrons of Persian literature such as Sultan Sanjar and the courts of the Samanids and Ghaznavids were situated in this region, as were writers such as Rudaki, Unsuri, and Ferdowsi. As such, this rich literary heritage continues to survive well into the present in countries like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.

 India, Pakistan, and Kashmir

With the emergence of the Ghaznavids and their successors such as the Ghurids, Timurids and Mughal Empire, Persian culture and its literature gradually diffused into the vast Indian subcontinent. Persian was the language of the nobility, literary circles, and the royal Mughal courts for hundreds of years. (In modern times, Persian has been generally supplanted by Urdu, a heavily Persian-influenced dialect of Hindustani.)

Under the Moghul Empire of India during the sixteenth century, the official language of India became Persian. Only in 1832 did the British army force the Indian subcontinent to begin conducting business in English. (Clawson, p.6) Persian poetry in fact flourished in these regions while post-Safavid Iranian literature stagnated. Dehkhoda and other scholars of the 20th century, for example, largely based their works on the detailed lexicography produced in India, using compilations such as Ghazi khan Badr Muhammad Dehlavi's Adat al-Fudhala (اداه الفضلا), Ibrahim Ghavamuddin Farughi's Farhang-i Ibrahimi ( فرهنگ ابراهیمی), and particularly Muhammad Padshah's Farhang-i Anandraj (فرهنگ آناندراج). Famous South Asian poets and scholars such as Amir Khosrow Dehlavi and Muhammad Iqbal of Lahore found many admirers in Iran itself.

 Western literature

Main article: Persian literature in the West

Persian literature was little known in the West before the nineteenth century. It became much better known following the publication of several translations from the works of late medieval Persian poets, and it inspired works by various Western poets and writers.

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German literature

• In 1819, Goethe published his West-östlicher Divan, a collection of lyric poems inspired by a German translation of Hafiz (1326–1390).
• The German essayist and philosopher Nietzsche was the author of the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885),^[5] referring to the ancient Persian prophet Zoroaster (circa 1700 BCE).

 English literature

• A selection from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (935–1020) was published in 1832 by James Atkinson, a physician employed by the British East India Company.
• A portion of this abridgment was later versified by the British poet Matthew Arnold in his 1853 Rustam and Sohrab.
• The American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson was another admirer of Persian poetry. He published several essays in 1876 that discuss Persian poetry: Letters and Social Aims, From the Persian of Hafiz, and Ghaselle.

Perhaps the most popular Persian poet of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was Omar Khayyam (1048–1123), whose Rubaiyat was freely translated by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859. Khayyam is esteemed more as a scientist than a poet in his native Persia, but in Fitzgerald's rendering, he became one of the most quoted poets in English. Khayyam's line, "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou", is known to many who could not say who wrote it, or where.

The Persian poet and mystic Rumi (1207–1273) (known as Molana in Iran) has attracted a large following in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Popularizing translations by Coleman Barks have presented Rumi as a New Age sage. There are also a number of more literary translations by scholars such as A.J. Arberry.

The classical poets (Hafiz, Sa'di, Khayyam, Rumi, Nezami and Ferdowsi) are now widely known in English and can be read in various translations. Other works of Persian literature are untranslated and little known.

 Swedish literature

During the last century, numerous works of classical Persian literature have been translated into Swedish by baron Eric Hermelin. He translated works by, among others, Farid al-Din Attar, Rumi, Ferdowsi, Omar Khayyam, Sa'adi and Sana'i. Influenced by the writings of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, he was especially attracted to the religious or Sufi aspects of classical Persian poetry.

More recently Rumi, Hafiz and Fakhruddin 'Iraqi are available in translation by Ashk Dahlén, scholar in Iranian Studies, who has made Persian literature known to a wider audience in Sweden.

 Contemporary Persian literature

 History

Some leading figures of Iranian literary intellectuals: (L to R) Morteza Keyvan, Ahmad Shamlou, Nima Yooshij, Siavash Kasraie, and Hushang Ebtehaj

In the nineteenth century, Persian literature experienced dramatic change and entered a new era. The beginning of this change was exemplified by an incident in the mid-nineteenth century at the court of Nasereddin Shah, when the reform-minded prime minister, Amir Kabir, chastised the poet Habibollah Qa'ani for "lying" in a panegyric qasida written in Kabir's honor. Kabir saw poetry in general and the type of poetry that had developed during the Qajar period as detrimental to "progress" and "modernization" in Iranian society, which he believed was in dire need of change. Such concerns were also expressed by others such as Fath-'Ali Akhundzadeh, Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, and Mirza Malkom Khan. Khan also addressed a need for a change in Persian poetry in literary terms as well, always linking it to social concerns.

The new Persian literary movement cannot be understood without an understanding of the intellectual movements among Iranian philosophical circles. Given the social and political climate of Persia (Iran) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which led to the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911, the idea that change in poetry was necessary became widespread. Many argued that Persian poetry should reflect the realities of a country in transition. This idea was propagated by notable literary figures such as Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda and Abolqasem Aref, who challenged the traditional system of Persian poetry in terms of introducing new content and experimentation with rhetoric, lexico-semantics, and structure. Dehkhoda, for instance, used a lesser-known traditional form, the mosammat, to elegize the execution of a revolutionary journalist. 'Aref employed the ghazal, "the most central genre within the lyrical tradition" (p. 88), to write his "Payam-e Azadi" (Message of Freedom).

Some researchers argue that the notion of "sociopolitical ramifications of esthetic changes" led to the idea of poets "as social leaders trying the limits and possibilities of social change."

An important movement in modern Persian literature centered on the question of modernization and Westernization and whether these terms are synonymous when describing the evolution of Iranian society. It can be argued that almost all advocates of modernism in Persian literature, from Akhundzadeh, Kermani, and Malkom Khan to Dehkhoda, 'Aref, Bahar, and Rafat, were inspired by developments and changes that had occurred in Western, particularly European, literatures. Such inspirations did not mean blindly copying Western models but, rather, adapting aspects of Western literature and changing them to fit the needs of Iranian culture.

Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub, master of Persian literature and literary criticism

Following the pioneering works of Ahmad Kasravi, Sadeq Hedayat and many others, the Iranian wave of comparative literature and literary criticism reached a symbolic crest with the emergence of Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub, Shahrokh Meskoob, Houshang Golshiri and Ebrahim Golestan.

 Persian literature in Afghanistan

Persian literature in Afghanistan has also experienced a dramatic change during last century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Afghanistan was confronted with economic and social change, which sparked a new approach to literature. In 1911, Mahmud Tarzi, who came back to Afghanistan after years of exile in Turkey and was influential in government circles, started a fortnightly publication named Saraj’ul Akhbar. Saraj was not the first such publication in the country, but in the field of journalism and literature it launched a new period of change and modernization. Saraj not only played an important role in journalism, it also gave new life to literature as a whole and opened the way for poetry to explore new avenues of expression through which personal thoughts took on a more social colour.

In 1930 (1309 AH), after months of cultural stagnation, a group of writers founded the Herat Literary Circle. A year later, another group calling itself the Kabul Literary Circle was founded in the capital. Both groups published regular magazines dedicated to culture and Persian literature. Both, especially the Kabul publication, had little success in becoming venues for modern Persian poetry and writing. In time, the Kabul publication turned into a stronghold for traditional writers and poets, and modernism in Dari literature was pushed to the fringes of social and cultural life.

Three of the most prominent classical poets in Afghanistan at the time were Ghary Abdullah, Abdul Hagh Beytat and Khalil Ullah Khalili. The first two received the honorary title Malek ul Shoara (King of Poets). Khalili, the third and youngest, was drawn toward the Khorasan style of poetry instead of the usual Hendi style. He was also interested in modern poetry and wrote a few poems in a more modern style with new aspects of thought and meaning. In 1318 (AH), after two poems by Nima Youshij titled "Gharab" and "Ghaghnus" were published, Khalili wrote a poem under the name "Sorude Kuhestan" or "The Song of the Mountain" in the same rhyming pattern as Nima and sent it to the Kabul Literary Circle. The traditionalists in Kabul refused to publish it because it was not written in the traditional rhyme. They criticized Khalili for modernizing his style.

Very gradually new styles found their way into literature and literary circles despite the efforts of traditionalists. The first book of new poems was published in the year 1957 (1336 AG), and in 1962 (1341 AH), a collection of modern Persian poetry was published in Kabul. The first group to write poems in the new style consisted of Mahmud Farani, Baregh Shafi’i, Solyman Layegh, Sohail, Ayeneh and a few others. Later, Vasef Bakhtari, Asadullah Habib and Latif Nazemi, and others joined the group. Each had his own share in modernizing Persian poetry in Afghanistan. Other notable figures include Ustad Behtab, Leila Sarahat Roshani, Sayed Elan Bahar and Parwin Pazwak. Poets like Mayakovsky, Yase Nien and Lahouti (an Iranian poet living in exile in Russia) exerted a special influence on the Persian poets in Afghanistan. The influence of Iranians (e.g. Farrokhi Yazdi and Ahmad Shamlou) on modern Afghanistani prose and poetry, especially in the second half of the twentieth century, must also be taken into consideration.^[6]

Prominent Afghanistani writers like Asef Soltanzadeh, Reza Ebrahimi, Ameneh Mohammadi, and Abbas Jafari grew up in Iran and were influenced by Iranian writers and teachers. Although Afghanistani authors have not proven themselves in the international arena like Iranian writers, Persian literature in Afghanistan has a promising future.^[7]

 Persian literature in Tajikistan

The new poetry in Tajikistan is mostly concerned with the way of life of people and is revolutionary. From the 1950s until the advent of new poetry in France, Asia and Latin America, the impact of the modernization drive was strong. In the 1960s, modern Iranian poetry and that of Mohammad Iqbal Lahouri made a profound impression in Tajik poetry. This period is probably the richest and most prolific period for the development of themes and forms in Persian poetry in Tajikistan. Some Tajik poets were mere imitators, and one can easily see the traits of foreign poets in their work. Only two or three poets were able to digest the foreign poetry and compose original poetry. In Tajikistan, the format and pictorial aspects of short stories and novels were taken from Russian and European literature. Some of Tajikistan's prominent names in Persian literature are Golrokhsar Safi Eva,^[8] Mo'men Ghena'at,^[9] Farzaneh Khojandi^[10] and Layeq Shir-Ali.

 Novels

Laiq Sher-Ali, prominent Persian poet from Tajikistan

Well-known novelists include:

• Simin Daneshvar
• Bozorg Alavi
• Ebrahim Golestan
• Zoya Pirzad

see also Persian Novel

 Satire

Main article: Persian satire

• Iraj Mirza
• Ebrahim Nabavi
• Kioumars Saberi Foumani
• Hadi Khorsandi
• Obeid Zakani
• Dehkhoda
• Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi
• Emran Salahi

 Literary criticism

Shahrokh Meskoob, Prominent literary critic and Shahnameh expert

Pioneers of Persian literary criticism in nineteenth century include Mirza Fath `Ali Akhundzade, Mirza Malkom Khan, Mirza `Abd al-Rahim Talebof and Zeyn al-`Abedin Maraghe`i.

Prominent twentieth century critics include:

• Allameh Dehkhoda
• Badiozzaman Forouzanfar
• Mohammad-Taqi Bahar
• Jalal Homaei
• Mohammad Moin
• Saeed Nafisi
• Parviz Natel-Khanlari
• Sadeq Hedayat
• Ahmad Kasravi.
• Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub
• Shahrokh Meskoob

Saeed Nafisi analyzed and edited several critical works. He is well known for his works on Rudaki and Sufi literature. Parviz Natel-Khanlari and Gholamhossein Yousefi, who belong to Nafisi's generation, were also involved in modern literature and critical writings.^[11] Natel-Khanlari is distinguished by the simplicity of his style. He did not follow the traditionalists, nor did he advocate the new. Instead, his approach accommodated the entire spectrum of creativity and expression in Persian literature. Another critic, Ahmad Kasravi, an experienced authority on literature, attacked the writers and poets whose works served despotism.^[12]

Contemporary Persian literary criticism reached its maturity after Sadeq Hedayat, Ebrahim Golestan, Houshang Golshiri, Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub and Shahrokh Meskoob. Among these figures, Zarrinkoub held academic positions and had a reputation not only among the intelligentsia but also in academia. Besides his significant contribution to the maturity of Persian language and literature, Zarrinkoub boosted comparative literature and Persian literary criticism.^[13] Zarrinkoub's Serr e Ney is a critical and comparative analysis of Rumi's Masnavi. In turn, Shahrokh Meskoob worked on Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, using the principles of modern literary criticism.

Mohammad Taghi Bahar's main contribution to this field is his book called Sabk Shenasi (Stylistics). It is a pioneering work on the practice of Persian literary historiography and the emergence and development of Persian literature as a distinct institution in the early part of the twentieth century. It contends that the exemplary status of Sabk-shinasi rests on the recognition of its disciplinary or institutional achievements. It further contends that, rather than a text on Persian ‘stylistics’, Sabk-shinasi is a vast history of Persian literary prose, and, as such, is a significant intervention in Persian literary historiography.^[14]

Jalal Homaei, Badiozzaman Forouzanfar and his student, Mohammad Reza Shafiei-Kadkani, are other notable figures who have edited a number of prominent literary works.^[15]

Critical analysis of Jami's works has been carried out by Ala Khan Afsahzad. His classic book won the prestigious award of Iran's Year Best book in the year 2000.^[16]

 Persian short stories

Historically, the modern Persian short story has undergone three stages of development: a formative period, a period of consolidation and growth, and a period of diversity.^[17]

 The formative period

The formative period was ushered in by Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh's collection Yak-i Bud Yak-i Nabud (1921; tr. H. Moayyad and P. Sprachman as Once Upon a Time, New York, 1985), and gained momentum with the early short stories of Sadeq Hedayat (1903–51). Jamalzadeh (1895–1997) is usually considered as the first writer of modern short stories in Persian. His stories focus on plot and action rather than on mood or character development and in that respect are reminiscent of the works of Guy de Maupassant and O. Henry. In contrast, Sadeq Hedayat, the writer who introduced modernism to Persian literature, brought about a fundamental change in Persian fiction. In addition to his longer stories, "Bgf-e kur" (his masterpiece; see above ii.) and "Haji Aqa" (1945), he wrote collections of short stories including Seh Ghatra Khun (Three Drops of Blood, 1932; tr. into French by G. Lazard as Trois gouuttes de sang, Paris 1996) and Zenda be Gur (Buried Alive, 1930). His stories were written in a simple and lucid language, but he employed a variety of approaches, from realism and naturalism to surrealistic fantasy, breaking new ground and introducing a whole range of literary models and presenting new possibilities for the further development of the genre. He experimented with disrupted chronology and non-linear or circular plots, applying these techniques to both his realistic and surrealist writings. Unlike Hedayat, who focused on the psychological complexity and latent vulnerabilities of the individual, Bozorg Alavi depicts ideologically motivated personages defying oppression and social injustice. Such characters, seldom portrayed before in Persian fiction, are Alavi's main contribution to the thematic range of the modem Persian short story. This commitment to social issues is emulated by Fereydun Tonokaboni (b. 1937), Mahmud Dawlatabadi (b. 1940), Samad Behrangi (q.v.; 1939–68), and other writers of the left in the next generation.

