Poetry has long been the finest means of expressing a poet's delicate feelings — the representative of countless centuries of Iranian life — for poetry is the only art form that has remained immune from religious prohibition. To look at the poems of various centuries is to trace the laws of each era.

In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries of the Islamic calendar, three epic poets gave verse to Iranian life before the Arab conquest: Ferdowsi, Fakhr al-Din As'ad Gurgani, and Nezami. In their works we encounter women who fight like men — Gordafarid and Gordiyeh in Ferdowsi:

They are also wise counselors whose ignored advice brings death to heroes — in Ferdowsi's tales of Rostam and Esfandiyar, and Gordiyeh's counsel to Bahram Chobin, both heroes die for having dismissed the women's warnings:

Women in these epics also reach the highest office of leadership: Homay Chahrzad, Purandokht, and Azarmidokht, queens of Iran.

However, one must note: these three masters translated their works from Pahlavi and spoke of women from before Islam. The celebrated poet Sa'di, writing in the sixth century, describes women's place according to the laws of his own time — his verses span from praise of virtue to striking harshness, reflecting his era's contradictions.

The Constitutional Era

In the literature of the Constitutional Revolution, woman became a full member of the social body — equal to man, one upon whom injustice had been done throughout history. The poets of this era were uniformly opposed to the veil and polygamy, and in favor of women's participation in public life and education.

Eshqi wrote of women living as if shrouded while still alive. Aref Qazvini called the veil a national ruin and called revolution its cure. Iraj Mirza argued that educated women are stronger in virtue, not weaker. Lahuti demanded women rise against misogynist laws: "Rise from sleep, O idol of the East — without you, the East will never advance a single step." Malek al-Sho'ara Bahar approached the subject with characteristic complexity.

Parvin E'tesami

It was in this era that the star of Persian poetry, Parvin, was born — opening the path for other women poets. She wrote plainly of what had been denied:

Forough Farrokhzad

Forough's fresh vision and feminine gaze gave woman a new identity in contemporary Persian poetry: woman as full human being — with body, soul, language, feeling, thought, and individual independence. This was the opposite of the image that had lived for centuries behind a veil of fantasy, love, and contempt:

Simin Behbahani

Simin's long life allowed her to sing of every facet of living — from Parvin's classical influence to Forough's confessional intimacy to, finally, society and politics. From her last poem, "I Am Woman":

Contemporary Voices

Ziba Shirazi, now living in California: "I am, I am, I am a woman — freedom is my garment. I am coquetry from head to toe, yet I am iron forged from stone. The essence of your soul comes from me — do not throw the chador over my head."

Hila Sedighi: "I am an Iranian woman, Iranian from the fabric of your body / Patient and proud both — sister of Tahmineh, part of the story of Purandokht and Parvin / I am an Iranian woman — I will build you with the bricks of my soul / I will raise hundreds of columns to your ceiling with my bones."

Farid al-Din Abu Hamid Muhammad Attar Neishaburi (540–618 AH / 1146–1221 CE) is one of the most celebrated mystic poets of Persian literature, writing at the close of the fifth and opening of the sixth century of the Islamic calendar. He was born in Nishapur and is counted among the most prolific Iranian poets — a master stylist whose works, including Tazkirat al-Awliya, Ilahi-nama, Asrar-nama, Mokhtarname, and Mantiq al-Tayr (The Conference of the Birds), have served as models for poets and writers across centuries. Perhaps no one admired Attar more than Rumi, who followed him in both poetry and mystical thought.

The fifth and sixth centuries were an era of profound conflict among rival religious factions — particularly the Ash'arites, Shi'ites, and Mu'tazilites. The Iranian people found themselves at the intersection of three colliding cultures: the warrior Turks arriving from the north, the Arabs who considered themselves superior, and Iran's own deep-rooted culture. The Turks appointed Iranian viziers, but these learned men were killed one after another. In this chaos, scholars turned to whatever work they could find. Kings clung to religion to maintain power, branding any dissent as heresy and apostasy, pushing free thinkers to the margins. Fatalism was strengthened; independent thought condemned. Many took refuge in the khanqah and Sufism — and Attar was one of them, abandoning his pharmacy to travel and wander. But Sufism itself was a form of protest against the political and religious powers of the time, and this protest is fully visible in Attar's poetry.

