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From ancient poets to visionary artists, Iran has produced some of history's most influential creative minds. Join us as we explore the cultural titans who shaped not just Iranian identity but world literature, music, and art through the centuries. Our countdown features luminaries from Ferdowsi's epic Shahnameh to Rumi's spiritual verses and beyond!
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00:00I am Mohammad Raza Shajaryan, a family of Iran.
00:04My name is a part of the Iranian world that wants to be a member of the world.
00:12Welcome to WatchMojo!
00:14And today, we are counting down our picks for the top Iranian creators.
00:19For this list, we'll generally be using Persian when referring to the language
00:23and Iranian when referring to the people.
00:26We use both interchangeably and recognize Iran's multi-ethnic makeup.
00:31How could I possibly make my family and friends see what I see?
00:36How could I describe the indescribable? Shams is my sea of mercy and grace.
00:42Before we continue, if you liked this video and want more on Iran,
00:47its culture, history, art and heritage, subscribe to our exclusive channel on Iran, Persia Mojo.
00:56Number 10. Nima Yushij
01:02Named Ali Esfandiari at birth, Nima Yushij is widely hailed as the father of modern Persian poetry.
01:10He shattered millennia of literary tradition by freeing verse from rigid classical meters
01:16in favor of flexible lines, a conversational cadence, and vivid imagery drawn from contemporary life.
01:23His pivotal aphsane reads like a manifesto for this new movement,
01:28while Phoenix extended his symbolist and socially engaged vision.
01:32Nima's revolution created the space for a new generation of icons, including Farooq Farrukhzad,
01:39Sohrab Sepehri, and Ahmad Shamloo.
01:42Even poets who rejected his meter, such as Simin Behbahani, wrote in his long shadow.
01:48His stone house in Yush, now his resting place, anchors the legend.
01:53A villager who rewrote the laws of Persian poetry.
01:58Number 9. Mani the Painter
02:01The third century prophet painter Mani founded Manichaeism, a religion framing existence as an epic struggle between a spiritual world of light and a material one of darkness.
02:14Manichaeism was once one of the most widespread and popular religions in the world and has been called by scholars the first world religion.
02:24To make his doctrines universally accessible, especially to those who could not read, he created the Arjang, a holy book of pictures to accompany his scriptures.
02:35This pioneering fusion of word and image serves as a remarkable forerunner to modern graphic novels and illustrated books.
02:44For the rest of the second phase and into the third phase, which is the current one,
02:49the purpose of this whole existence is to separate the light from its dark material in order to hopefully reach a complete separation of the two once again.
02:59His movement spread from the Roman Empire to China along the Silk Road.
03:04Though Mani was imprisoned and executed under Bahram I, his followers sustained a refined tradition of didactic book art.
03:13Surviving manuscripts from sites like Turfan show his visual model of pairing picture with text outlived him by centuries.
03:21Scholars of religion have argued in recent years that it's a mistake to essentialize a religion, boil a religion down to a monolithic essence.
03:30I'd rather argue that the history of Manichaeism is a story of varieties of Manichaeism.
03:36Varieties of Manichaeism that adapted differently over the centuries, whether in Egypt, Iran, or in China.
03:43Number 8. Hussain Alizadeh.
03:51Steeped in tradition, Alizadeh is a leading tar and sitar player and one of the most important composers of contemporary Persian classical music.
04:01He trained with masters of the radif, the canonical repertoire of historical Persian music,
04:07and recorded the complete Mirza Abdullah radif for tar and sitar before charting his own innovative course.
04:15His most celebrated work, Naynava, is a concerto for nay and string orchestra that bridges Persian modal systems and western orchestration.
04:26He founded the Hamavayan Ensemble in 1989 to explore choral textures and later co-founded Masters of Persian Music to present Persian classical repertoire to international audiences.
04:51Through Grammy-nominated recordings, international tours, film scores, and teaching, Alizadeh has carried a revered art form into the modern era while expanding its reach.
05:17Number 7. Farid ad-Din At-Tar.
05:20Long before Rumi, there was his acknowledged master, At-Tar of Neshabur, an apothecary who became one of the most influential spiritual storytellers in Persia.
05:22Number 7. Farid ad-Din At-Tar.
05:33Number 7. Farid ad-Din At-Tar.
05:36Long before Rumi, there was his acknowledged master, At-Tar of Neshabur, an apothecary who became one of the most influential spiritual storytellers in Persian literature.
05:47He used narrative poetry to map the Sufi path. In his signature poem, The Conference of the Birds, a flock journeys through seven valleys to seek a divine creature, only to discover the divine is their own collective self.