Sadeq Chubak was one of the first authors to break the taboo. Following the example of William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Erskine Caldwell, and Ernest Hemingway, his blunt approach appears in the early short story collections Khayma Shab-bazi (The Puppet Show, 1945) and Antar-i ke Luti-ash Morda Bud (1949; tr. P. Avery as "The Baboon Whose Buffoon was Dead", New World Writing 11, 1957, pp. 14-24), Later stories like "Zir-e Cheragh-e Ghermez", "Pirahan-e Zereski", and "Chera Darya Tufani Shoda Bud" describe the naked bestiality and moral degradation of the personages with no trace of squeamishness. His short stories mirror rotting society, populated by the crushed and the defeated. Chubak picks marginal characters—vagrants, pigeon-racers, corpse-washers, prostitutes, and opium addicts—who rarely appear in the fiction of his predecessors, and whom he portrays with vividness and force. His readers come face to face with grim realities and incidents that they have often witnessed for themselves in everyday life but have shunned out of their mind through complacency.

A distinctive trait of post-war Persian fiction in all the three stages of development is the attention devoted to narrative styles and techniques. In matters of style two main trends prevail. Some authors, like Chubak and Al-e Ahmad, follow colloquial speech patterns; others, such as Ebrahim Golestan (b. 1922) and Mohammad Etemadzadeh "Behazin" (b. 1915), have adopted a more literary and lyrical tone. Although the work of all four writers stretch into later periods, some brief remarks about their differing techniques, which delineated future paths, need mentioning at the outset. Golestan experimented with different narrative styles, and it was only in two late collections of stories, Juy o Divar o Teshna (The Stream and the Wall and the Parched, 1967) and Madd o Meh (The Tide and the Mist, 1969) that he managed to find a style and voice of his own. His poetic language draws inspiration both from syntactical forms of classical Persian prose and the experiments of modernist writers, most notably Gertrude Stein. The influence of modernism is evident also in the structure of Golestan's short stories, in which the traditional linear plot line is abandoned in favor of disrupted chronology and free association of ideas. Contrary to most other modern Persian authors, Golestan pays little heed to the state of the poor and the dispossessed. Instead, his short stories are devoted to the world of Persian intellectuals, their concerns, anxieties and private obsessions. His short stories resemble well-made decorative objects d'art, pleasing perhaps to the cognoscenti but leaving the majority of readers unmoved. Golestan's brand of modernism has influenced the later generation of writers like Bahman Forsi (b. 1933) and Hooshang Golshiri (b. 1937). Although the stories of Behazin show similar indebtedness to classical Persian models, he does not follow Golestan's modernist experiments with syntax. Behazin is an author whose stories, delivered in a lucid literary style, express his leftist social beliefs. In some of his later works like the short story collection Mohra-ye Mar (The Snake Charm, 1955), he turns to literary allegory, imbuing ancient tales with a new message, a technique, which allows him to express his critical views obliquely. Behazin's predecessors in the sub-genre of the allegorical tale were Hedayat (in Ab-e Zendegi, 1931) and Chubak ("Esa'a-ye Adab" in the collection Khayma-Shab-Bazi).

 Period of growth and development

This second period in the development of the modern Persian short story began with the coup of 19 August 1953, and ended with the revolution of 1979.

Mehdi Akhavan Sales and Fereydoon Moshiri, modern Persian poets

Jalal Al-e Ahmad is among the proponents of new political and cultural ideas whose influence and impact straddle the first and the second periods in the history of modern Persian fiction. His writings show an awareness of the works of Franz Fanon and the new generation of third-world writers concerned with the problems of cultural domination by colonial powers. Al-e Ahmad, Behazin, Tonekaboni, and Behrangi can all be described as engaged writers because most of their stories are built around a central ideological tenet or thesis and illustrate the authors' political views and leanings. Among poets of this period, Forough Farrokhzad (1935–1967) has a special place as the first female poet of the Persian language acclaimed by her contemporaries and who left a lasting legacy despite her short life. Her legacy and influence is not primarily (or uniquely) political; however, she was among the first women able to set a personal and original mark. In this sense she is elevated to iconic status.

Another notable author from this period is Simin Daneshvar (b. 1921), the first woman writer of note in contemporary Persian literature. Her reputation rests largely on her popular novel Savusun ("The Mourners of Siyāvosh," 1969). Simin Daneshvar's short stories deserve mention because they focus on the plight and social exclusion of women in Persian society and address topical issues from a woman's point of view.

Gholam Hossein Saedi's (1935–85) short stories, which he called ghessa, often transcend the boundaries of realism and attain a symbolic significance. His allegorical stories, which occasionally resemble folkloric tales and fables, are inhabited by displaced persons, trapped in dead ends (Sepanlu, p. 117). They emphasize the anxieties and the psychological perturbations of his deeply troubled characters. Sadeghi (1936–84) was yet another author who focused on the anxieties and secret mental agonies of his characters.

Hooshang Golshiri (b. 1937) and Asghar Elahi (b. 1944) created memorable psychological portraits through interim monologue and stream of consciousness techniques. Golshiri, the author of the long story "Shazda Ehtejab" (Prince Ehtejab, 1968), is particularly noted for his successful experiments with extended interior monologues. A bold, innovative writer eager to explore modern methods and styles, Golshiri uses stream of consciousness narrative to reassess familiar theories and events.

 Period of diversity

 Poetry

Of the hundreds of contemporary Persian poets (classical and modern), notable figures include [2] Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, Simin Behbahani, Forough Farrokhzad, Bijan Jalali, Siavash Kasraie, Fereydoon Moshiri, Nader Naderpour, Sohrab Sepehri, Mohammad-Reza Shafiei-Kadkani, Ahmad Shamlou, Nima Yushij, Manouchehr Atashi, Houshang Ebtehaj, Mirzadeh Eshghi (classical), Mohammad Taghi Bahar (classical), Aref (classical), Parvin Etesami (classical), and Shahriar (classical).

Nima Yushij, founder of modern Persian poetry

Classical Persian poetry in modern times

A few notable classical poets have arisen since the nineteenth century, among whom Mohammad Taghi Bahar and Parvin Etesami have been most celebrated. Mohammad Taghi Bahar had the title "king of poets" and had a significant role in the emergence and development of Persian literature as a distinct institution in the early part of the twentieth century.^[18] The theme of his poems was the social and political situation of Iran.

Parvin Etesami may be called the greatest Persian poetess writing in the classical style. One of her remarkable series, called Mast va Hoshyar (The Drunk and the Sober), won admiration from many of those involved in romantic poetry.^[19]

Modern Persian poetry

Nima Yushij is considered the father of modern Persian poetry, introducing many techniques and forms to differentiate the modern from the old. Nevertheless, the credit for popularizing this new literary form within a country and culture solidly based on a thousand years of classical poetry goes to his few disciples such as Ahmad Shamlou, who adopted Nima's methods and tried new techniques of modern poetry.

The transformation brought about by Nima Youshij, who freed Persian poetry from the fetters of prosodic measures, was a turning point in a long literary tradition. It broadened the perception and thinking of the poets that came after him. Nima offered a different understanding of the principles of classical poetry. His artistry was not confined to removing the need for a fixed-length hemistich and dispensing with the tradition of rhyming but focused on a broader structure and function based on a contemporary understanding of human and social existence. His aim in renovating poetry was to commit it to a "natural identity" and to achieve a modern discipline in the mind and linguistic performance of the poet.^[20]

Nima held that the formal technique dominating classical poetry interfered with its vitality, vigor and progress. Although he accepted some of its aesthetic properties and extended them in his poetry, he never ceased to widen his poetic experience by emphasizing the "natural order" of this art. What Nima Youshij founded in contemporary poetry, his successor Ahmad Shamlou continued.

The Sepid poem (which translates to white poem), which draws its sources from this poet, avoided the compulsory rules which had entered the Nimai’ school of poetry and adopted a freer structure. This allowed a more direct relationship between the poet and his or her emotional roots. In previous poetry, the qualities of the poet’s vision as well as the span of the subject could only be expressed in general terms and were subsumed by the formal limitations imposed on poetic expression.

Khalilollah Khalili on the cover of "Deewaan-e Khalilullah Khalili"

Simin Daneshvar, Iran's first female novelist and short story writer.

Nima’s poetry transgressed these limitations. It relied on the natural function inherent within poetry itself to portray the poet’s solidarity with life and the wide world surrounding him or her in specific and unambiguous details and scenes. Sepid poetry continues the poetic vision as Nima expressed it and avoids the contrived rules imposed on its creation. However, its most distinct difference with Nimai’ poetry is to move away from the rhythms it employed. Nima Yioushij paid attention to an overall harmonious rhyming and created many experimental examples to achieve this end.^[20]

Ahmad Shamlu discovered the inner characteristics of poetry and its manifestation in the literary creations of classical masters as well as the Nimai’ experience. He offered an individual approach. By distancing himself from the obligations imposed by older poetry and some of the limitations that had entered the Nimai’ poem, he recognized the role of prose and music hidden in the language. In the structure of Sepid poetry, in contrast to the prosodic and Nimai’ rules, the poem is written in more "natural" words and incorporates a prose-like process without losing its poetic distinction. Sepid poetry is a developing branch of Nimai’ poetry built upon Nima Youshij's innovations. Nima thought that any change in the construction and the tools of a poet’s expression is conditional on his/her knowledge of the world and a revolutionized outlook. Sepid poetry could not take root outside this teaching and its application.

According to Simin Behbahani, Sepid poetry did not received general acceptance before Bijan Jalali's works. He is considered the founder of Sepid poetry according to Behbahani.^[21][22] Behbahani herself used the "Char Pareh" style of Nima, and subsequently turned to ghazal, a free-flowing poetry style similar to the Western sonnet. Simin Behbahani contributed to a historic development in the form of the ghazal, as she added theatrical subjects, and daily events and conversations into her poetry. She has expanded the range of traditional Persian verse forms and produced some of the most significant works of Persian literature in the twentieth century.

A reluctant follower of Nima Yushij, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales published his Organ (1951) to support contentions against Nima Yushij's groundbreaking endeavors. But before long he realized that Nima and the modernists emulating him had more to offer than a just a change in rhythm, rhyme, and the general application of the classical Arabic meters.^[23] In Persian poetry, Mehdi Akhavan Sales has established a bridge between the Khorassani and Nima Schools. The critics consider Mehdi Akhavan Sales as one of the best contemporary Persian poets. He is one of the pioneers of free verse (new style poetry) in Persian literature, particularly of modern style epics. It was his ambition, for a long time, to introduce a fresh style to Persian poetry.^[24]

M.T.Bahar, the greatest classical poet of modern times

Forough Farrokhzad is important in the literary history of Iran for three reasons. First, she was among the first generation to embrace the new style of poetry, pioneered by Nima Yushij during the 1920s, which demanded that poets experiment with rhyme, imagery, and the individual voice. Second, she was the first modern Iranian woman to graphically articulate private sexual landscapes from a woman's perspective. Finally, she transcended her own literary role and experimented with acting, painting, and documentary film-making.^[25]

Fereydoon Moshiri is best known as conciliator of classical Persian poetry with the New Poetry initiated by Nima Yooshij. One of the major contributions of Moshiri's poetry, according to some observers, is the broadening of the social and geographical scope of modern Persian literature.^[26]

A poet of the last generation before the Islamic Revolution worthy of mention is Mohammad-Reza Shafiei-Kadkani (M. Sereshk). Though he is from Khorassan and sways between allegiance to Nima Youshij and Akhavan Saless, in his poetry he shows the influences of Hafez and Mowlavi. He uses simple, lyrical language and is mostly inspired by the political atmosphere. He is the most successful of those poets who in the past four decades have tried hard to find a synthesis between the two models of Ahmad Shamloo and Nima Youshij.^[27]

Sohrab Sepehri (Persian: سهراب سپهری transliteration: Suhrāb Sipihrī) (October 7, 1928 - April 21, 1980) was a notable modern Persian poet and a painter. He was born in Kashan in Isfahan province. He frequently is considered as one of the five famous modern Persian (Iranian) poets who have practised "New Poetry" (a kind of poetry that often has neither meter nor rhyme), the others being Nima Youshij, Ahmad Shamlou, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, and Forough Farrokhzad all of them now dead. He died in Pars hospital in Tehran of leukemia. His poetry is full of humanity and concern for human values. He loved nature and refers to it frequently. His poetry has been translated to many languages including French, English, Spanish, Italian, Swedish and Russian.

 Poetry

The Address

Translation: Maryam Dilmaghani

At the first light of the dawn

Asked the pilgrim:

"Do you happen to know

the abode of The Beloved?"

The skies went silent

save their mourning clouds,

save their falling stars.

The passer gave up his glowing twig

to the gloom of the sands

and replied:

“Don’t you see that poplar tree?

Well, right before the tree,

There is lane that you’ll reckon, I deem.

For it is greener than a heavenly dream.

For it is generously shaded with the deep blues of love.

Well, If you See.

So walk down that lane

You’ll arrive to the garden of sense

Turn to the direction of the loner lake

Listen to the genuin hymn of leaves

Watch the eternal fontain

that flows from the spring of ancient myths

till you faint away in a plain fear.

And when a rigid noise clatter into the fluid intimacy of space

you'll find a child

on the top of a tree,

next to the nest of awls

in hope of a golden egg.

Well, if you See.

You may be sure; the child'll show you the way.

Well, If you just ask about

the abode of The Beloved.”

Another poem By Sohrab Sepehri

Translated by Neima Jahromi

I’ve never seen two rival pines.

I’ve never seen a willow

Sell its shadow to the earth.

An oak happily offers

Its branch to the raven.

And wherever there is a leaf,

and in me, passion blossoms.

Another poem By Sohrab Sepehri

Translated by Persica Australis

I saw not two trees become foe.

I saw not a willow,

Sell its shade to the earth.

Benevolently it shares,

The elm its branch to the raven.

Wherever there is a leaf,

My Passion blossoms.