Having read the stories of earlier Sufis — Ibrahim Adham, Rabi'a, and Hasan Basri — Attar became captivated by mysticism and set out in search of the secret of truth. He showed little enthusiasm for formal philosophy; his inclinations were mystical, with a particular passion for the stories and sayings of the Sufis. (Many of these tales — fish bringing thousands of needles to Ibrahim Adham, Rabi'a's prayer mat floating in the air, the sea rising and calming at a Sufi's command — are legendary rather than historical; in the twenty-first century we know that fish do not obey human beings. Yet these stories were invented precisely to frighten tyrannical kings and fanatical clerics.)

Now let us describe Attar's seven cities of love in his own words.

The First Valley: Seeking (طلب)

The first valley is Seeking — it is what drives Attar to travel. When you enter this city you encounter great hardship, for you must cleanse your heart of everything it holds. And in that cleansing, the light of the divine essence finds its way into your heart, and Seeking multiplies you from one into a thousand.

The Second Valley: Love (عشق)

After Seeking comes the city of Love — whoever arrives there is drowned in fire, for in this city there is nothing but fire. The lover is one who, like fire, is warm, burning, and untamed. If your hidden eye opens, every particle of the universe becomes your confidant; but if you look with the eye of reason, you will never see love's head or feet. Attar tells many stories of love, in which he seems to say: love in any form — earthly or spiritual, forbidden or permitted — is love, and the lover is not to be blamed. He returns again and again to the example of Sultan Mahmoud and his love for his slave Ayaz — a sultan who killed thousands of innocents for their beliefs while he himself, in violation of Islamic law, loved his own slave and visited him secretly in the bathhouse.

The Third Valley: Knowledge (معرفت)

Next comes the valley of Knowledge — a city with neither head nor foot, for each traveler's journey will be according to their own state and condition. Here one finds a prayer niche, another finds an idol. The sun of Knowledge shines on each person according to their worth, and each finds their own station.

The Fourth Valley: Detachment (استغنا)

The next valley is Detachment — self-sufficiency and freedom from need. In this city there is neither claim nor proof. Seven seas and seven sparks of fire are here. The stories of the eight paradises are dead here, and the seven hells frozen like ice. Attar illustrates detachment through the story of Ibrahim Adham — a king who, upon hearing a divine call, abandons his throne, his wife and children, his wealth, and moves from city to city so that no one will recognize him.

The Fifth Valley: Unity (توحید)

Then you enter the city of Unity — the station of seclusion and stripping away all the excesses of life. Whether few or many, only One exists. Since you see neither beginning nor end, you release your attachment to both eternity past and eternity future.

The Sixth Valley: Bewilderment (حیرت)

In this city you see nothing but pain and regret. The bewildered man who arrives here is confused — he wonders if he has lost the way. Everything he knew of Unity is lost. If you ask him: Are you drunk or not? Do you exist or not? Are you inside or outside? Visible or hidden? Lasting or passing? He says: I do not know.

He has reached a station where he can trust nothing — he does not know whether what he once understood of Unity was true or false. Muslim and unbeliever have become one to him. In one story Attar compares the mystic in this valley to a man who, while unconscious, was brought before a beautiful girl, and then carried away unconscious again — the man, now in love, cannot tell whether he dreamed or lived it.

In another story, a sheikh who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca forty times suddenly ties on the sacred girdle (zunnār) and begins circling a fire temple. Attar does not explain why; the sheikh only says: a fire fell into my heart and I grew weary of both synagogue and Kaaba.

The Seventh Valley: Poverty and Annihilation (فقر و فنا)

The last city is Poverty and Annihilation — the human being is nothing, dissolved into the light of God.

It is not only love that knows neither woman nor man, neither unbeliever nor Muslim — in Attar's view, beliefs themselves, as long as they are accompanied by love of God, hold no superiority over one another. A Christian converts to Islam and tears his sacred girdle; Bayazid weeps and says: if I were in a non-Muslim country and forced to wear the girdle, what would I do? Then he asks: if tearing the girdle means entering Islam and is not wrong, why is wearing the girdle — entering another faith — forbidden?