06:03Here, each bird represents an aspect of the nafs or ego that clings to worldly things. One bird is attached to his possessions, another to reputation, and so on.
06:14His only surviving prose work, Memorial of the Saints, is a landmark collection of early Sufi saints' lives. At-Tar's life ended in the Mongol sack of Neshabur, but his influence proved enduring.
06:29As Rumi wrote, At-Tar roamed the seven cities of love. We are still at the bend of a single alley.
06:37The beloved had never been far. The journey had always been within. This ancient Persian tale reminds us. The path to the divine is not out there in distant lands, but within the stillness of the heart.
06:49Number six, Muhammad Reza Shajarian.
06:52I think Shajarian, by instinct, he has been catapulted into someone who really articulates the pains of the past.
07:03Starting singing at age five in Mashhad, Muhammad Reza Shajarian rose to become Iran's preeminent classical vocalist.
07:12He mastered the radif, debuted on Radio Khurasan in 1959, and reached global audiences through celebrated albums including Bidad, Dastan, and Night, Silence Desert.
07:26He received UNESCO's Picasso Medal and Mozart Medal, and earned two Grammy nominations. Shajarian also co-founded Masters of Persian Music in 2000.
07:45Rabbanah, his Ramadan prayer, aired nationwide until his criticism of the government caused it to be banned in 2009.
07:55Shajarian Reza Shajarian Reza Shajarian Reza Shajarian has even designed special instruments for Persian music.
08:18He died in Tehran in 2020, and was buried by Ferdowsi's tomb in Tuz, where mourners sang The Dawn Bird, an Iranian ballad often associated with protest.
08:30My name is a part of the city of Iranian people who wish to bring in the people of the world who lived in the world, which we have been in the world.
08:39The human world, the world, the world, the world, the world, the world, the world, the world, and the world.
08:44Number 5. Saadi of Shiraz
08:47Human beings are members of a whole, in creation of one essence and soul.
08:52If one member is inflicted with pain, other members, uneasy, will remain.
08:57You've likely seen his words without knowing his name.
09:01A carpet with sons of Adam.
09:03His poem on human unity is at UN headquarters, a testament to the vision of Saadi of Shiraz.
09:10His wisdom was shaped by decades of travel and study at Baghdad's Nizamiyah.
09:16And his writing blends wit and empathy, delivering truths like,
09:21If you have no sympathy for human pain, the name of human you shall not retain.
09:27If you have no sympathy for human pain, the name of human you cannot retain.
09:33His masterpieces are the Bustan, a handbook of ethics and conduct, and the Gulistan,
09:39rhymed prose-rich with anecdotes and maxims.
09:43Both became classroom staples and proverbs.
09:47His influence reached Europe with André Durière's French translation of Gulistan.
09:52Today, his tomb, the Saadi in Shiraz, remains a pilgrimage site.
09:58Number 4. Omar Khayyam
10:00Have you ever wondered how calendars came to be so precise?
10:04One of the key figures in this fascinating story is Omar Khayyam,
10:08a remarkable scholar from Southwest Asia.
10:10The man who revolutionized algebra and helped create one of history's most accurate calendars
10:16isn't best known for either.
10:18Born in Neshavur in 1048, Omar Khayyam helped to inaugurate the Solar Jalali calendar,
10:25famed for its precision and the basis of Iran's modern calendar.
10:30One of the standout features of the Jalali calendar is its unique system of leap years.
10:36Over a cycle of 33 years, they combined quadrennial and quinquennial leap years.
10:41This method ensured that the calendar remained in sync with the solar year.
10:46Remarkably, they calculated the length of the year to be about 365.2 for 219858156 days.
10:54His algebra treatise is thought by many to be the first general theory of cubic equations.
11:00And he also wrote a major critic of Euclid's geometry.
11:05Centuries later, a twist of fate made him a famous poet.
11:09His quatrains, the Robayat, survive in varying manuscript collections.
11:15Edward Fitzgerald's 1859 English version became a literary sensation,
11:20recasting Khayyam as a voice of wine, love, and existential doubt.
11:26Beset the road I was to wander in.
11:29Thou wilt not with predestination round.
11:33Enmesh me and impute my fall to sin.
11:3658.
11:36His modern white marble mausoleum in Neshavur honors both the brilliant scientist and the accidental poet.
11:44Number 3.
11:47Rumi.
11:48Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi.
11:50Hazreti Mevlana Jalal ad-Din Rumi is, you know, one of the most important saints,
12:01spiritual masters of the Islamic history.
12:06He is one of America's best-selling poets, yet he was an Iranian born more than 800 years ago.
12:14How did Rumi become a modern spiritual icon?
12:18The turning point was a single encounter.