 The Lover Is Always Alone

The translations except from The Address (by Maryam Dilmaghani) have been retrieved from the book "The Lover is Always Alone" by Karim Emami. Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980) is one of Iran's foremost contemporary poets, and one of the foremost modernist painters too. A self-selected anthology of his poems, Hasht Ketab (Eight Books) has been a perennial bestseller ever since it was published in 1976. Karim Emami, the translator of Sepehri’s poems, “The lover is always alone”, states that, “In the land of poetry, the immortals - Hafez, Saadi, Rumi, Ferdowsi, and Khayyam - always top the list of most frequently reprinted titles, but the modernists are not in this league, except perhaps for Sepehri (1).” The most avid readers of Sepehri's poems are the younger generation-high school and university students of both sexes. Both men and women graduates look up to Sepehri almost as a spiritual mentor and guide. The number of articles written regularly about him in the popular press is simply staggering. Unlike so many other contemporary Iranian poets, Sepehri does not have a political agenda. Emami states that, “He [Sepehri] is not sloganeer preaching, overtly or covertly, the downfall of the autocratic regime (1).” He is apolitical. His poetry is a reflection of his deepest personal feelings and reflections on the smallest incidents of his daily life. Sepehri does not use the formal language of Persian literature or formal metrics. His poetic medium is free verse. The vocabulary offers everyday speech! Sepehri’s poems are very simple and understandable. His style of poetry amazes its readers because within the simplicity of his words, he offers so much beauty, and pays so much attention to simple and almost forgotten events that happen around him. Emami states his view on Sepehri’s poetry, “He praises life and God's myriad creations - everything, animate or inanimate, that he encounters under the sun. He is communion with nature, and wants us all to love it and respect its laws. His poems are full of aphorisms that he passes to us as pieces of advice, or as recommendations or even commandments (2).” Here are a couple of Sepehri’s poems that people often use as pieces of advice:

• Let's not muddy the water!
• Eyes should be washed to see things in a different way...

• Let's be simple everywhere.

"Hasht Ketab" (Eight Books) 1976

The Death of Color 1951

The Life of Dreams 1953

Us nil, us a look Was not published until 1977

Downpour of Sunshine 1958

East of Sorrow 1961

Water's Footsteps 1965

The Wayfarer 1966

The Green Space 1967 Sepehri demonstrates his skills in his powers of observation, his imagery, and his expression of feeling. A part of his appeal must be that he is not like any other poet. In his own ways, he is unique. Sepehri was born in Kashan in 1928, in the first decade of Reza Shah Pahlavi’s reign and of the rapid modernization of the country. Kashan is located some 250 kilometers south of Tehran, built on the edge of the Kavir, the great salt desert. It is an old city, imbued with age-old traditions of Persian life. When Sohrab had finished 9th grade, he moved on to Tehran to attend a two-year teacher training course. He intended to become a primary school teacher, move back to his town and help support the family. He did so for a while; however, it did not last for more than two years as he then moved back to Tehran, to attend Tehran University's school of fine arts. Emami, translator of “The lover is always alone” states that, “He simply could not suppress his love for painting, which has become an all-consuming passion (3).” To help support himself while attending the university, he found a job in the oil company, and later on in the public health organization. Emami says, “He was a restless soul and could not stay in one job for long (3).” At the University, he was attracted to the modern art movement, both in his painting and his poetry. The pioneering efforts of Nima Yushij, the father of modern Persian poetry in forging a new and liberated style of poetry appealed to him, and he soon gave up the old style of formal metrics which he had been practicing in Kashan. He went on to publish all the collection of his poems, "Eight Books" in 1976, which took thirty years of his life. In 1979 he became ill with leukemia, and traveled to England to seek cure, but the treatment proved of no avail, and he eventually died after returning to Iran, in Tehran in the spring of 1980. Sepehri was buried according to his will in the village of Mashhad-e Ardahal, in the vicinity of Kashan. Although, he can no longer continue writing poetry, he is seen as the leader and a mentor to the new generation of Iranians. He is still very much alive within his works which have inspired too many people over the last two decades to convert to the new style of poetry, and to begin a new life style. The poem below, from “The Lover is Always Alone” appears on Sepehri’s gravestone, where he is buried in Kashan, Iran.

"If you are coming to see me,

pray step gently, softly

Lest the thin shell of my loneliness

Should crack (Sepehri 154)."

“The Lover is Always Alone” is a collection of Sepehri’s poems translated into English by one of Iran’s finest translators, Karim Emami. The purpose of this book has been to introduce Sepehri’s poems to English speakers. It has also offered a deeper understanding of poems to its bilingual readers. This essay demonstrates the influence of Sepehri as poet, the social signification and it also demonstrates his political life.

Sepehri's poems offer different looks, and yet very simple ones, which separates him from other open-minded poems. He regards the nature phenomena and events which occur everyday and have been considered trivial by all on account of repetition, with a vision full of surprises and wonder. Pirouz Sayar, the author of "paintings and drawings of Sohrab Sepehri", states that, “He gazes at the sun as it rise, at the bird as it sings far away, at a bud which blossoms, at a plant which is growing in the pot, at the life which is going on among the trees in the valley, and the red rose which plunges the onlooker into its enchantment (249).” Sohrab Sepehri had a significant vision, in both his poetry and painting. Mostafa Valiabdi who has made a movie about the poet’s life states that, “He is one of the few poets in Iran that had looked at West and its culture with open eyes and awareness (5).” Some poets had rarely traveled outside of Iran and had little idea of the western culture. On the other hand they were some others who converted to the Western culture and changed their entire credos, life style and style of poetry. Sepehri had been inspired by Western countries, India, and Japan, but eventually he would go back to his hometown, Kashan, where his spirits and roots had always been. Sepehri's magnificent vision and poetry had made him more of a world citizen than an Iranian Poet per se. That is the way he introduces himself in the “Water’s footsteps”:

"I come from Kashan

But Kashan is no longer my town.

My hometown has been lost.

With feverish effort, I have built myself a house

On the far side of the night (Sepehri 50)."

The "Wayfarer" demonstrates Sepehri’s vast vision in his poetry even more, and as a world citizen, someone who would see, notice, and appreciate beauty and art anywhere on the earth. That is a huge part of Sepehri's character and poetry, a restless soul that just wants to live as close as possible to the nature, where he is able to find God. Here is a part from Sepehri’s “Wayfarer”:

"Wherever I am, let me be!

The Sky is mine.

The windows, the mind, the air, love, earth, are all mine.

What does it matter

if mushrooms of nostalgia

grow from time to time? (Sepehri 58)"

Sepehri’s love affair with Kashan and its plains did not keep him from traveling and exploring the world, which inspired his Poetry, painting, and vision toward life.The journey began in 1957, when he departed for France to study lithography, and was enrolled in Paris school of Fine Arts. In the following year, he settled in Rome, Italy for some time and took part in the Bienniel of Venice. He later returned to Iran resumed his work of painting. In the year 1960, he left for Japan to study the technique of wood engraving. During his stay in Japan, he visited several centers of Art, and became familiar with the work of Japanese artists. Thenceforth, Sepehri devoted all his time to creative art, and he held many exhibitions in Iran and abroad. In 1963 he took part in the Biennial of San Paulo in Brazil and a little later a group exhibition of Persian art at the museum of Le Havre, France. In 1964, he traveled to India and paid visits to the art centers of the country. In 1970 he traveled to the United States and during his few months of stay there he participated in a group exhibition in Bridgehampton city, and in 1971 in an individual exhibition in Cyprus Gallery in Paris, he went back to France and Paris at the invitation of the Art International Quarter. In 1976, he participated in the exhibitions of the Persian Contemporary art in the Art Bazaar held in Basel of Switzerland. Pirouz Sayar states that, “Sepehri is an artist who has been profoundly influenced by Oriental

intellectual ideas and his particular vision and thought should be evaluated in this context. His deep

understanding of the Persian Art and culture, combined with his familiarity with thoughts and art of the far

East and India, resulted in flourishing of his vision in a particular manner (249).”

New generation of Iranians, Sepehri's most avid readers, are more liberal and less prejudice, [old

fashion thinkers] than the last generation. They are very eager to explore the world around them, and that

leaves no doubt why Sepehri's characteristics in his poetry appeal to them very much. His poetry has become

the language of the new generation, a generation that seeks new ideas, the generation that wants a bloodless

revolution in many aspects of the old fashioned Persian life. In the last two decades, religion has been

ruling Iran in all aspects of social and political life. Iranian youngsters encounter a paradox between their

personal life and their social life. With the introduction of computer and internet, a huge wave of western

culture has penetrated to Iran; however, the old fashion side of the society seems to remain unchanged. Still

people have to fake their religions and beliefs, and there is no tolerance toward people who want to choose a

path outside of the religion’s box.

Sepehri’s ideology of religion matches the new generation’s ways of thinking. He believes in faith,

dignity, and truthfulness, and yet he is not religious in his poetry. Sepehri's god is not Allah, his god

lies by the water, his god is among the trees, his god lives nearby! He creates a free and open environment

in his poetry; he gives people the right to doubt anything before believing in it. According to Fahimeh

Rastkar, the poet's close friend, “Sohrab was not a religious person, but he would set himself a limit for

everything in life based on his own credos and values (8).” This poem, a part of “Water's Footstep”,

describes Sepehri's mentality towards religion:

“I am a Moslem.

My Mecca is a rose.

My mosque is a spring, my prayer stone the light.

Fields make my prayer rug.

I make ablution with the heartbeat of the windows.

Moonlight flows through my prayers, the spectrum

too.

My Kaaba lies by the water,

My Kaaba lies under the acacias.

My Kaaba travels like the breeze,

From one garden to the next,

From one town to another (Sepehri 28).”

When Sepehri was twenty three years old and had just written his first collection of poems, Iran was

under the dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The entire country was under the control of the British

government, with United States also competing with England to gain more power in the region. The highlight of

that era would be the Coup of 1953, an operation planned by CIA to remove Mohammad Mossadegh, prime minister

of the time who passed the Oil nationalization act that led to British and Americans losing control of Iran’s

oil industry. The coup of 1953 left behind some ugly memories from the American government in Iranian’s minds.

With United States gaining more control in Middle East, they helped Shah to re-install himself back into

power by creating one of the most tortuous secret polices in the world, Savak.

Many artists and poets expressed their feelings toward the unelected Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza

Pahlavi, and his dictatorship by making their works do the talking. Poets reflected the problems of the

society in their poems. They criticised Shah for letting the United States dominate in Iran. However, the

society had very little capacity and patience toward those criticisms. Khosrow Golesorkhi, a journalist and a

poet, became one of the victims of the government’s intolerance behavior. He was mysteriously killed by the

secret police in 1974. Many chose to stay silent and stay away from politics, but others did what they could

to better the society. With early efforts of Nima Yushij, Sepehri and his contemporary poets began a new era

in modern Persian poetry, which was a dramatic revolution to the Persian literature. Sepehri did not have a

political agenda, and he was never interested in getting involved in politics. He would keep himself busy by

spending his entire time studying different kinds of arts, painting, and writing poems. This is precisely why

he was disparaged by his "political conscious" fellow poets that he paid too much attention to his inner life

too little to the social-political circumstances around him. Shamlu, one of Sepehri’s contemporary poets and

a very successful one too, believed that poets must reflect their era in their works. “An innocent person is

dying nearby, and Sepehri is standing by a tree and saying ‘Don’t muddy the water’, his poems reflect beauty,

but that is not enough, beauty is not enough for me (Shamlu 108).” Sepehri’s poems do not reflect an era in

time, and it is very hard to be able to recognize a specific period of time in his works. However, he offers

innocence, beauty, freedom, purity, love, and faith in his poems. Sepehri’s poems reflect the stages of

seeking perfection and ascension in the poet’s life. That is why his poems now stand on the peak of the modern

Persian poetry, and have become ever lasting. Most of all, Sohrab Sepehri was a poet of the people.

In conclusion, the staggering number of articles that have been written about Sohrab Sepehri is the

symbol of new generation’s attempts to find the ideal ideology and view toward life and to become familiar

with who they are. Sepehri lived for fifty two years, and in his prolific life he visited many countries and

spent all his times toward his passions, poetry and painting. The collection of his poems, “The Eight Books”

is now one of the most popular books in Iran. Sepehri’s vision has been a vital key to his success. Although;

he is apolitical and does not reflect his time in his works, the concepts that he demonstrates are truly

timeless. He talks about being "simple", having a fresh attitude toward life, and living as close as possible

to the nature. The English translation of Sepehri’s poems, “The lover is always alone” is a very successful

beginning in introducing his poetry to the world. Hopefully Sepehri's poetry, will one day, become the

language of our world, as Emami says, “In the age of rapid travel and communication, books still have their

own magic means finding their way around the world (22).” The world that Sepehri lived in twenty seven years

ago may have changed, but hope still very much exists. Yes, “One must live, as long as the poppies bloom”, as

Sepehri had always said.

Work Cited

The Lover Is Always Alone. Trans. Karim Emami. Tehran: Sokhan,

Sepehri, Sohrab, and Riccardo Zipoli. While poppies bloom: Poems and Panoramas. Trans. Karim Emami. Tehran: Zarrin-o-Simin Books, 2005.

Bidi, Hamed. "Where Are My Shoes?" While Poppies Bloom. 12 Oct 2006. 24 Oct 2006 <http://kafshhayamkoo.persianblog.com/>.

Valiabdi, Mostafa. Hichestan.Tehran: Tiam, 2005.

Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad. Hasht Ketab: Professor Hakkak's view on the Sepehri's esthetic vision and significance.United States: Ketabe Gooya, 2005.

Sepehri, Parvaneh. The Blue Room. Tehran: Gooya, 2003.

Sepehri, Paridokht. Wherever I am, let me be! Tehran: Peykan, 2005.

Sayar, Pirouz. Paintings and Drawings Of Sohrab Sepehri. Tehran: Soroush Press, 2002.

Sepehri, Paridokht. Sohrab, the Migratory Bird. Tehran: Tahouri, 1996.

Hamid Siahpoush. The Lonely Garden: Sohrab Sepehri's Remembrance. Tehran: Negah, 2003.

Sohrab Sepehri's life timeline:

Born in 1928 – Kashan – Iran

He hosted a painting exhibition - Tehran 1944

He published his first poetry book that followed by a few other books in the same year - 1951

He graduated from the fine arts university with B.A. degree in painting - Tehran – 1953

He translated some Japanese poetry into Persian and published them in a literary magazine called Sokhan – 1955

He traveled to Paris and attended the Paris Fine Arts School in lithography – 1957

He traveled to Tokyo to further his studies in lithography and wood carving – 1960

On the way back to Iran from Japan , he visited India and became familiar with the ideology of Buddhism – 1961

He published three books in poetry – 1960

He traveled to India again and visited several cities and provinces – 1964

He traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan 1964

He traveled to Europe and visited several countries such as Germany,England,France,Spain,the Netherlands,Italy and Austria – 1966

He published some long poems after he returned to Iran – 1966

He hosted a painting exhibition in Tehran 1967

He published another book in poetry 1967

He traveled to Greece and Egypt – 1974

He published his final book called ‘Hasht Ketab' (Eight Books), which was the collection of almost all of his published poems in one volume – 1976

He got blood cancer and traveled to England for treatment – 1978

Unfortunately, his attempt to defeat cancer brought him no result. He returned to Iran and died in Pars Hospital in Tehran on Monday April 21, 1980.