— Maryam Tabibzadeh  |  Written for Kanoon, Iranian Society of Carolina, NC  |  July 18, 2019

Is the Lion and Sun flag a national symbol — or the flag of the Pahlavi monarchy? Is the Lion and Sun the emblem of Iran, or the emblem of the Shah?

Before I answer, let me share a memory from a few years ago, during the Green Movement. I was demonstrating with a group of Iranians when a friend handed me two Lion and Sun flags. I gave one to another friend, who recoiled as if bitten by a snake and said: "No — I won't hold this flag. It's the symbol of the Pahlavi monarchy." I told her this had been Iran's flag since the Constitutional Revolution, but another participant insisted: "No — in the Qajar era the lion was seated, but the Pahlavi lion stands upright." Though I didn't believe him, I hadn't studied the flag closely enough to argue, and I watched as my friend and several others raised a plain green, white, and red flag with no emblem at all. I told her: the Lion and Sun flag was Iran's flag from the 13th of Mordad 1285 (August 5, 1906) until 1357 (1979). The flag you're carrying is neither the old flag nor the current flag of Iran — it's one you invented.

That moment sent me to the history books. Here is what I found.

The Origins of the Symbol

The Lion and Sun is one of the oldest symbols in Iranian culture, with roots stretching back thousands of years — far predating any monarchy. The lion represented power, courage, and the divine; the sun represented light, sovereignty, and the divine grace that legitimized rule. Together they formed an image that Iranians carried through dynasty after dynasty, not as a royal trademark but as a national identity.

The three colors of the flag — green, white, and red — have their own layered history. When the Qajar-era reformer Amir Kabir standardized the flag, he adopted the colors that had existed since the Nader Shah era and simply required the flag to be rectangular. The flag had a white ground with a green stripe at the top and a red stripe at the bottom, with the Lion, Sun, and Sword at its center — and in this form, Iran's flag took on essentially the shape it would hold for more than a century.

The Constitutional Revolution

With the victory of the Constitutional Revolution in the reign of Mozaffar al-Din Shah and the formation of the National Consultative Assembly, the representatives enshrined in Article Five of the Supplementary Fundamental Law: "The official colors of the Iranian flag are green, white, and red, and its emblem is the Lion and Sun."

The colors were given meaning: green for the Islamic faith and Shi'a tradition, as well as the flourishing of the country and the clarity of spirit; white for the peace, friendship, and tranquility of the Iranian people; red for the constitutional movement and the nation's readiness to defend its independence and freedom, even at the cost of its children's blood.

With the flag's colors now fixed, the Lion and Sun was formally adopted as the flag's official emblem — and for the first time in Iranian history, the national flag was enshrined in the constitution as a symbol of national independence and sovereignty. This was not a royal emblem. It was a constitutional one.

The Qajar and Pahlavi Eras

The question my fellow demonstrator raised — seated lion vs. standing lion — turns out to have a simpler answer than he suggested. The posture of the lion changed across different eras and different artists, but this was a matter of artistic convention, not political distinction. In wartime the lion held a sword; in peacetime, not always.

When the Pahlavi dynasty replaced the Qajars, no fundamental change was made to the flag, and Article Five of the Supplementary Fundamental Law describing it remained unchanged. In the Reza Shah era, the lion was drawn with a more realistic face, and the sun was no longer depicted in feminine form. The word for flag itself changed during this period — the Persian derafsh, the Arabic alam and rayat, and the Turkish biyrak were all replaced with the single word parcham, now standard in modern Persian.

In 1957, a detailed regulation described the flag's specifications precisely — the lion's orientation, the sword in its paw, the curl of its tail in the shape of an italic S. In 1958, further refinements were made. By the 1970s, a modernized design of the Lion and Sun was official. Through all of this, the emblem remained what the Constitutional Revolution had named it: the national symbol of Iran.

