Audiobook classics of Persian literature released for Azerbaijani listeners

TEHRAN – (Iranart)- Audio versions of Yusof and Zolaykha and Leyli and Majnun, two love stories from the classic Persian literature, have been released for Azerbaijani listeners.

Both of the audiobooks released by Avaye Chirok, a major Iranian institute that produces audiobooks, have been narrated by Bahmand Vakhshur based on the Azerbaijani translation of the books by Sirus Qamari.

Vakhshur has earlier narrated “The Collection of Azerbaijani Poems of Shahriar”, “Qachaq Nabi” (“Qaçaq Nebi”), and “Koroghlu” (“Koroglu”) for Azerbaijani audiences in three audiobooks released by Avaye Chirok in January.

Leyli and Majnun is a narrative poem of approximately 4,600 lines composed in 1188 by poet Nezami of Ganja, also known as Nezami Ganjavi. It is the third of his five long narrative poems known collectively as the Khamseh (the Quintet).

There are various versions of the Khamseh in Iranian libraries, but the two versions kept at the Central Library of the University of Tehran and the library of the Shahid Motahhari School and Mosque in Tehran were inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register list in 2011.

Yusof and Zolaykha, as a love story with religious overtones, has always been among the most favorite themes of Persian poets who, with direct or oblique references to its various episodes, created a desired imagery, expanded on a particular point in the poem, conveyed a poetic message or reinforced it.

The most celebrated versified rendering of this romance is the Yusof and Zolaykha by Nur ad-Din Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 1492), who composed it in 1483. It follows the meter of Nezami Ganjavi’s Khosrow and Shirin love story and forms the fifth poem in the poet’s collection of seven masnavis known as Haft Owrang “Seven Thrones”. 

The Yusof and Zolaykha story ends in the union and the eventual death of both protagonists.

source: Tehran Times