1903-1951

by
Farzin Yazdanfar

Sadeq Hedayat, the foremost short story writer of Iran, was born in 1903. He was of a highly educated aristocratic family. After finishing his primary education, he was sent to a French school to study French. He received his secondary education there, and was sent to Europe on a government scholarship to study dentistry. He shortly gave up dentistry for engineering, and engineering for the study of pre-Islamic languages and ancient culture of Iran.

In Europe, Hedayat was exposed to world literature, especially European literature, and read the works of Kafka, Poe, and Dostoevski. In his solitude, he became extremely self-conscious and devoted a great deal of his time to the problem of life and death. He studied the works of Rainer Maria Rilke and was impressed by Rilke's adoration of death so immensely that he wrote his own commentary on Death in 1927. He even tried to commit suicide in the same year by drowning himself in the river Marne, but he was rescued. He wrote collections of short stories and a novella, The Blind Owl, which is regarded as Hedayat's masterpiece and has been translated in many languages. It took him almost a decade to prepare this novella which he finally published in 1937 in India. It could not be published inside Iran until 1941.

Hedayat's language is both literary and scholarly. In addition to his novella and short stories, he was the first person to conduct serious and methodical research on the folklore of Iran. He also studied the ancient Iranian languages and wrote essays about archaelogy, anthropology and liguistics. Satire was also Hedayat's language. In his fiction, he criticizes the social and political problems of his society - criticism which is very often expressed in satirical form*.

Hedayat gradually improved his writing skill and developed a talent for philosophical, social, and eventually political themes. His career reached its peak in the late 1930s when he finished preparing his novella. However, in the 1940s, it was obvious that he could not produce anything substantial. He became increasingly frustrated to the point that abusive criticism replaced artistic criticism in his works. His inability to create the literary works his public expected, drove him deeper into depression. He finally decided to leave Iran and go back to Paris, where he had started his career. However, postwar Paris was not the Paris he had experienced in the 1920s.

He made his last decision. He attempted suicide again; this time he succeeded, on April 4, 1951. At the time of his death, he had become recognized as the foremost modern prose author of Iran.

• * The best example of Hedayat's social satire is a puppet show in three acts entitled, The Myth of Creation. This work, translated by M.R. Ghanoonparver, has recently been published by Mazda Publishers.

Social Centre in Mamelodi, South Africa Situated on the outskirts of South Africa’s capital city Pretoria, Mamelodi is a large ‘township’ with a population of 1.5 million people. In Mamelodi, social problems are many: poverty and unemployment are rife, approximately 25 per cent of people are HIV positive, and there are thousands of AIDS orphans, many being cared for by relatives. SOS Children recognized that the need for vocational training and support for HIV-affected families was desperately needed, and as a result has set up sustainable long term education and support programmes in Mamelodi. These have yielded amazing results. In 2001, the HIV/AIDS Community Support Programme was launched, allowing SOS Children to reach HIV-affected and –infected children in the local community. This project is being run by the SOS Social Centre in Mamelodi, and in 2002 the Social Centre formalized its partnership with Tateni Home-Based Care in the form of Legodimo la Tsepo – ‘Heaven of Hope’ – community based childcare support programme. The project strengthens the capacity of families and the community to care for orphaned children, through education and by giving support to child-led and grandparent-led families. This support m may come in the form of food parcels, clothing, education, counseling, a and assistance with income generating activities. As SOS Children recognizes that it is best for a child to grow up in its biological family, provided the child’s physical and mental health is not at risk, we do all we can to keep families together and prevent child abandonment. 62 per cent of primary care givers in the poorest area of Mamelodi, Mandela Village, are female single parents / guardians, many of whom are unemployed. SOS Children offers vocational training courses to mothers who have to support their families. Courses are tailored to meet the need of the local market, and courses at the Mamelodi Social Centre include beadwork and sewing (dressmaking). Women, and some men, on the sewing course for example make clothes and knit jumpers which they can then sell. This helps to generate a regular income so they can support their children. Clientele at the Social Centre are expected to make an active contribution to the programme by working hard so they can become independent. This will avoid long-term dependency on the project. A number of women on this course are given start-up grants to help them set up their own businesses. While the mothers are on these training courses or at work, SOS Children runs day-care centres for their children. SOS Children’s ‘EduCare’ programme runs 40 creches in Mandela Village, which care for over 2,500 children. The EduCare centres also run short courses for mothers in hygiene, health, nutrition and child development. There are thousands of orphans in Mamelodi. It is estimated that 84 per cent of orphans in Mandela Village are cared for by family members, but many are struggling to cope. As well as supporting these families, SOS Children l plays an important role in the identification of a families that could benefit from government grants. Foster care grants make it possible for relatives to care for orphans. Children who have nothing and no-one, or whose families still cannot cope, are given a new loving home at SOS Children’s Village Mamelodi. SOS Children’s Community Support Programmes in Mamelodi are supporting thousands of vulnerable children and their families. We are helping them to help themselves by providing children with an education and adults with skills to make them employable. These programmes help people in the long-term. Home Note about sponsorship: please note that we do not offer children on our outreach programmes to child sponsors: we only offer children who live in our villages. However, you are welcome to Sponsor a Child in Africa in one of our villages by following the link.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flag Coat of arms
Anthem National anthem of South Africa
Capital		Pretoria (executive) Bloemfontein (judicial) Cape Town (legislative)
Largest city		Johannesburg (2006) [3]
Official languages		11[show] Afrikaans English Southern Ndebele Northern Sotho Sotho Swati Tsonga Tswana Venda Xhosa Zulu
Demonym		South African
Government		Parliamentary democracy
	President	Thabo Mbeki
Independence		from the United Kingdom
	Union	31 May 1910
	Statute of Westminster	11 December 1931
Area
	Total	1,221,037 km² (25th) 471,443 sq mi
	Water (%)	Negligible
Population
	2005 estimate	47,432,000 (26th)
	2001 census	44,819,278
	Density	39 /km² (163rd) 101 /sq mi
GDP (PPP)		2005 estimate
	Total	$570.2 billion (18th)
	Per capita	$12,161 (57th)
Gini? (2000)		57.8 (high)
HDI (2004)		0.653 (medium) (121st)
Currency		South African rand (ZAR)
Time zone		SAST (UTC+2)
Internet TLD		.za
Calling code		+27

The Republic of South Africa (also known by other official names) is the country at the southern tip of Africa. It borders the Atlantic and Indian oceans and Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland, and Lesotho, an independent enclave surrounded by South African territory. South Africa is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, and, due to its having the largest economy in Africa, is widely regarded as the most socially, economically and infrastructurally developed country on the continent.

South Africa has experienced a different history from other nations in Africa because of early immigration from Europe and the strategic importance of the Cape Sea Route. European immigration began shortly after the Dutch East India Company founded a station at what would become Cape Town, in 1652. The closure of the Suez Canal during the Six-Day War exemplified its significance to East-West trade. The country's relatively developed infrastructure made its mineral wealth available and important to Western interests, particularly throughout the late nineteenth century and, with international competition and rivalry, during the Cold War. South Africa is ethnically diverse, with the largest Caucasian, Indian, and racially mixed communities in Africa. Black South Africans, who speak nine officially recognised languages, and many more dialects, account for slightly less than 80% of the population.

Racial strife between the white minority and the black majority has played a large part in South Africa's history and politics, culminating in apartheid, which was instituted in 1948 by the National Party (although segregation existed before that time). The laws that defined apartheid began to be repealed or abolished by the National Party in 1990, after a long and sometimes violent struggle (including economic sanctions from the international community) by the Black majority as well as many White, Coloured, and Indian South Africans^{[citation needed]}.

Several philosophies and ideologies have developed in South Africa, including ubuntu (the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity) and Jan Smuts's holism.

Regular elections have been held for almost a century; but the majority of South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994.

South Africa is often called the "Rainbow Nation", a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and later adopted by then President Nelson Mandela. Mandela used the term "Rainbow Nation" as a metaphor to describe the country's newly developing multicultural diversity after segregationist apartheid ideology. The country's socially progressive policies are rare in Africa,^{[citation needed]} for example, by 2007, the country had joined Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, Spain, and parts of the United States in legalising same-sex marriage.

 History

Main article: History of South Africa

South Africa contains some of the oldest and most beautiful archaeological sites in Africa. Extensive fossil remains at the Sterkfontein, Kromdraai and Makapansgat caves suggest that various australopithecines existed in South Africa from about three million years ago. These were succeeded by various species of Homo, including Homo habilis, Homo erectus and modern man, Homo sapiens. Bantu-speaking peoples, iron-using agriculturists and herdsmen, moved south of the Limpopo River into modern-day South Africa by the fourth or fifth century (the Bantu expansion) displacing the original Khoi and San speakers. They slowly moved south and the earliest ironworks in modern-day KwaZulu-Natal Province are believed to date from around 1050. The southernmost group was the Xhosa people, whose language incorporates certain linguistic traits from the earlier Khoi and San people, reaching the Fish River, in today's Eastern Cape Province. These Iron Age populations displaced earlier hunter-gatherer peoples as they migrated.

Painting of an account of the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck, the first European to settle in South Africa, with Devil's Peak in the background.

The written history of South Africa begins with the arrival of the Portuguese. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias became the first European to reach the southernmost tip of Africa. When he returned to Lisbon carrying news of the discovery, which he called Cabo das Tormentas (Cape of Storms) due to the stormy conditions he had encountered in the region, his royal sponsor, John II of Portugal, chose a different name, Cabo da Boa Esperança or Cape of Good Hope, for it promised a sea route to the riches of India then being sought by Portugal. Later, the great Portuguese poet Camoens immortalized Dias' voyage in the epic poem The Lusiads, specifically via the mythological character, Adamastor, which symbolizes the forces of nature the Portuguese navigators had to overcome during the circumnavigation of the cape.

Along with the accounts of the early navigators, the accounts of shipwreck survivors provide the earliest written accounts of Southern Africa. In the two centuries following 1488, a number of small fishing settlements were made along the coast by Portuguese sailors, but no written account of these settlements survives. In 1652 a victualling station was established at the Cape of Good Hope by Jan van Riebeeck on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the slowly-expanding settlement was a Dutch possession. The Dutch settlers eventually met the south-westerly expanding Xhosa people in the region of the Fish River. A series of wars, called Cape Frontier Wars, ensued, mainly caused by conflicting land and livestock interests.

To ease Cape labour shortages slaves were brought from Indonesia, Madagascar, and India. Furthermore, troublesome leaders, often of royal descent, were banished from Dutch colonies to South Africa. This group of slaves eventually gave rise to a population that now identifies themselves as "Cape Malays". Cape Malays have traditionally been accorded a higher social status by the European colonists — many became wealthy landowners, but became increasingly dispossessed as apartheid developed. Cape Malay mosques in District Six were spared, and now serve as monuments for the destruction that occurred around them.

Most of the descendants of these slaves, who often married with Dutch settlers, were later classified together with the remnants of the Khoikhoi (aka Khoisan) as Cape Coloureds. Further intermingling within the Cape Coloured population itself, as well as with Xhosa and other South African people, now means that they constitute roughly 50% of the population in the Western Cape Province.

Great Britain seized the Cape of Good Hope area in 1795 ostensibly to stop it falling into the hands of the French, but also seeking to use Cape Town in particular as a stop on the route to Australia and India. It was returned to the Dutch in 1803, but soon afterwards the Dutch East India Company declared bankruptcy, and the British annexed the Cape Colony in 1806. The British continued the frontier wars against the Xhosa, pushing the eastern frontier eastward through a line of forts established along the Fish River and consolidating it by encouraging British settlement. Due to pressure of abolitionist societies in Britain, the British parliament first stopped its global slave trade in 1807, then abolished slavery in all its colonies in 1833.

The discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold in 1886 encouraged economic growth and immigration, intensifying the subjugation of the natives. The Boers successfully resisted British encroachments during the First Boer War (1880–1881) using guerrilla warfare tactics, much better suited to local conditions. However, the British returned in greater numbers without their red jackets in the Second Boer War (1899–1902). The Boers' attempt to ally themselves with German South-West Africa provided the British with yet another excuse to take control of the Boer Republics.

Boer civilians watching British soldiers burn down their house: Boers were given 10 minutes to gather belongings

The Boers resisted fiercely, but the British eventually overwhelmed the Boer forces, using their superior numbers, improved tactics and external supply chains. Also during this war, the British used controversial concentration camps and scorched earth tactics, forcing whole families into crowded tents and burning their houses. Crops were burnt and all livestock slaughtered to demoralize the resisting Boers. The appalling conditions in British concentration camps were brought to light by Welfare Campaigner Emily Hobhouse in her report "Report of a Visit to the Camps of Women and Children in the Cape and Orange River Colonies". Maltreatment and undernourishment were common in camps. Food was often poisoned and glass pieces and hooks were found in many rations. The death toll reached 26,370 of which 24,000 were children.

The Treaty of Vereeniging specified full British sovereignty over the South African republics, and the British government agreed to assume the £3 000 000 war debt owed by the Afrikaner governments. One of the main conditions by the of the treaty ending the war was that 'Blacks' would not be allowed to vote, except in the Cape Colony.

After four years of negotiations, the Union of South Africa was created from the Cape and Natal colonies, as well as the republics of Orange Free State and Transvaal, on May 31, 1910, exactly eight years after the end of the Second Boer War. The newly-created Union of South Africa was a dominion. In 1934, the South African Party and National Party merged to form the United Party, seeking reconciliation between Afrikaners and English-speaking 'Whites', but split in 1939 over the Union's entry into World War II as an ally of the United Kingdom, a move which the National Party strongly opposed.

In 1948 the National Party was elected to power, and began implementing a series of harsh segregationist laws that would become known collectively as apartheid. Not surprisingly, this segregation also applied to the wealth acquired during rapid industrialisation of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. While the White minority enjoyed the highest standard of living in all of Africa, often comparable to "First World" western nations, the Black majority remained disadvantaged by almost every standard, including income, education, housing, and life expectancy. However, the average income and life expectancy of a black, 'Indian' or 'coloured' South African compared favourably to many other African states, such as Ghana and Tanzania as education and health were provided, though selectively.

