Nezami and the Poetics of the Visual Art

Service Description

Nezami and the Poetics of the Visual Arts in Medieval Persian Poetry Dates: October 13 – December 15, 2026 (online course) Time: Tuesdays, 10:15 am – 11:15 am Pacific Standard Time (Los Angeles) Persian language skills: basic, intermediate, advanced Nezāmi Ganjavi authored five romances in verse (masnavis) that rank among the most refined achievements of medieval Persian literature. In crafting these stylistically intricate narrative poems, Nezāmi drew on didactic, romantic, epic, folkloric, philosophical, and scientific traditions that circulated in western Iran, on the frontier between the Saljuk and Byzantine empires, during and after the region’s gradual Islamization. This course approaches Nezāmi’s five poems—Makhzan al-Asrar, Leyli-o Majnun, Khosrow-o Shirin, Haft Paykar, and the Eskandar-Name—as works of visual enchantment that reflect on the nature of thought at the intersection of words and images. By entering the imaginative worlds conjured by Nezāmi’s poetry, we will examine how language produces vivid visual obsessions in the mind and, in turn, prompts us to reflect on our own habits of seeing and imagining. Nezāmi’s metapoetic reflections on language and vision raise urgent questions: What do we think we are seeing when poetry happens? How might poetic vision make us more self-consciously aware, more ethically present to ourselves and the world, and more capable of action? Nezāmi’s visually intoxicating poetry compels us to consider the quasi-magical power of artistic craft to enchant, seduce, and transform readers and spectators. As scholarship in Islamic Studies increasingly turns to the dynamics of wonder and wonderment, Nezāmi’s visual poetics suggests a further link between affect and ethics. His poetry invites us to ask what forms of ethical orientation might underlie the enchanting power of literature, beyond the rhetoric of art for art’s sake and the kaleidoscopic pleasures of aesthetic experience. The course will also include the study of medieval and early modern manuscripts and images that illuminate the centrality of the visual imagination in Nezāmi’s poetry. * Once learners enroll, Silk Road Academy will coordinate the class schedule, process payments, and manage administrative details. Dr. Domenico Ingenito is Associate Professor of Iranian Studies and premodern Persian Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles.