From Egypt to Susa: The Flight of the Falcon of Shiraz

We know very little about the life and times of our master, Mawlana Shahin of Shiraz.

What we do know is that, like so many of his compatriots—Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Zoroastrians alike—he lived under the protective wing of the exalted Mongol king, Ilkhan Abu Sa'id. We know he was roughly a contemporary of the great Hafez, and that he received a broad classical education alongside the traditional religious training of the Jewish community.

Like other poets of his era, Shahin was steeped in the Persian epic tradition and the historical heritage of his ancient homeland. Beyond a few brief biographical notes left by his successors, and the fact that his name—meaning "Falcon"—was likely a literary pen name, he remains a ghost to history.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the Jews of the Iranian sphere began speaking Persian, though it likely occurred well before the seventh-century Arab conquest. Jewish merchant communities across Central Asia are responsible for some of the earliest known texts in New Persian, a language born from the hybridization of Iranian culture and the mantle of Islam.

The Samanid period gave Iranians a new language to express ancient longings. Later, when the Mongols breached the garden walls, they brought fresh gusts of wind that carried new seeds to the flowerbeds of the Persian *bustan*. Refined in the fires of invasion from East and West, Iranian culture proved its phoenix-like nature time and again, rising from the ashes to yield sweet fruit and fragrant blossoms.

One of these magnificent fruits is the art of the Persian miniature. A secular descendant of the Mongol invasions, Persian painting absorbed Islamic themes, Indian colors, and ancient epics into its ivory pages. It articulated these stories through a visual language that was at once Chinese, Steppe-born, Hellenic, and local Iranian.

This tradition, which sprouted in the Ilkhanid courts under the brushes of artists from across Asia, took root in the royal workshops of Central Asia. It produced masterpieces in Timurid Herat, reached full maturity under the Safavids, and sent its offshoots to the sultanates of Delhi and Istanbul. Ferdowsi’s *Shahnameh*, the foundational work of the Persian-speaking world, became more than an object of art; it was a way to stretch the Iranian heavens over a frame encompassing half of Asia—a visual claim to political legitimacy.

The epic weight of Iranian culture did not only permeate the souls of Muhammad’s followers; it also moved the land's ancient Jewish inhabitants. Living under the Iranian sky, our teacher Shahin Shirazi recast his people's tradition in local colors. The Judeo-Persian "Tafsir" literature, which offered a space to interpret and expand Jewish tradition, was written in the local dialect, dressing an ancient heritage in robes of Eastern silk.

Shahin's two most famous works, the *Ardashir-nama* and the *Musa-nama*, gave full expression to the identity of the Judeo-Iranian community. They recast foundational stories—the Scroll of Esther and the Exodus—using tools that were Jewish in soul but Persian in body.

In the *Ardashir-nama*, Shahin—the Jew from Shiraz, who dedicated his work to the Mongol Khan as was the custom—weaves together the tales of the heroes of Iran and Turan. He echoes the themes of the literary patriarch Ferdowsi, featuring Zal, Rostam, and Afrasiyab. This sprawling family tree serves as the rootstock onto which Shahin grafts the story of Queen Esther. Her romance with the King of Persia—here named Ardashir—is intertwined with the classic motifs of love, loss, the hunt, and the heavy hand of fate so common in Persian epics.

From this union between the seed of Persia and the Jewish womb, King Cyrus the Great is born. He would, as the story goes, fulfill his mother's command and establish a sanctuary for the Jews on Mount Moriah, at the very edge of the Iranian world.

In the earlier *Musa-nama*, Shahin presents the life of Moses on a Persian epic scale. He recounts the struggle of a mythic superhero fighting his people's enemies—including a mighty wolf, a fire-breathing dragon, and a black lion—in a role that seems tailored to the massive frame of Rostam, Iran's greatest hero.

The epic compositions of Iranian Jews, and the spectacular art they inspired, describe a world far more complex than the standard dichotomy of Jewish-Gentile relations in Islamic lands. They reveal a diverse spectrum of colors within the Persian garden, bridging Egypt and Susa, Iran and Turan, Jerusalem and Tehran.

In the images:

A fragment of a Judeo-Persian manuscript. Among the earliest writings in the New Persian dialect. Dandan Oilik, Xinjiang, Western China.

Masterpieces of Persian illustration, including the *Shahnameh* of Shah Tahmasp from the Safavid period, and the veiled Prophet Muhammad on his *Mi'raj* journey to Mecca.

Illustrations from the *Musa-nama* showing the exploits of the Prophet Moses (veiled), and from the *Ardashir-nama*.