On the occasion of the New Iranian Year Celebration, aka Nowruz, which is one of the most ancient celebrations, remained from the ancient Iran epoch, for the first time the library of the US Congress unveiled digitally a collection of rare Persian language manuscripts. These documents provide scientific, religious, philosophical and literary subjects which are very valuable across the Persian language lands. The collection includes 150 manuscripts, which most of the date back to the 13th AD and represent the diversity of religious and mystical traditions in the Persian culture. Since 10th century, Persian language has become the cultural language of a vast area of the western, central and southern Asia. Today, Persian is the local language of Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and some regions in the central, southern Asia and Caucasus.
In this collection, one may find some unique manuscripts of classical and less-known poems written in very beautiful calligraphies. It also includes Shahnameh, an epic about before Islam era in Iran. It also includes the most famous Persian poems belonged to Sa’di, Hafez, Rumi, Jami and Nizami Ganjavi. “These rare Persian manuscripts indicate how diverse and universal is this collection, because many of them are rotted in India, Central Asia, Caucasus and territories of Ottoman Empire and Persian Language local lands”, Hirad Dinavari, [expert of African and Middle East collections of this library] said.