What the Three Colors Mean

The scholar Bahman Namvar Motlagh has offered a deeper reading of the three colors, connecting them to the Indo-European tripartite theory of Georges Dumézil: the three colors correspond to the three ancient classes of civilization — sovereigns (white), warriors (red), and craftsmen and farmers (green). Cyrus the Great's famous declaration — "I fear three things for my people: lies, enemies, and drought" — maps onto the same three: lies are the greatest danger for sovereigns, enemies for warriors, drought for those who work the land.

Whether the colors were chosen with this framework consciously in mind or not, the three-part structure runs deep in Iranian civilization and surfaces again and again across its history.

After 1979

After the Islamic Revolution, the Lion and Sun was removed from the flag and replaced with the stylized Allah emblem designed by Hamid Nadimi. The new flag erased an emblem that had belonged to the Iranian nation — constitutionally, legally, and historically — for over seventy years.

So to return to the demonstration, and to my friend who would not take the flag: the Lion and Sun is not the Pahlavi flag. It is the constitutional flag of Iran, adopted by the people's elected representatives in 1906, and carried by the nation through monarchy and revolution alike until it was removed by decree. The plain tricolor she carried that day represented nothing — no era, no law, no people. It was, as I told her, invented.

— Maryam Tabibzadeh  |  Written for Kanoon, Iranian Society of Carolina, NC

Mirza Mohammad Farrokhi Yazdi was born in 1889 in the city of Yazd. He began writing poetry from a young age — and at fifteen, composed a poem criticizing England's colonial methods of educating Iranian children. The result: expulsion from the missionary school. The first two lines are cited as the cause:

From the earliest stirrings of the Constitutional Movement, Farrokhi became a committed member of the Democratic Party in Yazd. In the spring of 1918, while other poets composed odes praising the local governor, Farrokhi read a poem at a gathering of freedom-seekers. At its end he declared: "You are a tyrant in the manner of Zahhak — you must abandon this way." The governor ordered Farrokhi's lips sewn shut with needle and thread, and had him thrown in prison. The newspapers gave him the title Lesān al-Mellat — "the tongue of the nation." His cellmate recalled asking whether the sewing was painful. Farrokhi answered: "Were my lips made of burlap, that they should be stitched?"

The Newspaper Storm

In 1921 in Tehran, Farrokhi founded the newspaper Tufan ("The Storm") — suppressed more than fifteen times. When shut down, he published under other mastheads, continuing to print his articles and poems. The paper was the voice of the laboring poor and the peasant.

Exile, Return, and Death

In 1930, Farrokhi escaped to Germany via Soviet Russia. A powerful minister later urged him to return, promising clemency. Farrokhi, who loved Iran with everything in him, returned. He was placed under surveillance, fell into poverty, and was eventually imprisoned. He died on October 16, 1939. The official cause was malaria — but a post-1941 prosecutor stated he was killed by an injection of air. His grave is unknown. His poetry endures.

How close were the visions of Iran's Constitutional poets to the laws and changes enacted under Reza Shah? Some consider Reza Shah the father of modern Iran. Others called him an instrument of England. The truth is found not in political mythology but in the poetry itself.

What the Poets Wanted

Iraj Mirza placed his hopes in Sardar Sepah: "There is no trade, no industry, no road — there is no hope except in Sardar Sepah." He fiercely opposed the hijab and religious superstition. He died three months after Reza Shah came to power.

Mirzadeh Eshqi was among the first men in Iran to publicly defend women's rights. With his help, the Women's Patriotic Society staged Iran's first women's theater in 1924 — five thousand women attended. The clergy had it shut down. Eshqi was assassinated weeks later.

Bahar — poet, journalist, parliamentarian — initially attacked Reza Shah ferociously. But a decade later, surveying what had been built, he wrote poems of genuine praise: the empty treasury refilled, bandits subdued, roads laid, schools opened everywhere.

The Question of Credit

The reforms of the Reza Shah era were not invented by Reza Shah. They had been the explicit demands of Iranian intellectuals for decades. What he provided was the capacity to move against those who had frustrated every reform for a century. The ideas belonged to the poets. Their visions became Iran's reality through the accumulated pressure of a generation that refused to stop dreaming.