Apartheid became increasingly controversial, leading to widespread sanctions and divestment abroad and growing unrest and oppression within South Africa. (See also the article on the History of South Africa in the apartheid era.) A long period of harsh suppression by the government, and at times violent resistance, strikes, marches, protests, and sabotage by bombing and other means, by various anti-apartheid movements, most notably the African National Congress (ANC), followed. In the late 1970s, South Africa began a program of nuclear weapons, and in the following decade it produced six deliverable nuclear weapons. The rationale for the nuclear arsenal is disputed, but it is believed that Vorster and P.W. Botha wanted to be able to catalyse American intervention in the event of a war between South Africa and the Cuban-supported MPLA government of Angola.

In 1990 the National Party government took the first step towards negotiating itself out of power when it lifted the ban on the African National Congress and other left-wing political organisations, and released Nelson Mandela from prison after twenty-seven years' incarceration on a sabotage sentence. Apartheid legislation was gradually removed from the statute books, and South Africa also destroyed its nuclear arsenal and acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The first multi-racial elections were held in 1994, which the ANC won by an overwhelming majority. It has been in power ever since.

Despite the end of apartheid, millions of South Africans, mostly black, continue to live in poverty. This is partly attributed to the legacy of the apartheid system and, increasingly, what many see as the failure of the current government to tackle social issues, coupled with the monetary and fiscal discipline of the current government to ensure both redistribution of wealth and economic growth. In the ten years since the ANC government took power, South Africa's United Nations Human Development Index has fallen dramatically, while it was steadily rising until the mid-1990s.^[1] Much of this could be attributed to the AIDS pandemic and the government's failure to take steps to address it.^[2] However, the ANC's social housing policy has produced some improvement in living conditions in many areas by redirecting fiscal spending and improving the efficiency of the tax collection system.

Government and politics

Main article: Politics of South Africa

The central area of Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa

The Police Crush Another Demonstration Against Durban Mayor Obed Mlaba by the Shackdwellers' Movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, 28 September, 2007

South Africa is the only nation in the world with three capital cities: Cape Town, the largest of the three, is the legislative capital; Pretoria is the administrative capital; and Bloemfontein is the judicial capital. South Africa has a bicameral parliament: the ninety members of the National Council of Provinces (the upper house); and the four hundred members of the National Assembly (the lower house). Members of the lower house are elected on a population basis by proportional representation: half of the members are elected from national lists and half are elected from provincial lists. Ten members are elected to represent each province in the National Council of Provinces, regardless of the population of the province. Elections for both chambers are held every five years. The government is formed in the upper house, and the leader of the majority party in the National Assembly is the President.

Current South African politics are dominated by the African National Congress (ANC), which received 69.7% of the vote during the last 2004 general election and 66.3% of the vote in the 2006 municipal election. The current (2004-2009 term) President of South Africa is Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded former President Nelson Mandela. The main challenger to the ANC's rule is the Democratic Alliance party, which received 12.4% of the vote in the 2004 election and 14.8% in the 2006 election. The leader of this party is Helen Zille (elected May 6, 2007). The previous leader of the party was Tony Leon. The formerly dominant New National Party, which introduced apartheid through its predecessor, the National Party, suffered increasing humiliation at election polls since 1994, and finally voted to disband. It chose to merge with the ANC on 9 April 2005. Other major political parties represented in Parliament are the Inkatha Freedom Party, which mainly represents Zulu voters, and the Independent Democrats, who took 6.97% and 1.7% of the vote respectively, in the 2004 election.

However since 2004 the country has suffered many thousands of popular protests, some violent, making it, according to one academic, the "most protest rich country in the world.".^[3] Many of these protests have been organised from the growing shanty towns that surround South African cities.

 Law

Main article: Law of South Africa

The primary sources of South Africa law were Roman-Dutch mercantile law and personal law with English Common law, as imports of Dutch settlements and British colonialism. The first European based law in South Africa was brought by the Dutch East India Company and is called Roman-Dutch law. It was imported before the codification of European law into the Napoleonic Code and is comparable in many ways to Scottish law. This was followed in the 19th century by British law both common and statutory. Starting in 1910 with unification, South Africa had its own parliament which passed laws specific for South Africa, building on those previously passed for the individual member colonies.

 Provinces, districts and municipalities

Main articles: Provinces of South Africa, Districts of South Africa, and Municipalities of South Africa

Map showing the provinces and districts (numbered) of South Africa.

Northern Cape      North West      Gauteng      Limpopo      Mpumalanga

KwaZulu-Natal      Eastern Cape      Free State      Western Cape

When apartheid ended in 1994, the South African government had to integrate the formerly independent and semi-independent Bantustans into the political structure of South Africa. To this end, it abolished the four former provinces of South Africa (Cape Province, Natal, Orange Free State, and Transvaal) and replaced them with nine fully integrated provinces. The new provinces are usually much smaller than the former provinces, which theoretically gives local governments more resources to distribute over smaller areas.

The nine provinces are further subdivided into 52 districts: 6 metropolitan and 46 district municipalities. The 46 district municipalities are further subdivided into 231 local municipalities. The district municipalities also contain 20 district management areas (mostly game parks) that are directly governed by the district municipalities. The six metropolitan municipalities perform the functions of both district and local municipalities. The new provinces are:

Province	Former homelands and provinces	Capital	Area (km²)	Area (mi²)	Population (2001)
Eastern Cape	Cape Province, Transkei, Ciskei	Bhisho	169 580	65 475	6 436 761
Free State	Orange Free State, QwaQwa	Bloemfontein	129 480	49 992	2 706 776
Gauteng	Transvaal	Johannesburg	17 010	6 568	8 837 172
KwaZulu-Natal	Natal, KwaZulu	Pietermaritzburg	92 100	35 560	9 426 018
Limpopo	Transvaal, Venda, Lebowa, Gazankulu	Polokwane	123 900	47 838	5 273 637
Mpumalanga	Transvaal, KwaNdebele, KaNgwane, Bophuthatswana, Lebowa	Nelspruit	79 490	30 691	3 122 994
Northern Cape	Cape Province	Kimberley	361 830	139 703	822 726
North West	Transvaal, Cape Province, Bophuthatswana	Mafikeng	116 320	44 911	3 669 349
Western Cape	Cape Province	Cape Town	129 370	49 950	4 524 335
Total			1 219 080	470 688	44 819 768

Geography

Main article: Geography of South Africa

Map of South Africa

Satellite picture of South Africa

South Africa is located at the southern most region of Africa, with a long coastline that stretches more than 2500 kilometres (1 550 mi) and across two oceans (the Atlantic and the Indian). At 470 979 mi² (1 219 912 km²),^[4] South Africa is the world's 25th-largest country (after Mali). It is comparable in size to Colombia. Njesuthi in the Drakensberg at 3 408 m (11,424 ft) is the highest peak in South Africa.

South Africa has a generally temperate climate, due in part to it being surrounded by the Atlantic and Indian Oceans on three sides, by its location in the climatically milder southern hemisphere and due to the average elevation rising steadily towards the north (towards the equator) and further inland. Due to this varied topography and oceanic influence, a great variety of climatic zones exist.

The climatic zones vary, from the extreme desert of the southern Namib in the farthest northwest to the lush subtropical climate in the east along the Mozambique border and the Indian ocean. From the east, the land quickly rises over a mountainous escarpment towards the interior plateau known as the Highveld. Even though South Africa is classified as semi-arid, there is considerable variation in climate as well as topography.

The interior of South Africa is a vast, rather flat, and sparsely populated scrubland, Karoo, which is drier towards the northwest along the Namib desert. In contrast, the eastern coastline is lush and well-watered, which produces a climate similar to the tropics. The extreme southwest has a climate remarkably similar to that of the Mediterranean with wet winters and hot, dry summers, hosting the famous Fynbos Biome. This area also produces much of South Africa's wine. This region is also particularly known for its wind, which blows intermittently almost all year. The severity of this wind made passing around the Cape of Good Hope particularly treacherous for sailors, causing many shipwrecks. Further east on the country's south coast, rainfall is distributed more evenly throughout the year, producing a green landscape. This area is popularly known as the Garden Route.

The Free State is particularly flat due to the fact that it lies centrally on the high plateau. North of the Vaal River, the Highveld becomes better watered and does not experience subtropical extremes of heat. Johannesburg, in the centre of the Highveld, is at 1740 metres (5 709 ft) and receives an annual rainfall of 760 millimetres (30 in). Winters in this region are cold, although snow is rare.

To the north of shitshire, the altitude drops beyond the Highveld's escarpment, and turns into the lower lying Bushveld, an area of mixed dry forest and an abundance of wildlife. East of the Highveld, beyond the eastern escarpment, the Lowveld stretches towards the Indian ocean. It has particularly high temperatures, and is also the location of extended subtropical agriculture. The mountains of the Barberton Greenstone belt in the lowveld are the oldest mountains on Earth, dating back 3.5 Billion years. The earliest reliable proof of life (dated 3.2–3.5 Billion years old) has been found in these mountains.

The high Drakensberg mountains, which form the south-eastern escarpment of the Highveld, offer limited skiing opportunities in winter. Many people think that the coldest place in South Africa is Sutherland in the western Roggeveld Mountains, where midwinter temperatures can reach as low as −15 degrees Celsius (5 °F). In fact, the coldest place is actually Buffelsfontein, which is in the Molteno district of the Eastern Cape. Buffelsfontein recorded a low of −18.6 degrees Celsius (-1.5 °F).^[5] The deep interior has the hottest temperatures: A temperature of 51.7 °C (125 °F) was recorded in 1948 in the Northern Cape Kalahari near Upington.^[6]

South Africa also has one possession, the small sub-Antarctic archipelago of the Prince Edward Islands, consisting of Marion Island (290 km²/112 mi²) and Prince Edward Island (45 km²/17.3 mi²) (not to be confused with the Canadian province of the same name).

 Flora and fauna

Fynbos, a floral kingdom unique to South Africa, is found near Cape Town

South Africa is one of only 17 countries worldwide considered Megadiverse. It has more than 20,000 different plants, or about 10% of all the known species of plants on Earth, making it particularly rich in plant biodiversity. South Africa is the third most biodiverse country in the world^{[citation needed]}, after Brazil and Indonesia and has greater biodiversity than any country of equal or smaller size (Brazil being roughly seven times South Africa's size, and Indonesia more than 50% larger).

South Africa's most prevalent biome is grassland, particularly on the Highveld, where the plant cover is dominated by different grasses, low shrubs, and acacia trees, mainly camel-thorn and whitethorn. Vegetation becomes even more sparse towards the northwest due to low rainfall. There are several species of water-storing succulents like aloes and euphorbias in the very hot and dry Namaqualand area. The grass and thorn savannah turns slowly into a bush savannah towards the north-east of the country, with more dense growth. There are significant numbers of baobab trees in this area, near the northern end of Kruger National Park.^[7]

The Fynbos Biome, which makes up the majority of the area and plant life in the Cape floristic region, one of the six floral kingdoms, is located in a small region of the Western Cape and contains more than 9,000 of those species, making it among the richest regions on earth in terms of floral biodiversity. The majority of the plants are evergreen hard-leaf plants with fine, needle-like leaves, such as the sclerophyllous plants. Another uniquely South African plant is the protea genus of flowering plants. There are around 130 different species of protea in South Africa.

While South Africa has a great wealth of flowering plants, it has few forests. Only 1% of South Africa is forest, almost exclusively in the humid coastal plain along the Indian Ocean in KwaZulu-Natal (see KwaZulu-Cape coastal forest mosaic). There are even smaller reserves of forests that are out of the reach of fire, known as montane forests (see Knysna-Amatole montane forests). Plantations of imported tree species are predominant, particularly the non-native eucalyptus and pine. South Africa has lost a large area of natural habitat in the last four decades, primarily due to overpopulation, sprawling development patterns and deforestation during the nineteenth century. South Africa is one of the worst affected countries in the world when it comes to invasion by alien species with many (e.g. Black Wattle, Port Jackson, Hakea, Lantana and Jacaranda) posing a significant threat to the native biodiversity and the already scarce water resources. The original temperate forest that met the first European settlers to South Africa was exploited ruthlessly until only small patches remained. Currently, South African hardwood trees like Real Yellowwood (Podocarpus latifolius), stinkwood (Ocotea bullata), and South African Black Ironwood (Olea laurifolia) are under government protection.

Numerous mammals are found in the bushveld habitats including lion, leopard, White Rhino, Blue Wildebeest, kudu, impala, hyena, hippopotamus, and giraffe. A significant extent of the bushveld habitat exists in the north-east including Kruger National Park and the Mala Mala Reserve, as well as in the far north in the Waterberg Biosphere.

Mpumalanga, previously known as the Eastern Transvaal has much in the way to offer, from scenery, to ancient history and the big 5. With hundreds of species of birds, mammals and reptiles it is the Safari destination of choice. Visit Mpumalanga to find out more about the Bio Diversity, the culture, The history and the amazing scenery of this area.

Climate change is expected to bring considerable warming and drying to much of this already semi-arid region, with greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, flooding and drought. According to computer generated climate modelling produced by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI)^[8] (along with many of its partner institutions), parts of southern Africa will see an increase in temperature by about one degree Celsius along the coast to more than four degrees Celsius in the already hot hinterland such as the Northern Cape in late spring and summertime by 2050.

The Cape Floral Kingdom has been identified as one of the global biodiversity hotspots since it will be hit very hard by climate change and has such a great diversity of life. Drought, increased intensity and frequency of fire and climbing temperatures are expected to push many of these rare species towards extinction. The book Scorched : South Africa's changing climate takes much of the modelling produced by SANBI and presents it in an accessible travelogue-style collection of essays.^[9]

South Africa houses many endemic species, among them the critically endangered Riverine Rabbit (Bunolagus monticullaris) in the Karoo.

 Economy

Main article: Economy of South Africa

The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town with Table Mountain in the background. Cape Town has become an important retail and tourism centre for the country, and attracts the largest number of foreign visitors in South Africa

By UN classification South Africa is a middle-income country with an abundant supply of resources, well-developed financial, legal, communications, energy, and transport sectors, a stock exchange (the JSE Securities Exchange), that ranks among the top twenty in the world, and a modern infrastructure supporting an efficient distribution of goods to major urban centres throughout the region. South Africa is ranked 24th in the world in terms of GDP, corrected for purchasing power parity.

In many respects, South Africa is under-developed, however; advanced development is significantly localised around four areas, namely Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, and Pretoria/Johannesburg. Beyond these four economic centres, development is marginal and poverty still reigns despite government efforts. Consequently the vast majority of South Africans are poor. However, key marginal areas are experiencing rapid growth recently. Such areas include: Mossel Bay to Plettenberg Bay; Rustenburg area; Nelspruit area; Bloemfontein; Cape West Coast; KwaZulu-Natal North Coast amongst others.

