“Iranian Civilization and Culture” published in Russian

TEHRAN,Aug.24(MNA) -- “Iranian Civilization and Culture: Before Islam and Its Impact on Islamic Civilization and Arab Literature” has been published in Russian in Moscow. The book was written by Mohammad Mohammadi-Malayeri (1909-2002), who is recognized as an authority of pre-Islamic Iranian sources of Islamic civilization and culture as well as Arabic literature. Boris Vyacheslavovich Norik, a scholar of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, translated the book and Moscow-based publisher Nauchnaya Kniga printed it. This book sheds light on various aspects of the impact of pre-Islamic Iranian literature and culture on Arabic literature and Islamic culture, following the Arabic conquests and the collapse of the Sassanid Empire in Iran in the seventh century. It covers a period in Iranian literary history, dominated by the Arabic language, when Iranian scholars and administrators were transferring Iran’s literary and administrative heritage through translation of Iranian books into Arabic and adaption of Iranian traditions and practices, including the Sassanid administrative, financial and agricultural systems and various cultural practices, to the Islamic Caliphate thus ensuring their survival in a period of turmoil and transition from the Sassanid to the Islamic period. The book relies on scattered references in Arabic sources mainly from the first centuries of Islam, as the original Iranian sources did not survive the Arab conquests, a primary reason why this area of scholarly research has remained mostly on the dark. Mohammadi-Malayeri completed a doctorate at the American University of Beirut in 1942, and was assigned by Tehran University to establish the Department of Persian Studies at the Lebanese University in 1957. In 1958, he was appointed as Dean of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Tehran. He authored a number of books in Arabic and Persian and published numerous articles on the subject. “Iranian Civilization and Culture” was translated by into English Shahrokh Mohammadi, son of the author, and Manohar Publishers released it in October 2012.