BBC News Online: World: Middle East

Persia's crowning glory

The exhibition at the Sackler Gallery looks at historical figures made legendary in the 11th century poem Shahnameh, or Book of Kings.

Successive leaders of Iran sought to legitimise their rule by commissioning elaborately illustrated editions of the book.

"To this day the poem is considered a potent expression of Persian literary and national identity," says the Sackler Gallery's introduction to the show.

On view are coins, paintings, metalwork, and ceramics drawn from loans and the permanent collection of the Sackler and Freer Galleries.

The author, Ferdowsi, laboured for 30 years to combine history, legend, fighting, feasting, hunting and politics.

The poem, finished in 1010, is nearly 60,000 verses long.

Massumeh Farhad, co-curator of the show, likened Ferdowsi to "Shakespeare in England or Homer in Greece".

At least one scholar thinks one story may be the distant ancestor of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Persian nationalist

The Shahnameh tells the history of the Iranian people from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century.

Although the Book of Kings is in Arabic script, the language is Persian, with few of the Arabic words that now pervade the modern language.