Shahnama Millennium Conference
Ferdowsi: The Next Thousand Years

The Persian Department of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and the Cambridge Shahnama Project, with support from the Ali Reza and Mohammad Soudavar Fund for Persian Studies and in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation.

Prof. Charles Melville
Dr. Firuza Abdullaeva

Ferdowsi’s poetic masterpiece, the Shahnama or ‘Book of Kings’, was completed 1,000 years ago, in March 2010. To mark this millennium, an international conference on the Shahnama has been organised to coincide with this landmark event. The conference is the seventh in a series of meetings organised in Cambridge, Edinburgh and Leiden since 2001 under the auspices of the ‘Shahnama Project’, with a view to stimulating research on the Shahnama in a broad framework of interests that approach the poem as literature, history and in the context of the arts of the book. There is a particular emphasis on the study of the manuscript tradition and the relationships between Ferdowsi’s text and the images created to illustrate it for over 600 years.

Reflecting this broad remit, and building on the work of earlier meetings, the conference brings together established scholars from different fields, as well as young researchers who are newly engaging with the Shahnama in their recent work. The overall scheme of the conference is to elaborate various areas of existing research, and to open up new topics for study in anticipation of the continuing appreciation of the poem in world literature as it enters its next thousand years. In particular, the reception of the Shahnama in Persian literary and visual culture, and its impact on neighbouring regions (Ottoman Turkey, Mughal India, Central Asia and the Caucasus), continue to provide fertile topics for investigation.

Click on ‘Programme’ in the left column of this page for the conference programme. Please note the programme is subject to last minute changes.

Click on ‘Abstract and Biographies’ in the left column of this page for abstract of papers that will be presented at the conference plus short biographies of the speakers. Abstract and biographies are not complete and will be updated regularly.

Click on ’Registration’ in the left column of this page to download the form. Registration fee is not refundable.

£40 per day including lunch
Accommodation available at Clare College