The World As Scripted in Persia

The World As Scripted in Persia

The Library of Congress's new show, "A Thousand Years of the Persian Book"

 By Lee Lawrence in the Wall Street Journal

Washington

'There is, in fact, no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer." Thomas Jefferson penned these words on Sept. 21, 1814, just weeks after British troops had set fire to the U.S. Capitol, reducing its library to ashes. Jefferson had compiled a personal library over 50 years and was now exploring selling much of it to the government to replace Congress's—and the nation's—loss. Lest anyone think the books' range too broad for politicians, Jefferson argued, "I do not know that it contains any branch of science which Congress would wish to exclude from their collection."

Two centuries later, a series of exhibitions illustrates the extent to which the Library of Congress has embraced Jefferson's philosophy. After shows that highlighted American, Armenian and Hebraic books, we now have "A Thousand Years of the Persian Book." It showcases about 80 works drawn primarily from the 80,000 strong Iranian-world collection in the library's African and Middle Eastern Division. The selection covers religion, history, science and technology along with various branches of literature, from classical poetry to 18th- and 19th-century literary movements, contemporary writings and children's books. In these pages early scientists map the world and catalog its contents, scholars elaborate religious doctrine and writers of both sexes pen poetry, spin tales, try out new genres and extol progressive ideas, from women's rights to social criticism.

While the show includes a Quran, poetry by Omar Khayyam and Rūmī, and copies of the iconic Persian "Shahnameh" epic, lead curator Hirad Dinavari minimizes the familiar in favor of introducing visitors to the wide reach of Persian culture and language. More than a third of the books come from outside the borders of Persia (or, as it has been known since its name change in 1935, Iran). An 1898 study of medicinal plants, for example, was produced in Kabul, while two copies of the Shahnameh came from India—a late-17th- to early-18th-century illustrated manuscript and a 1913 printed work from Bombay's Zoroastrian or Parsi community. Today's vibrant Iranian diaspora has expanded this cultural reach—witness the 20th- and 21st-century books written in Persian and published in the U.S., France and Germany.

An interconnectedness within this cultural sphere comes through in such works as a delicately illuminated 1520 Sufi manuscript—scholars cannot tell whether it is from Persia or Afghanistan—and a small, lavishly bound 1835 manuscript. Made in Kashmir, India, it is filled with charming miniatures and the verses of Nizāmī Ganjavī, a 12th-century poet from Azerbaijan.

The actual writing itself is often revealing. An 1893 text on jurisprudence published in Afghanistan is written in Persian but details Sunni interpretations of Islamic law. This is because Persia embraced the Shiite school of Islam only in the early 16th century; when Afghanistan came under Persian rule in the ninth century, the empire was Sunni. Similarly, a 2011 anthology of the works of Gulrukhsor Safi, Tajikistan's national poet and prominent Iranologist, is written in Ms. Safi's native Tajik. The language is a variant of Persian, but she writes it using the Cyrillic alphabet, the legacy of decades of Soviet domination.

Most of the books, however, use the Persian alphabet. A wonderfully illustrated 1565 Persian translation of "Marvels of Creation and Oddities of Existence"—an influential 13th-century treatise on natural sciences and cosmology—is handwritten in the naskh script, recognizable by the pleasing balance between straight verticals and gently curved horizontals. The same script appears in a lavish 1739 Persian Quran with jewellike border decorations and in an 1809 Shiite prayer manual. In the latter, however, the scribe wrote the main text in naskh and then, between the lines, inserted commentaries in the more dynamic, rounded nasta'liq script—a reminder of the central role scriptural interpretations play in Islam.

A culture that prized calligraphy, Persia had no shortage of copyists and little desire to sacrifice the beauty of script for the benefits of mass printing. But in 1821, three centuries after movable type had revolutionized European book production, the first lithographic press arrived from Tblisi, Georgia. As works from the late 1800s illustrate, lithography offered the cost-effectiveness of printing while retaining a link to the handwritten word (especially important for religious texts) and the aesthetic of manuscripts. In an 1857 Persian lithographic book (shown here in a 1910 Indian reprint), the scribe slanted his lines and drew a bird with letters, something no typesetter could reproduce. Eventually, Persia adopted movable type, but the transition was fraught, as illustrated by the 1903 "The Second Travelogue of Muẓaffar al-Dīn, King of the Qajar Dynasty." It used the technology but enclosed it within lithographs of a handwritten opening and closing colophon.

The show, too, has fitting bookends: Visitors enter and leave through a gallery that contains a replica of the Jefferson collection that seeded today's sprawling Library of Congress. Shows like this drive home the value of following Jefferson's example—for, when it comes to books and knowledge, there is no such thing as casting too wide a net.

Ms. Lawrence writes about Asian and Islamic art for the Journal.