12:20A conventional scholar in Konya, he met the mystic Shams of Tabriz in 1244 and his voice ignited.
12:29Bountiful is your life, full and complete.
12:33Or so you think until someone comes along and makes you realize what you've been missing all this time.
12:39From that fire came two pillars.
12:42The Masnavi, six books of teaching stories, and the Divan Shams, an outpouring of ecstatic lyrics.
12:50After Rumi's death, his followers shaped his path into the Moolavi Semah,
12:55the turning ceremony now recognized by UNESCO.
12:59I wish that everyone takes from Hazreti Mevlana the message of peacefulness,
13:07of returning towards God, and of living in a way that the Mevlavi tradition expresses,
13:18which is one of respect, of good manners.
13:22Today, his tomb at the Moolana Museum in Konya draws visitors from around the world.
13:29Proof that his call to love and interchange still travels across languages and centuries.
13:36Number 2.
13:38Hafiz of Shiraz
13:39It should be emphasized that Hafiz was the heir to a great poetic tradition.
13:46In countless Iranian homes, one book is opened not just for its poetry, but to divine the future.
13:54This tradition of bibliomancy, Fale Hafiz, is why the poet earned the title, Tongue of the Unseen.
14:02The master behind this voice is Hafiz of Shiraz, the undisputed master of the Persian Ghazal,
14:09a complex lyric ode.
14:11His divan is renowned for jewel-like diction and layered wine and love imagery that skewers hypocrisy.
14:19It is the way in which his poetry, although it grew out of a great tradition already established by his time,
14:29rides above all that preceded it, while it addresses itself to the hearts of everyone.
14:39His influence went global after the first printed divan, Calcutta 1791, circulated in the West,
14:49and Goethe later drew on Hafiz to craft his own West-Eastern divan.
14:54Today, pilgrims flock to his tomb, the Hafiziyah in Shiraz, a 1930s pavilion by André Godard,
15:03whose copper dome is shaped like a dervish's cap.
15:07Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.
15:12Nezami Ganjavi, the Shakespeare of Persian Romantic epics.
15:17Here are the prince and the princess in detail.
15:22They're Hosro and Shirin.
15:24This is a moment early in their love story.
15:28And the night is beautiful, full of perfumes.
15:32There is drink and poetry and so on.
15:36Kamal Ad-Din Behzad revitalized Persian painting with dynamic scenes and individualized figures.
15:43Behzad was known in the late 15th century as the best painter and illustrator of Herat,
15:50a city in the West, Afghanistan.
15:53Sadiq Hedayat, Iran's pioneering modernist, whose blind owl became a Tehran sensation.
16:00His description is so vivid and the storytelling so powerful that draw you in to read more.
16:06I think the reason it's become such a powerful book has to do with the way the words are weaved
16:11together to create a really profound reading experience.
16:15Farooq Farrokhzad, rebel voice of modern Iran, whose work shattered conventions.
16:22My time is past.
16:23My time is past.
16:25I've carried my burden.
16:26I'm done with my work.
16:28He stays in his room from dawn to dusk.
16:31Greece's history of histories, or Ferdowsi's epics of kings.
16:36Sohrab Sephri, poet painter whose books blended minimal nature and zen-inspired mysticism.
16:43I'm like a stone's hair, I'm like a stone's hair, I'm like a stone's hair, I'm like a stone's hair, I'm like a stone's hair.
16:54Number 1, Ferdowsi of Tus.
16:57Honestly, when you see the book in person, these images are all simply breathtakingly beautiful.
17:03There are 500 glorious pages of them.
17:05Ferdowsi of Tus spent 30 years forging his nation's soul into a single book.
17:13Finished in 1010, the Shahnameh, or Book of Kings, is 50,000 epic couplets carrying Persia from the first kings to the Arab conquest.
17:23Told with the conviction that a ruler's right to rule depends on justice.
17:28The first part tales of the mythical creation of Persia and its earliest mythical past.
17:34The second part tales of the legendary kings and the heroes Rostam and Sohrab.
17:38Drawing on an earlier source and weaving in lines by the poet Daqiqi, Ferdowsi shaped the saga in Mutaqarib, an epic meter made for recitation.
17:49Its tragedies, like Rostam and Sohrab, became a moral mirror for Iranian culture.
17:55Today, the Shahnameh lives on through the dramatic storytelling of Nakhali performers, in legendary illustrated manuscripts, and at his monumental tomb in Tus.
18:07A shrine to the man who built an indestructible palace for his culture's memory.
18:13Which Iranian creator or single work do you think changed the course of history?
18:18Let us know in the comments.
18:21Ator taught me that home was within me.
18:24That home was the journey that I was on.
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