Large income gaps and a dual economy designate South Africa as a developing country. South Africa has one of the highest rates of income inequality in the world. The white South African minority tends to be considerably wealthier than the rest of the population. A decade of continual economic growth has helped to lower unemployment, but daunting economic problems remain. Other problems are crime, corruption, and HIV/AIDS.

At the start of 2000, President Thabo Mbeki vowed to promote economic growth and foreign investment by relaxing restrictive labour laws, stepping up the pace of privatisation, and cutting unneeded governmental spending. His policies face strong opposition from organised labour. South Africa is also the continent's largest energy producer and consumer.

The South African rand (ZAR), the world's most actively-traded emerging market currency, has joined an elite club of fifteen currencies, the Continuous linked settlement (CLS), where forex transactions are settled immediately, lowering the risks of transacting across time zones. The rand was the best-performing currency against the United States dollar (USD) between 2002 and 2005, according to the Bloomberg Currency Scorecard.

The volatility of the rand has affected economic activity, with the rand falling sharply during 2001, hitting an historic low of 13.85 ZAR to the USD, raising fears of inflation, and causing the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates. The rand has since recovered, trading at 7.14 ZAR to the dollar as of September 2007 while the South African Reserve Bank's policy of inflation targeting has brought inflation under control. The stronger rand has however put exporters under considerable pressure, with many calling for government to intervene in the exchange rate to help soften the rand, and many others dismissing staff.

Refugees from poorer neighbouring countries abound with immigrants from the DRC, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi and many others representing a large portion of the informal sector. With high unemployment levels amongst poorer South Africans, xenophobia is a very real fear and many people born in South Africa feel resentful of immigrants who are seen to be depriving the native population of jobs, a feeling which has been given credibility by the fact that many South African employers have employed migrants from other countries for lower pay than South African citizens, especially in the construction, tourism, agriculture and domestic service industries. Illegal immigrants are also heavily involved in informal trading.^[10] However, many immigrants to South Africa continue to live in poor conditions, and the South African immigration policy has become increasingly restrictive since 1994.^[11]

 Agriculture

Workers planting on a farm in the central area of Mpumalanga.

Farm workers.

South Africa has a large agricultural sector and is a net exporter of farming products. There are almost a thousand agricultural cooperatives and agribusinesses throughout the country, and agricultural exports have constituted 8% of South Africa's total exports for the past five years. The agricultural industry contributes around 10% of formal employment, relatively low compared to other parts of Africa, as well as providing work for casual labourers and contributing around 2.6% of GDP for the nation.^[12] However, due to the aridity of the land, only 13.5% can be used for crop production, and only 3% is considered high potential land.^[13]

Although the commercial farming sector is relatively well developed, people in some rural areas still survive on subsistence agriculture. It is the eighth largest wine producer in the world, and the eleventh largest producer of sunflower seed. South Africa is a net exporter of agricultural products and foodstuffs, the largest number of exported items being sugar, grapes, citrus, nectarines, wine and deciduous fruit. The largest locally produced crop is maize (corn), and it has been estimated that 9 million tons are produced every year, with 7.4 million tons being consumed. Livestock are also popular on South African farms, with the country producing 85% of all meat consumed. The dairy industry consists of around 4,300 milk producers providing employment for 60,000 farm workers and contributing to the livelihoods of around 40,000 others.^[14]

In recent years, the agricultural sector has introduced several reforms, some of which are controversial, such as land reform and the deregulation of the market for agricultural products. Land reform has been criticised both by farmers' groups and by landless workers, the latter alleging that the pace of change has not been fast enough, and the former alleging racist treatment and expressing concerns that a similar situation to Zimbabwe's land reform policy may develop,^[15] a fear exacerbated by comments made by the country's deputy president.^[16][17] The sector continues to face problems, with increased foreign competition and crime being two of the major challenges for the industry. The government has been accused of not devoting enough time and money to tackle the problem of farm attacks as opposed to other forms of violent crime.^[18]

Another issue which affects South African agriculture is environmental damage caused by misuse of the land and global climate change. South Africa is unusually vulnerable to climate change and resultant diminution of surface waters. Some predictions shows surface water supply could decrease by 60% by the year 2070 in parts of the Western Cape.^[19] To reverse the damage caused by land mismanagement, the government has supported a scheme which promotes sustainable development and the use of natural resources.^[20]

 Demographics

 South Africa is a nation of more than 47 million people of diverse origins, cultures, languages, and beliefs. The last census was held in 2001 and the next will be in 2011. Statistics South Africa provided five racial categories by which people could classify themselves, the last of which, "unspecified/other" drew negligible responses, and these results were omitted.^[21] The 2006 midyear estimated figures for the other categories were Black African at 79.5%, White at 9.2%, Coloured at 8.9%, and Indian or Asian at 2.5%.^[22] South Africa has a yearly population growth rate of −0.46%.^[23]

By far the major part of the population classified itself as African or black, but it is not culturally or linguistically homogeneous. Major ethnic groups include the Zulu, Xhosa, Basotho (South Sotho), Bapedi (North Sotho), Venda, Tswana, Tsonga, Swazi and Ndebele, all of which speak Bantu languages (see Bantu peoples of South Africa).

Some, such as the Zulu, Xhosa, Bapedi and Venda groups, are unique to South Africa. Other groups are distributed across the borders with South Africa's neighbours: The Basotho group is also the major ethnic group in Lesotho. The Tswana ethnic group constitute the majority of the population of Botswana. The Swazi ethnic group is the major ethnic group in Swaziland. The Ndebele ethnic group is also found in Matabeleland in Zimbabwe, where they are known as the Matabele. These Ndebele people are however in effect Zulu people because the language they speak is Zulu and they are the descendants of a faction under the warrior Mzilikazi that escaped persecution from Shaka by migrating to their current territory. The Tsonga ethnic group is also found in southern Mozambique, where they are known as the Shangaan.

The white population descends largely from colonial immigrants: Dutch, German, French Huguenot, and British. Culturally and linguistically, they are divided into the Afrikaners, who speak Afrikaans, and English-speaking groups, many of whom are descended from British immigrants (see Anglo African). Many small communities that have immigrated over the last century retain the use of other languages. The white population is on the decrease due to a low birth rate and emigration; as a factor in their decision to emigrate, many cite the high crime rate and the government's affirmative action policies. In the first decade after the ANC took power, a million whites emigrated.^{[24][25][26][27]}

The term "Coloured" is still largely used for the people of mixed race descended from slaves brought in from East and Central Africa, the indigenous Khoisan who lived in the Cape at the time, indigenous African Blacks, Whites (mostly the Dutch/Afrikaner and British settlers) as well as an admixture of Javanese, Malay, Indian, Malagasy and other European (such as Portuguese) and Asian blood (such as Burmese). The majority speak Afrikaans. Khoisan is a term used to describe two separate groups, physically similar in that they were light-skinned and small in stature. The Khoikhoi, who were called Hottentots by the Europeans, were pastoralists and were effectively annihilated; the San, called Bushmen by the Europeans, were hunter-gatherers. Within what is known as the Coloured community, more recent immigrants will also be found: Coloureds from the former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Namibia and immigrants of mixed descent from India and Burma (Anglo-Indians/Anglo-Burmese) who were welcomed to the Cape when India and Burma received their Independence.

The major part of the Asian population of the country is Indian in origin (see Indian South Africans), many of them descended from indentured workers brought in the nineteenth century to work on the sugar plantations of the eastern coastal area then known as Natal. There is also a significant group of Chinese South Africans (approximately 100,000 individuals) and Vietnamese South Africans (approximately 50,000 individuals).

Religion

According to the latest 2001 national census, Christians accounted for 79.7% of the population. This includes Zion Christian 11.1%, Pentecostal (Charismatic) 8.2%, Catholic 7.1%, Methodist 6.8%, Dutch Reformed 6.7%, Anglican 3.8%, and other Christian 36%. Islam accounted for 1.5% of the population, Hinduism about 1.3%. 15.1% had no religious affiliation, 2.3% were other and 1.4% were unspecified.^[28][29]

African Indigenous Churches were the largest of the Christian groups. It was believed that many of these persons who claimed no affiliation with any organised religion adhered to traditional indigenous religions. Many persons combined Christian and traditional indigenous religious practices.^[30]

Islam in South Africa probably pre-dates the colonial period, and consisted of isolated contact with Arab and East African traders.^{[citation needed]} Many South African Muslims are described as Coloureds, notably in the Western Cape, including those whose ancestors came as slaves from the Indonesian archipelago (the Cape Malays). Others are described as Indians, notably in KwaZulu-Natal, including those whose ancestors came as traders from South Asia; they have been joined by others from other parts of Africa as well as white or black South African converts. It is estimated that Islam is the fastest growing religion of conversion in the country,^[31] with the number of black Muslims growing sixfold, from 12,000 in 1991 to 74,700 in 2004.^[32]

Hinduism in South Africa dates back to British Colonial period primarily but later waves of continuous immigrants from India have contributed to sizeable Hindu population. Most Hindus are predominantly ethnically South Asians but there are many who come from mixed racial stock and many are converts with the efforts of Hindu missionaries such as ISKCON.>^[33]

 Culture

Main article: Culture of South Africa

Prison Buildings on Robben Island, the holding place of several anti-apartheid fighters including Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned there for eighteen years. Robben Island is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Decorated houses, Drakensberg Mountains

It may be argued that there is no "single" culture in South Africa because of its ethnic diversity. Today, the diversity in foods from many cultures is enjoyed by all and especially marketed to tourists who wish to sample the large variety of South African cuisine. In addition to food, music and dance feature prominently.

South African cuisine is heavily meat-based and has spawned the distinctively South African social gathering known as a braai, or barbecue. South Africa has also developed into a major wine producer, with some of the best vineyards lying in valleys around Stellenbosch, Franschoek, Paarl and Barrydale.^[34]

There is great diversity in music from South Africa. Many black musicians who sang in Afrikaans or English during apartheid have since begun to sing in traditional African languages, and have developed a unique style called Kwaito. Of note is Brenda Fassie, who launched to fame with her song "Weekend Special", which was sung in English. More famous traditional musicians include Ladysmith Black Mambazo, while the Soweto String Quartet performs classic music with an African flavour. White and Coloured South African singers are historically influenced by European musical styles including such western metal bands such as Seether. South Africa has produced world-famous jazz musicians, notably Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Abdullah Ibrahim, Miriam Makeba, Jonathan Butler, Chris McGregor, and Sathima Bea Benjamin. Afrikaans music covers multiple genres, such as the contemporary Steve Hofmeyr and the punk rock band Fokofpolisiekar. Crossover artists such as Johnny Clegg and his bands Juluka and Savuka have enjoyed various success underground, publicly, and abroad.

The country's black majority still has a substantial number of rural inhabitants who lead largely impoverished lives. It is among these people, however, that cultural traditions survive most strongly; as blacks have become increasingly urbanised and westernised, aspects of traditional culture have declined. Urban blacks usually speak English or Afrikaans in addition to their native tongue. There are smaller but still significant groups of speakers of Khoisan languages which are not included in the eleven official languages, but are one of the eight other officially recognised languages. There are small groups of speakers of endangered languages, most of which are from the Khoi-San family, that receive no official status; however, some groups within South Africa are attempting to promote their use and revival.

The middle class lifestyle, predominantly of the white minority but with growing numbers of black, Coloured and Indian people,^[35] is similar in many respects to that of people found in Western Europe, North America and Australasia. Members of the middle class often study and work abroad for greater exposure to the world's markets.

Asians, predominantly of Indian origin, preserve their own cultural heritage, languages and religious beliefs, being either Christian, Hindu or Sunni Muslim and speaking English, with Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Tamil or Gujarati being spoken less frequently. Most Indians live lifestyles similar to that of whites. The first Indians arrived on the famous Truro ship as indentured labourers in Natal to work the Sugar Cane Fields. There is a much smaller Chinese community in South Africa, although its numbers have increased due to immigration from Republic of China (Taiwan).

South Africa has also had a large influence in the Scouting movement, with many Scouting traditions and ceremonies coming from the experiences of Robert Baden-Powell (the founder of Scouting) during his time in South Africa as a military officer in the 1890s. The South African Scout Association was one of the first youth organisations to open its doors to youth and adults of all races in South Africa. This happened on 2 July 1977 at a conference known as Quo Vadis.^[36]

 Languages

Main article: Languages of South Africa

Map showing principal South African languages by municipality. Lighter shades indicate a non-majority plurality.

Afrikaans      Northern Sotho      Southern Sotho      Swati      Tsonga

Tswana      Venda      Xhosa      Zulu

South Africa has eleven official languages:^[37] Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu. In this regard it is second only to India in number. While each language is technically equal to every other, some languages are spoken more than others.

According to the 1996 National Census, the three most spoken first home languages are Zulu (9.2 million), Xhosa (7.2 million) and Afrikaans (5.8 million). The three most spoken second home languages are English (2.2 million), Afrikaans (1.1 million) and Zulu (0.5 million). The four most spoken home languages are Zulu (9.8 million), Xhosa (7.5 million), Afrikaans (6.9 million) and English (5.7 million). The 1996 census does not include information about languages spoken elsewhere than at home.^[38]

There are eleven official names for South Africa, one in each of the official national languages.

The country also recognizes eight non-official languages: Fanagalo, Khoe, Lobedu, Nama, Northern Ndebele, Phuthi, San and South African Sign Language^{[citation needed]}. These non-official languages may be used in certain official uses in limited areas where it has been determined that these languages are prevalent. Nevertheless, their populations are not such that they require nationwide recognition.

Many of the "unofficial languages" of the San and Khoikhoi people contain regional dialects stretching northward into Namibia and Botswana, and elsewhere. These people, who are a physically distinct population from other Africans, have their own cultural identity based on their hunter-gatherer societies. They have been marginalised to a great extent, and many of their languages are in danger of becoming extinct.

Many white South Africans also speak other European languages, such as Portuguese (also spoken by Angolan and Mozambican blacks), German, and Greek, while many Asians and Indians in South Africa speak South Asian languages, such as Telugu, Hindi, Gujarati and Tamil.

Sports

The main sports in South Africa are soccer (football), Rugby (rugby union), cricket and boxing. Other sports with significant support are swimming, golf and netball. Basketball, surfing and skateboarding are popular amongst the youth.

Famous Boxing personalities include Baby Jake Jacob Matlala, "the rose of Soweto" Dingaan Thobela, Gerrie Coetzee and Brian Mitchell. Soccer players who have excelled in international clubs include Lucas Radebe of Leeds United and Quinton Fortune, formerly of Manchester United. South Africa produced Formula 1 motor racing's 1979 world champion Jody Scheckter. Sarel van der Merwe won many national titles during the 70's 80's and 1990's.

