News & Events

Event
26 Oct 2013, 11:00am Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Site, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DA

Cambridge University Festival of Ideas: Ancient stories of the Persian Book of Kings in Modern art, included lectures by Professor Charles Melville, Dr Firuza Abdullaeva, Dr Mahbod Ghaffari and presentations by the artists who participated in the art show ‘Imagining Shahnama in the 21st century’, curated by Veronica Shimanovskaya.

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Event
26 Oct 2013 (All day) RADA Studios, 16 Chenies St, London WC1E 7EX

Under the auspices of the Cambridge Shahnama Centre there was the premiere of a new contemporary stage work by Dr Hossein Hadisi for voices, percussion and dance. The piece celebrated the Persian traditional art of storytelling (naqqáli) by reenacting the ancient myth of Zahhák, a symbol of tyranny and evil in the Shahnama. The music is performed by EXAUDI, one of Britain’s leading contemporary music ensembles, and six dancers from the London Contemporary Dance School. The performance also features paintings by Iranian surrealist master Ali Akbar Sadeghi.

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News
25 Oct 2013

There are hundreds of manuscripts of the poem in existence around the world, created over eight centuries, often accompanied by intricate and fabulous illustrations and miniature paintings. The Shahnama Project was set up in 1999 by Charles Melville, Professor of Persian History with the support of the British Academy grant of £500,000, to hold an archive of images and other records of these manuscripts. The Project became the natural basis of the newly established Pembroke Shahnama Centre for Persian Studies which is currently directed by Dr Firuza Abdullaeva, who formerly taught Persian literature at Oxford and St Petersburg. Symbolically, while a Tutorial Fellow at Wadham College, she was also a curator of the College Firdausi...

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News
15 Oct 2013

The endowment will go towards work on enhancing and developing the Shahnama Project website (http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk); staffing the Shahnama Centre; supporting travel for research and attending conferences; organizing workshops and events; maintaining and making accessible a reference library of scholarship on Persian literary and artistic culture, and preparing publications.

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News
15 Oct 2013

When Bita Daryabari was a little girl in Iran, she learned to paint in watercolor and oil. In school she was taught about the country's greatest poets and she memorized and recited their work. Nearly three decades after leaving Iran during the country's war with Iraq and resettling in the United States, she felt her three children lacked a similar education in Persian arts and culture. So the 44-year-old start-up-guru-turned-philanthropist decided to put her hard-earned Silicon Valley fortune towards advocating for the cultural...

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News
3 Jun 2013

On Saturday, May 24th, Global philanthropist Bita Daryabari and speakers from around the globe gathered to celebrate the official opening of the Shahnama Centre for Persian Studies (http://persian.pem.cam.ac.uk) at Pembroke College in Cambridge, England. (Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.) The $2 million (US) endowment by Daryabari ensured the creation of the Centre, which aims to encourage research on Persian literature, history and art. The Centre grew...

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News
3 Jun 2013

On Saturday, May 24th, Global philanthropist Bita Daryabari and speakers from around the globe gathered to celebrate the official opening of the Shahnama Centre for Persian Studies (http://persian.pem.cam.ac.uk) at Pembroke College in Cambridge, England. (Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.) The $2 million (US) endowment by Daryabari ensured the creation of the Centre, which aims to encourage research on Persian literature, history and art. The Centre grew out of the...

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