From Memory to Manuscript: How Classical Persian Literature Was Preserved and Spread

Long before printing presses and digital archives, the great poems and stories of Persia journeyed from living memory to the pages of illuminated manuscripts—thanks to a dynamic interplay of orality, calligraphy, patronage, and devotion. Here’s how that remarkable transmission unfolded, ensuring that works from the Shāhnāmeh to the ghazals of Hafez reached readers across centuries and continents.

1. The Power of Oral Transmission

1. Verses on the Tongue

   • In medieval society, literacy was often confined to courts and madrasas. Poets and reciters (rawāts) would commit lengthy works to memory, performing them at gatherings, caravanserais, and pilgrimage sites.

   • Epic poems like Ferdowsī’s Shāhnāmeh (over 50,000 couplets!) circulated first through recitation, each performance reinforcing the text in collective memory.

2. Communal Correction and Standardization

   • Audiences—many of whom knew passages by heart—acted as living proofreaders. When a reciter stumbled, listeners would supply the missing line, gradually stabilizing a canonical version.

   • This oral “editorship” paved the way for a standardized text once scribes began copying it down.

2. The Birth of the Manuscript Culture

1. From Parchment to Paper

   • Early Persian scribes used parchment or imported papyrus; after the 9th century, paper mills in Samarkand and Baghdad made writing materials more plentiful and affordable.

   • The shift to paper spurred a flourishing of book production—ck copyists could turn out Qur’an copies, legal manuals, and poetry collections in growing numbers.

2. Script Innovations

   • Naskh and tawqīʿ scripts offered legibility for administrative and scholarly works.

   • Nastaliq—the elegant, sloping “bride of calligraphy”—emerged in 14th-century Shiraz and Herat, ideally suited to Persian …