South Africa hosted and won the 1995 Rugby World Cup at their first attempt, and then followed this up by hosting and winning the 1996 African Cup of Nations football tournament. It also hosted the 2003 Cricket World Cup and the first Twenty20 Cricket World Championship, in September 2007. South Africa will be the host nation for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which will be the first time the tournament is held in Africa.

In 2004, the team of Roland Schoeman, Lyndon Ferns, Darian Townsend and Ryk Neethling won the gold medal at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, simultaneously breaking the world record in the 4x100 freestyle relay. All four of the swimmers trained at the University of Arizona. Previously Penny Heyns won Olympic Gold in the 1996 olympics. Several other swimmers have participated and won in international swimming events

 Health

Main article: HIV/AIDS in South Africa

As in many African countries, the spread of AIDS (acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome) is an alarming problem in South Africa with up to 31% of pregnant women found to be HIV infected in 2005 and the infection rate among adults estimated at 20%.^[39] The link between HIV, a virus spread primarily by sexual contact, and AIDS has long been denied by the president and the health minister, who have insisted that the many deaths in the country are due to malnutrition, and hence poverty, and not HIV.^[40] The government has recently, after much delay, devoted substantial resources to fighting this pandemic^{[citation needed]}.

AIDS affects mainly those who are sexually active and is far more prevalent in the black population, which means the demographics of the country are slowly changing^{[citation needed]}. Most deaths are people who are also economically active, resulting in many families losing their primary wage earners. This has resulted in many 'AIDS orphans' who in many cases depend on the state for care and financial support.^[41] It is estimated that there are 1,200,000 orphans in South Africa.^[41] Many elderly people also lose the support from lost younger members of their family.

It is estimated that more than 1000 people die in South Africa every day because of AIDS and that six million people in the country are expected to die in the next ten years.^{[citation needed]}

Malaria

The Department of Health reported on April 25, 2007 that there has been a significant decrease of 65 percent in the number of malaria cases in the country. Deaths have been reduced by 73 percent.^[42]

 Crime

Main article: Crime in South Africa

Crime continues to be a major problem in South Africa. According to a survey for the period 1998–2000 compiled by the United Nations, South Africa was ranked second for assault and murder (by all means) per capita, in addition to being ranked second for rape and first for rapes per capita.^[43] Total crime per capita is tenth out of the sixty countries in the data set. Nevertheless, crime has had a pronounced effect on society: many wealthier South Africans moved into gated communities, abandoning the central business districts of some cities for the relative security of suburbs. This effect is most pronounced in Johannesburg, although the trend is noticeable in other cities as well. Many emigrants from South Africa also state that crime was a big motivator for them to leave. Crime against the farming community has continued to be a major problem.^[44]

 Military

Main article: South African National Defence Force

South Africa's armed forces, known as the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), was created in 1994. Previously known simply as the South African Defence Force (SADF), the new force consists of the forces of the old SADF, as well as the forces of the African nationalist groups, namely Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA), and the former homeland defence forces. The SANDF is subdivided into four branches, the South African Army, the South African Air Force, the South African Navy, and the South African Military Health Services.

In recent years, the SANDF has become a major peacekeeping force in Africa, and has been involved in operations in Lesotho, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Burundi, amongst others. It has also participated as a part of multi-national UN peacekeeping forces.

South Africa undertook a nuclear weapons program in the 1970s and may have conducted a nuclear test over the Atlantic in 1979. It has since renounced its nuclear program and, after destroying its small nuclear arsenal, signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1991. It is the only African country to have successfully developed nuclear weapons.

 Media

Main article: Media in South Africa

South Africa has a large, free, and active press that regularly challenges the government, a habit formed during the apartheid era when the press was the medium least controlled by the government. Major scandals have erupted when the press reported charges of corruption that were proven to be true in cases such as that of Schabir Shaik, in which (then) deputy president Jacob Zuma was implicated, and the corruption allegations that led to the dismissal of Winnie Mandela from parliament. Even though South Africa now has the most sophisticated media network in Africa, it was one of the last countries in the world to allow television, with colour TV broadcasts commencing in 1975. By the end of apartheid in 1994, television networks covered all urban areas and some less populated areas, while radio networks covered almost all of the country.

During the Apartheid era the majority of commercial and all public-service radio stations and all of the television channels were operated by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), and were subject to strict control and censorship by the government, with a few independent regional stations allowed. The creation of the independent black homelands (or Bantustans) in the 1970s allowed for the establishment of TV and radio stations outside of the control of the apartheid Government. Following the demise of apartheid, the broadcasting industry was de-regulated with many of the commercial regional SABC radio stations and former Bantustan stations privatised and sold to companies and consortiums that were majority owned by black people. Three SABC television channels are in place at present.

An African language channel was introduced to the SABC in 1981 (during apartheid) with a second African language channel added later in the decade. The SABC's television monopoly was eventually challenged in 1986 when a new privately owned subscription television network, M-Net, was launched. M-Net was forbidden to operate a news service.

South Africa currently has two terrestrial free-to-air television networks (SABC and e.tv), one subscription based terrestrial network (M-Net), as well as has access to satellite television (DStv) which is operated by M-Net's owners, Multichoice. e.tv is allowed to operate an independent television news service. The SABC broadcasts news and entertainment channels Africa-wide via satellite.

 Tourism

South Africa is a popular tourist destination, and a substantial amount of revenue comes from tourism^{[citation needed]}. Among the main attractions are the diverse and picturesque culture, the game reserves and the highly regarded local wines. In recent years, tourism in South Africa has seen high growth with the first five months of 2007 showing the highest levels of tourism in South Africa since 1998. Figures released by Marthinus van Schalkwyk, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism show a decided increase in foreign visitors.

Children and Colors
Authors: Jandy Jeppson with Judith A. Myers-Walls, PhD, CFLE

Lisa, Jacob’s caregiver, noticed that Jacob said “yellow” when he looked at an orange crayon. She wondered if he really thought the orange crayon was yellow. Jacob’s mother told Lisa that when she asked him what color the yellow crayon is, he said “blue.” Lisa decided she and Jacob’s mother could start to teach about colors. Adults talk about colors a lot. For this reason, young children may know the names of many colors. They may not know which color goes to which name, though. You can help children learn colors. Talk about colors and ask children the color of things. With young children, start by teaching about a single color, and then add more colors as time goes on. If parents or other caregivers have questions about why colors are important, there are many ideas in this article that you can share with them. Colors are useful Recognizing colors is an important skill. People often use colors to describe things. For example, a person who is giving directions might say, “Turn left past the green house.” Traffic signs are color-coded. Blue signs give information to travelers about gas, lodging, and phones. Brown signs tell about national parks and other vistas. Street names are on green signs. People also need to understand how colors go together. That helps people to dress with items of clothing that go together nicely. It is also a skill a person will need to design and decorate a sign or a card. Colors are pretty, but they also give information about safety. Drivers need to stop when they see a red stop sign or light. Colors can warn us that food may be spoiled. When we see blue spots on brown or white bread, we know not to eat it. Red or white spots on the body can tell parents and caregivers that a child is sick. Some black things on the wall, ceiling, or floor could be spiders, or they could be mold. Either one could cause red or white spots on the body, but for different reasons. Talking about colors can help to solve problems. When someone is hurt, colors help to figure out what might be wrong. For example, a doctor might ask, “Is it black and blue? Is it yellow or clear? Is it red?” Answers to these questions give information about problems. At home, color can help with caring for your house and yard. For example, what color is the water when you fill up a glass? Is it brown? Colors can tell us that there is a problem. Is the grass green? Or yellow? Or brown? Does it need to be watered? What color is the sky? Is it going to rain? The answer to this question can help you know how to dress and prepare for the day. Colors can be expressive Children and adults learn that they can use colors to tell others how they feel. For example, it means one thing to wear all black. It usually means something else to wear a bright, flowery shirt. Some messages are communicated with colors on TV, in movies, and in other forms of media. Many people think that white means purity. In a TV commercial, everything on the screen may have dull colors, except for one thing like a red balloon. That is the thing we are supposed to notice. In some classes at school and in some jobs, colors are very important. People who are in interior design, landscaping, and historical restoration need to know a lot about colors. Even people in biology and other sciences use colors in important ways. As a childcare provider, you can help parents learn that it is important to help children learn about colors. Activities using colors at home or in childcare • Use the seasons to help you teach about colors—white in the winter, orange and yellow in the fall, and so on.  • Use blocks, cards, paints, and crayons to help children learn to name different colors.  • Ask children to point to everything that is a particular color, such as green. Then ask if a book is green, or a crayon isgreen. Look for colors while you are on a trip in the car or taking a walk outside •Choose a color of the day or week. Make projects, cook foods, and read books about that color. Ask the child to pointthe color out in the store or at school.  •Does one of the parents in your program have a job that uses colors in a special way? Is there a painter, or an artist, ora designer who has a child in your program? Ask that person to share his or her interest with the children.

Relaxation techniques: Learn ways

 to calm your stress

Relaxation techniques can reduce negative

 responses to stress and help you enjoy a

better quality of life. Explore relaxation

techniques you can do on your own.

Relaxation techniques are a great way to help your quest for stress management. Relaxation isn't just about peace of mind or enjoying a hobby. Relaxation is a process that decreases the wear and tear of life's challenges on your mind and body.

Whether you have a lot of stress in your life or you've got it under control, you can benefit from learning relaxation techniques. Learning basic relaxation techniques isn't hard. Explore these simple relaxation techniques to get you started on de-stressing your life and improving your health.

The benefits of relaxation techniques

With so many things to do, relaxation techniques may take a back seat in your life. But that means you may miss out on the health benefits of relaxation.

Practicing relaxation techniques can improve how you physically respond to stress by:

• Slowing your heart rate
• Lowering blood pressure
• Slowing your breathing rate
• Reducing the need for oxygen
• Increasing blood flow to major muscles
• Reducing muscle tension

You may also gain these overall health and lifestyle benefits from relaxation techniques:

• Fewer physical symptoms, such as headaches and back pain
• Fewer emotional responses, such as anger and frustration
• More energy
• Improved concentration
• Greater ability to handle problems
• More efficiency in daily activities

Types of relaxation techniques

Although health professionals such as complementary and alternative medicine practitioners, doctors and psychotherapists can teach relaxation techniques, you can also learn some on your own. Relaxation techniques usually involve refocusing your attention to something calming and increasing awareness of your body. It doesn't matter which technique you choose. What matters is that you try to practice relaxation regularly.

There are several main types of relaxation techniques, including:

• Autogenic relaxation. Autogenic means something that comes from within you. In this technique, you use both visual imagery and body awareness to reduce stress. You repeat words or suggestions in your mind to help you relax and reduce muscle tension. You may imagine a peaceful place and then focus on controlled, relaxing breathing, slowing your heart rate, or different physical sensations, such as relaxing each arm or leg one by one.
• Progressive muscle relaxation. In this technique, you focus on slowly tensing and then relaxing each muscle group. This helps you focus on the difference between muscle tension and relaxation, and you become more aware of physical sensations. You may choose to start by tensing and relaxing the muscles in your toes and progressively working your way up to your neck and head. Tense your muscles for at least five seconds and then relax for 30 seconds, and repeat.
• Visualization. In this technique, you form mental images to take a visual journey to a peaceful, calming place or situation. Try to use as many senses as you can, including smells, sights, sounds and textures. If you imagine relaxing at the ocean, for instance, think about the warmth of the sun, the sound of crashing waves, the feel of the grains of sand and the smell of salt water. You may want to close your eyes, sit in a quiet spot and loosen any tight clothing.

Other relaxation techniques include those you may be more familiar with, such as:

• Yoga
• Tai chi
• Music
• Exercise
• Meditation
• Hypnosis
• Massage

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Relaxation techniques take practice

As you learn relaxation techniques, you'll become more aware of muscle tension and other physical sensations of stress. Once you know what the stress response feels like, you can make a conscious effort to practice a relaxation technique the moment your muscles start to tense. This can prevent stress from spiraling out of control.

Remember that relaxation techniques are skills. And as with any skill, your ability to relax improves with practice. Be patient with yourself. Stay motivated to reduce the negative impact of stress on your body and to experience a greater sense of calm in your life.

And bear in mind that some people, especially those with significant psychological problems and a history of abuse, may experience feelings of emotional discomfort during relaxation exercises. Although this is rare, if you experience emotional discomfort during relaxation exercises, stop what you're doing and consider talking to your health care professional.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Persian philosopher Medieval
Name	Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi (Rūmī)
Birth	1207 CE
Death	1273 CE
School/tradition	Islamic Irfan; Sufism; Hanafi Sunniism, possibly influenced by Shiism[1]
Main interests	lyric poetry, music
Notable ideas	Middle Eastern music, Sufi poetry, Sufi philosophy, and Sufi dance
Influences	Attar, Shams-e Tabrizi
Influenced	Muhammad Iqbal, Tahir-ul-Qadri, Kazi Nazrul Islam

Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī^[2] (Persian: مولانا جلال الدین محمد رومی, Turkish: Mevlânâ Celâleddin Mehmed Rumi, Arabic: جلال الدين الرومي), also known as Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (Persian: محمد بلخى), but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi, (September 30, 1207–December 17, 1273), was a 13th century Persian ^[3][4] Muslim poet, jurist, and theologian. His name literally means "Majesty of Religion", Jalal means "majesty" and Din means "religion".^[5]

Rumi was born in Balkh (in present-day Afghanistan), then a city of Greater Khorasan (Iran) and died in Konya, Seljuk Empire (in present-day Turkey). His birthplace and native language/local dialect indicates a Persian heritage.^[6] His poetry is in Persian and his works are widely read in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and in translation especially in Turkey, Azerbaijan, the US, and South Asia. He lived most of his life in, and produced his works under, the Seljuk Empire.^[7] Rumi's importance is considered to transcend national and ethnic borders. Throughout the centuries he has had a significant influence on Persian as well as Urdu and Turkish literatures. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages in various formats, and BBC News has described him as the "most popular poet in America".^[8]

After Rumi's death, his followers founded the Mevlevi Order, better known as the "Whirling Dervishes," who believe in performing their worship in the form of dance and music ceremony called the sema.

 Life

Rumi's life is described in Shams ud-Din Ahmad Aflāki's "Manākib ul-Ārifīn" (written between 1318 and 1353). He is described as a descendant of the caliph Abu Bakr, and of the Khwārizm-Shāh Sultān Alā ud-Dīn bin Takash (1199–1220), whose only daughter, Mālika-ye Jahān, had allegedly been married to Rumi's grandfather. However, both claims are rejected by modern scholars. His father was Baha' ud-Din Walad (also written as Bahaeddin Veled), a theologian, jurist and a mystic of uncertain lineage), who was also known during his lifetime as "Sultan of the Scholars". His mother was Miimine Hatun and his brother was Muhammet Alâettin.

