Rostam is Iran’s greatest mythological hero, a Persian Hercules, magnificent in strength and courage. As re-counted in the tenth-century Book of Kings (Shahnameh) by the poet Ferdowsi, he was an indomitable force in ancient Persia for five hundred years, undergoing many trials of combat, cunning, and endurance. Although Rostam served a series of often-fickle kings, he was always his own man, committed to the greater good of Iran. His adventures are some of the best loved of all Persian narratives and remain deeply resonant in Iranian culture.

The rise of Iranian cinema to world prominence over the last few decades is one of the most fascinating cultural stories of our time. There is scarcely an international film festival anywhere that does not honor the aesthetic and political explorations of Iranian artists. Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema celebrates this remarkable emergence. It focuses on twelve of the most important Iranian filmmakers of the past half-century—among them, such pioneers as Forugh Farrokhzad, Dariush Mehrjui, Abbas Kiarostami, and Jafar Panahi.

The history of the Persian Gulf during the eighteenth century is still little known. This gap is now being filled by the historian and renowned scholar Willem Floor, first with publication of The Persian Gulf: A Political and Economic History of Five Port Cities, 1500-1730, and now with The Persian Gulf: The Rise of the Gulf Arabs, The Politics of Trade on the Persian Littoral, 1747-1792. This study tells the fascinating story of the shift in trade from the lower to the upper Gulf, while there was also a partial shift of trade from the northern Persian coast to the southern Arab coast. It tells of the departure of first the Dutch then the British trading companies, and the rise of the local rulers who began to dominate political developments.

The Persian Gulf: The Economic and Political History of Five Port Cities, 1500-1730 provides the most comprehensive overview to date of the Persian Gulf at a time of major political change, including the successive arrival of the European ‘trading empires’. The study emphasizes the role of the local elites and how its members manipulated and used the administrative structures for their own gain. It also delves into various aspects of the governance of the ports.

Wine is seen as the natural partner of many great cuisines, but few people associate it with Persian food, one of the world’s most sophisticated culinary traditions. The ties, in fact, are age-old. From Persia to Napa: Wine at the Persian Table (264 pages, with 160 color photos) weaves together history, poetry, a look at modern viniculture, and a wealth of recipes and wine pairings to celebrate the rightful relationship of wine and food on the Persian table.

Vis & Ramin is one of the world’s great love stories. It was the first major Persian romance, written between 1050 and 1055 in rhyming couplets. This remarkable work has now been superbly translated into heroic couplets (the closest metrical equivalent of the Persian) by the poet and scholar Dick Davis.

Vis and Ramin had immense influence on later Persian poetry and is very probably also the source for the tale of Tristan and Isolde, which first appeared in Europe about a century later.

Titles and Emoluments in Safavid Iran: A Third Manual of Safavid Administration contains unique and important information on offices, ethnic attitudes and administrative developments in Iran’s Safavid government (1495–1720). It provides the official honorific title for each official (and the variations thereof), which show the importance of these titles in the intricate structure of social and political standing among the power elite. The commentary’s long database of all known administrative jurisdictions with names and dates of each of its governors gives us a more nuanced understanding of how the Safavid administration functioned, not only at the central level but also at the provincial one. This, together with a detailed index, allows the reader to find the names of individual governors and follow their careers.

Titles and Emoluments in Safavid Iran facilitates the analysis of power relations between the central and tribal interests as well as other groups, and the changes therein over time. It is an essential historical resource for all those interested in Iran’s Safavid era.

In August 1907, while Iran was in the throes of its Constitutional Revolution, Britain and Russia concluded a secret agreement to divide the country between themselves into zones of influence. In 1910 with the tacit support of the British, Tsarist Russia occupied northwest Iran and violently suppressed the constitutional movement in Tabriz, the northwestern city which was at the center of the constitutional movement. The ferocity of the Russian occupation took the leaders of the constitutionalists by surprise, and in desperation they cried out for help to democratic nations.

Edward G. Browne was a scholar and professor at Cambridge University who wrote The Persian Revolution and the four-volume Literary History of Persia. He supported the constitutionalists in word and deed. Appalled by the British government’s acquiescence of the Russian atrocities in Tabriz, he tried through letters to the editor, political lobbying, and the writing of pamphlets to mobilize public opinion to force the British government to intervene with Russia.

Letters from Tabriz is the publication, prepared by Browne, of the letters sent to him by Iranian constitutionalist leaders describing, in rousing eyewitness accounts, the Russian atrocities in Tabriz. Its full publication was stifled because of the Anglo-Russian partnership prior to World War I, and it has never been published in English until now.

No writer’s work has been studied more closely or often than the plays of William Shakespeare, that master of language and peerless explorer of the human heart. Books about him number in the thousands, yet Shakespeare, Persia, and the East brings a truly fresh perspective to his genius. In the three dozen plays he composed between 1590 and 1612, Shakespeare ranged far and wide in his imagination, setting some of his tales in places as varied as Denmark, Venice and Athens—while drawing on a rich array of imagery and lore from lands further east. This remarkable book by a lifelong student of Shakespeare Cyrus Ghani reveals how rich a source of inspiration those exotic Eastern realms were for the playwright.

To illuminate the creative uses Shakespeare made of the East, this book first looks at the life of the playwright himself, then at the dynasties that did so much to shape England and Persia in that tumultuous age. Other sections in the book profile key figures in the efforts to forge a connection between the two lands, with particular focus on the colorful Sherleys and their fatally ambitious sponsor, the Earl of Essex—a great admirer of Shakespeare. The final section of the book briefly describes the plays and cites their many allusions to the East—testimony that this literary giant was very much a man of his time.