Routledge Classical Persian Prose Course

The Routledge Classical Persian Prose Course offers students and scholars an engaging introduction to canonical texts in classical and pre-modern Persian prose literature spanning ten centuries, from the 10th to the 20th.

Featuring twenty-one carefully structured lessons, this textbook presents renowned literary works alongside a variety of exercises including paraphrasing, translation, task-based activities, and manuscript reading. The varied exercises develop all four language skills: receptive skills are enhanced through reading texts and listening to audio files, while productive skills are cultivated through paraphrasing, creative writing, and role-play activities that build speaking proficiency. The textbook includes detailed contextual support with both English and Persian descriptions of the works and their authors. Footnotes throughout highlight differences between classical and modern Persian forms and syntax, facilitating comprehension and deeper linguistic understanding. Students benefit from scaffolded materials that ease the transition into classical Persian forms, while common Persian proverbs from Sa'di enrich cultural knowledge. Each lesson includes a classical Persian prose manuscript folio, providing students hands-on experience with primary sources and building paleographic competence essential for advanced Persian studies.

This textbook is an essential resource for students seeking to develop proficiency in classical Persian prose literature while building practical manuscript reading skills.

Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi is a linguist and a literary translator. She is Instructional Professor of Persian at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. She is the editor of The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy of Persian (2020) and co-edited several other volumes on Persian linguistics, literary translation, teaching Persian literature, and Persian language pedagogy, The Routledge Handbook of Persian Literary Translation (2022),

Behrooz Mahmoodi‑Bakhtiari is an Iranian linguist, and author. He currently serves as an Associate Professor of linguistics and Persian at the Department of Performing Arts, University of Tehran. He has also contributed to some major edited volumes, including The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy of Persian (2020), and The Routledge Handbook of Persian Literary Translation (2022).