Rumi by Haydar Hatemi

When the Mongols invaded Central Asia sometime between 1215 and 1220, his father with his whole family and a group of disciples set out westwards. On the road to Anatolia, Rumi encountered one of the most famous mystic Persian poets, Attar, in the city of Nishapur, located in what is now the Iranian province of Khorāsān. 'Attar immediately recognized Rumi's spiritual eminence. He saw the father walking ahead of the son and said, "Here comes a sea followed by an ocean." He gave the boy his Asrarnama, a book about the entanglement of the soul in the material world. This meeting had a deep impact on the eighteen-year-old Rumi's thoughts and later on became the inspiration for his works.

Mevlâna meets the Seljuk emperor Alā' ud-Dīn Key-Qobād
Mevlâna museum, Konya, Turkey

From Nishapur, Walad and his entourage set out for Baghdad, meeting many of the scholars and Sufis of the city.^[9] From there they went to Baghdad, and Hejaz and performed the pilgrimage at Mecca. The migrating caravan then passed through Damascus, Malatya, Erzincan, Sivas, Kayseri and Nigde. They finally settled in Karaman during seven years. His mother and his brother died in Karaman. In 1225 Mevläna married Gevher Hatun in Karaman. They had two sons: Sultan Veled and Alaeddin Çelebi. When his wife died, Mevlâna married again and had a son Emir Alim Çelebi and a daughter Melike Hatun.

On 1 May 1228, most likely as a result of the insistent invitation of 'Alā' ud-Dīn Key-Qobād, ruler of Anatolia, Baha' ud-Din came and finally settled in Konya in Anatolia within the westernmost territories of Seljuk Empire.

Baha' ud-Din became the head of a madrassa (religious school) and when he died Rumi inherited his postion and succeeded him at the age of twenty-five. One of Baha' ud-Din's students, Sayyed Burhan ud-Din-e Muhaqqiq, continued to train Rumi in the religious and mystical doctrines of Rumi's father. For nine years, Rumi practiced Sufism as a disciple of Burhan ud-Din until the latter died in 1240-1. From then on started Rumi's public life. He became the teacher who preached in the mosques of Konya and taught his adherents in the madrassah.

During this period Rumi also travelled to Damascus and is said to have spent four years there.

It was his meeting with the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi on 15 November 1244 that changed his life completely. Shams had traveled throughout the Middle East searching and praying for someone who could "endure my company". A voice came, "What will you give in return?" "My head!" "The one you seek is Jalal ud-Din of Konya." On the night of December 5, 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door. He went out, never to be seen again. It is believed that he was murdered with the connivance of Rumi's son, 'Ala' ud-Din; if so, Shams indeed gave his head for the privilege of mystical friendship.

Rumi's love and his bereavement for the death of Shams found their expression in an outpouring of music, dance and lyric poems, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus. There, he realized:

Why should I seek? I am the same as

He. His essence speaks through me.

I have been looking for myself!^[10]

For more than ten years after meeting Shams, Mawlana had been spontaneously composing ghazals, and these had been collected in the Divan-i Kabir. Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub, the goldsmith. After Salaḥ ud-Din's death, Rumi's scribe and favorite student Hussam-e Chelebi assumed the role. One day, the two of them were wandering through the Meram vineyards outside of Konya when Hussam described an idea he had to Rumi: "If you were to write a book like the Ilāhīnāma of Sanai or the Mantiq ut-Tayr of 'Attar it would become the companion of many troubadours. They would fill their hearts from your work and compose music to accompany it."

Rumi smiled and took out a piece of paper on which were written the opening eighteen lines of his Masnavi, beginning with:

Listen to the reed and the tale it tells,

How it sings of separation...^[11]

Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent the next twelve years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi to Hussam. In December 1273, Rumi fell ill; he predicted his own death and composed the well-known ghazal, which begins with the verse:

How doest thou know what sort of king I have within me as companion?

Do not cast thy glance upon my golden face, for I have iron legs. ^[12]

He died on December 17, 1273 in Konya; Rumi was laid to rest beside his father, and a splendid shrine, the Yeşil Türbe "Green Tomb" (original name:قبه لخزراء), was erected over his tomb. His epitaph reads:

"When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men."^[13]

 Teachings of Rumi

A page of a copy circa 1503 of the "Diwan-e Shams-e Tabriz-i"

The general theme of his thoughts, like that of the other mystic and Sufi poets of the Persian literature, is essentially about the concept of Tawhīd (unity) and union with his beloved (the primal root) from which/whom he has been cut and fallen aloof, and his longing and desire for reunity.

The "Masnavi" weaves fables, scenes from everyday life, Qur’anic revelations and exegesis, and metaphysics, into a vast and intricate tapestry. Rumi is considered an example of "insan-e kamil" — the perfected or completed human being. In the East, it is said of him, that he was, "not a prophet — but surely, he has brought a scripture". Rumi believed passionately in the use of music, poetry and dancing as a path for reaching God. For Rumi, music helped devotees to focus their whole being on the divine, and to do this so intensely that the soul was both destroyed and resurrected. It was from these ideas that the practice of Whirling Dervishes developed into a ritual form. He founded the order of the Mevlevi, the "whirling" dervishes, and created the "Sema", their "turning", sacred dance. In the Mevlevi tradition, Sema represents a mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to "Perfect." In this journey the seeker symbolically turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth, and arrives at the "Perfect"; then returns from this spiritual journey with greater maturity, so as to love and to be of service to the whole of creation without discrimination against beliefs, races, classes and nations.

According to Shahram Shiva, one reason for Rumi's popularity is that "Rumi is able to verbalize the highly personal and often confusing world of personal/spiritual growth and mysticism in a very forward and direct fashion. He does not offend anyone, and he includes everyone. The world of Rumi is neither exclusively the world of a Sufi, nor the world of a Hindu, nor a Jew, nor a Christian; it is the highest state of a human being — a fully evolved human. A complete human is not bound by cultural limitations; he touches every one of us. Today Rumi's poems can be heard in churches, synagogues, Zen monasteries, as well as in the downtown New York art/performance/music scene." According to Professor Majid M. Naini [5], Rumi's life and transformation provide true testimony and proof that people of all religions and backgrounds can live together in peace and harmony. Rumi’s visions, words, and life teach us how to reach inner peace and happiness so we can finally stop the continual stream of hostility and hatred and achieve true global peace and harmony.

In other verses in Masnavi, Rumi describes in detail the universal message of love:

Love’s nationality is separate from all other religions,

The lover’s religion and nationality is the Beloved (God).

The lover’s cause is separate from all other causes

Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries.^[14]

 Major works

Rumi's poetry is often divided into various categories: the quatrains (rubaiyat) and odes (ghazals) of the Divan, the six books of the Masnavi, the discourses, the letters, and the almost unknown Six Sermons.

Masnavi-ye Manavi
Mevlâna museum, Konya, Turkey

Rumi's major work is Masnavi-ye Manavi (Spiritual Couplets), a six-volume poem regarded by many Sufis as second in importance only to the Qur'an.^{[citation needed]} In fact, the Masnavi is often called the "Qur'an-e Parsi" (The Persian Qur'an).^{[citation needed]} It is considered by many to be one of the greatest works of mystical poetry.^{[citation needed]}

Rumi's other major work is the Divanı - Kebir or Diwan-e Shams-e Tabriz-i (The Works of Shams of Tabriz - named in honor of Rumi's great friend and inspiration, the darvish Shams), comprising some 40,000 verses. Several reasons have been offered for Rumi's decision to name his masterpiece after Shams. Some argue that since Rumi would not have been a poet without Shams, it is apt that the collection be named after him.^{[citation needed]} Others have suggested that at the end, Rumi became Shams, hence the collection is truly of Shams speaking through Rumi.^[15] Both works are among the most significant in all of Persian literature.^{[citation needed]} Shams is believed to have been murdered by disciples of Rumi who were jealous of his relationship with Shams (also spelled Shems).^{[citation needed]}

Fihi Ma Fih (In It What's in It) is composed of Rumi's speeches on different subjects. Rumi himself did not prepare or write these discourses. They were recorded by his son Sultan Valad or some other disciple of Rumi and put together as a book. The title may mean, "What's in the Masnavi is in this too."^{[citation needed]} Some of the discourses are addressed to Muin al-Din Parvane. Some portions of it are commentary on Masnavi.

Mektubat is the book containing the letters he wrote to his close friends with the answers to questions asked.

Majalis-i Sab'a (seven sessions) contains seven sermons (as the name implies) given in seven different assemblies. As Aflaki relates, after Sham-i Tabrizi, Rumi gave sermons at the request of notables, especially Salah al-Din Zarqubi.^{[citation needed]}

 Legacy

The sarcophagus of Rumi, in Rumi museum in Konya

Rumi's importance transcends national and ethnic borders.^[16] Speakers of the Persian languages in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan see him as one of their most significant classical poets and an influence on many poets through history.^[17] He has also had a great influence on Turkish literature throughout the centuries.^[18] His poetry forms the basis of much classical Iranian and Afghanistani music.^[19] Contemporary classical interpretations of his poetry are made by Muhammad Reza Shajarian (Iran), Shahram Nazeri (Iran), Davood Azad (Iran) and Ustad Mohammad Hashem Cheshti (Afghanistan). To many modern Westerners, his teachings are one of the best introductions to the philosophy and practice of Sufism. Pakistan's National Poet, Muhammad Iqbal (November 9, 1877-April 21, 1938) was also inspired by Rumi's works and considered him to be his spiritual leader and addressed him as Pir Rumi in his poems (the honorific Pir literally means old man, but in the sufi/mystic context it means founder, master, or guide).^[20]

Rumi's work has been translated into many of the world's languages including Russian, German, Urdu, Turkish, Arabic, French, Italian and Spanish, and is appearing in a growing number of formats including concerts, workshops, readings, dance performances and other artistic creations. The English interpretations of Rumi's poetry by Coleman Barks have sold more than a half million copies worldwide.^[21] Recordings of Rumi poems have made it to Billboard's Top 20 list. A collection of Deepak Chopra's editing the translations by Fereydoun Kia of Rumi's love poems, has been sung by Hollywood personalities such as Madonna, Goldie Hawn, Philip Glass and Demi Moore; also Shahram Shiva's CD, Rumi: Lovedrunk has been very popular on the Internet's music communities such as MySpace.com. The 13th-century poet of the Seljuk Empire is one of the most widely read poets in the United States^[22]

The Mevlevi Order

The Mevlevi Sufi order was founded in 1273 by Rumi's followers after his death.^[23] His first successor in the rectorship of the order was Husam Chelebi himself, after whose death in 1284 Rumi's younger and only surviving son, Sultan Walad, favorably known as author of the mystical Masnavi Rabābnāma, or the Book of the Guitar (died 1312), was installed as grand master of the order.^[24] The leadership of the order has been kept in Rumi's family in Konya uninterruptedly since then.^[25] The Mevlevi, or "The Whirling Dervishes", believe in performing their dhikr in the form of sema. During the time of Rumi (as attested in the "Manakib ul Arifin" of Eflaki Dede), his followers gathered for musical and "turning" practices. Mevlana himself was a notable musician, who played the rebab although his favorite instrument was the ney.^[26] The music accompanying the traditional ritual consists of settings of poems from the "Masnavi" and "Diwan-i-Kebir" or of his son Sultan Veled's poems.^[26] The Mevlevi were a well-established Sufi Order in the Ottoman Empire, and many of the members of the order served in various official positions of the Caliphate. The centre for the Mevlevi order was in Konya. There is also a Mevlevi monastery or dergah in Istanbul, near the Galata Tower, where the sema ceremony is performed and accessible to the public. The Mevlevi order issues an invitation to people of all backgrounds:

Rumi's tomb in Konya, Turkey

During Ottoman times, the Mevlevi order produced a number of famous poets and musicians such as Sheikh Ghalib, Ismail Rusuhi Dede of Ankara, Esrar Dede, Halet Efendi, and Gavsi Dede (all buried at the Galata Mevlevi-Hane in Istanbul)^[28] Music, especially the ney, play an important part in the Mevlevi order and thus much of the traditional 'oriental' music that Westerners associate with Turkey originates with the Mevlevi order.

With the foundation of the modern secular republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk removed religion from the sphere of public policy and restricted it exclusively to that of personal morals, behavior, and faith. On 13th December 1925, a law was passed closing all the 'Tekkes' (dervish lodges) and 'Zaviyes' (Central dervish lodges) and also the centres of veneration to which pilgrimages (ziyaret) were made. Istanbul alone had more than two hundred and fifty 'Tekkes' as well as small centres for the gatherings of various fraternities. This law dissolved the Orders, prohibited the use of mystical names, titles and costumes pertaining to these titles, impounded their assets, banned their ceremonies and meetings; the law also provided sentences for those who tried to re-establish them. Two years later, in 1927, the Mausoleum of Mevlana in Konya was allowed to reopen as a Museum.^[29].

In the 1950s, the Turkish government began allowing the Whirling Dervishes to perform annually in Konya on the Urs of Mevlana, December 17, the anniversary of Rumi's death.^[30] In 1974, they were allowed to come to the West.^[30] The Mevlana annual festival is held every year in Konya in December. It lasts two weeks and its culminating point is the 17th December called Sheb-i Arus meaning 'Nuptial Night', the night of the union of Mevlana with God.

 International Rumi Year

Iranian musician Shahram Nazeri was awarded Légion d'honneur and Iran's House of Music Award for his renowned works on Rumi masterpieces.

Upon a proposal by Culture and Tourism Ministry of Turkey, the year 2007 was proposed as the "International Rumi Year" to UNESCO, but has not yet been confirmed. This is intended for the commemoration of Rumi's 800th birthday anniversary and will be celebrated all over the world.^[31] On this occasion Iranian musician Shahram Nazeri was awarded Légion d'honneur and Iran's House of Music Award for his renowned works on Rumi masterpieces.^[32] 2006 was declared as the "International Mozart Year" by UNESCO.^[33].^[34]

In honour of Jalal-ud-Din Balkhi-Rumi, one of the great humanists, philosophers and poets who belong to humanity in its entirety, UNESCO issued a UNESCO Medal in his name in association with the 800th anniversary of his birth in 2007 in the hope that this medal will prove an encouragement to those who are engaged in a deep and scholarly dissemination of his ideas and ideals, which in turn would in fact enhance the diffusion of the ideals of UNESCO.^[35][36]