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Literature
The first major literary works are the scriptures of Zoroastrianism and the Pahlave writing of Parthian and Sassanian Iran, when there was certainly an active literary life. Poetry was cultivated by minstrels. The Arab conquest (7th century A.D.) made Arabic the literary theme. Persian (Farsi) re-emerged as the literary language in the 9th century A.D., and in the following centuries the classical Persian literature flowered in the following centuries. This literature is undoubtedly the most brilliant expression of the Iranian genius. While there are also interesting works in prose, it is poetry-the most varied in the Islamic world-that gives Iranian literature special value. Of the early known poets one should count Rudaki, Ferdowsi, Onsori, Farrokhi, Manuchehri, Asadi, etc. classical persian literature has developed under two powerful patronage: royal and religious. The Seljuk period stands out in the history of Iranian literature-a period rich in both verse and prose. In a class by himself was Nasser Khosrow, a poet and great scholar whose travel books are among the seven or eight of his fifteen works in prose and some of 30000 verses that still survive. Some Iranian scholars believe that Nasser Khosrow should join the six in the Iranian Hall of Fame of outstanding poets-Ferdowse, Khayyam, Anvari, Mowlavi, Sadi and Hafez. Omar Khayam (11th century A.D.), both a poet and a mathematician, while combining two opposite attributes, crafted his well-known Rubaiyat. In the 20th century, western influence and the struggle for independence and social justice in Iran made political and social themes paramount, and literaty language became simple and direct.
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Philosophy
In pre-Islamic times in Iran, philosophy was not completely separated from religion as became the case in Greece. It was particularly during the Islamic period that philosophy flourished in Persia. The first great figure of philosophical school, Al-kindi, was an Arab. Other important thinkers were Persians, such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. Avicenna (or Ibn-e Sina) was the greatest philosopher-scientist of Persia and also of Islam. Al-Ghazzali, the most famous theologian and one of the foremost religious thinkers of Islam, was a Persian, as was Abu Hanifah, the founder of the dominant school of Sunni law in Islam. Suhrawardi and Sadr Od-Din Shirazi were the greatest philosophers. It was that Persia should have become a center of Islamic philosophy.
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Science
In pre-Islamic times, scientific interest was widespread in Persia, especially during the Sassanian period. The Persians had a system of medicine of their own and also borrowed freely from the Indians and Greeks. In astronomy and mathematics the pre-Islamic Persians showed much interest in calendrical calculations. The Islamic period saw the translation of the treasures of ancient science into Arabic and the growth of Arabic into a universal scientific language, and Persian scientists began to flourish as neverbefore in medicine the tradition of Hippocrates and Galen, along with that of the Indians and ancient Persians, was synthesized into a formidable school of medicine that reached its peak with Rhazes and Avicenna. Other fields of science in which Persia produced important figures were mathematics and astronomy. Al-Khwarazmi, in whose book these numerals were discussed, has in fact given his name to the science of numbers called algorithm. The greatest treatise on algebra during medieval times was by khayyam, the celebrated Persian poet. In astronomy the Persians made major contributions through such men as Al- Biruni, the greatest scientist of his day, and Nasir Od-Din Al-Toosi, the director of the famous observatory of Maraghah. Muslim scholars set up new observatories, made new calculations and corrected certain of the elements in Ptolemy's astronomy. .
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Avicenna  In full Abu 'Ali al-Husayn ibn 'abd Allah ibn Sina, is an Iranian physician and one of the most famous and influential philosopher-scientists of Islam. He was born in 980 A.D. in Bukhara in Iran and died in 1037 A.D. in Hamadan while he was imprisoned.
During his childhood and youth, he studied logic, metaphysics and was mastered in Islamic law. By the age of 21 he was accomplished in all branches of formal learning and had already gained a wide reputation as an outstanding physician. His services were also sought as an administrator, for a while he even entered government service as a clerk; he became the court physician for some time he also suffered political reactions and intrigues against him and was forced into hiding for some time; at last he was imprisoned untill he died.
Occupied during the day with his duties at court as both physician and administrator, Avicenna spent almost every night with his students, carrying out general philosophical and scientific discussions. Even in hiding and prison he continued writing.
He was particularly noted for his contributions in the fields of Aristotelian philosophy and medicine.
He composed the Kitab ash-shifa' ('Book of Healing'), which is one of the most famous books in the world and probably the largest work of its kind ever written by a man. It treats of logic, the natural sciences, including psychology, the quadrivium (geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music), and metaphysics, but there is no real exposition of ethics or politics. His thought in this work owes a great deal to Aristotle but also to other Greek influences and to Neoplatonism.
The al-Qanun fi at-tibb (Canon of Medicine ) is the most famous single book in the history of medicine in both East and West. It is a systematic encyclopaedia based for the most part on the achievements of Greek physicians of the Roman imperial age, on other Arabic works and, to a lesser extent, on his own experience (his own clinical notes were lost during his journeys). It was translated into Latin in the 12th century along with his 'Book of Healing'.
His other books are Kitab an-najat ('Book of Salvation'), 'Oriental philosophy' (al-hikmat al-mashriqiyah) and his last book is Kitab
al-isharat wa at-tanbihat ('Book of Directives and Remarks').
Avicenna's influence
In the western world, Avicenna's influence was felt, though no distinct school of 'Latin Avicennism' can be discerned as can with Averroës, the great Spanish-Arabic philosopher. The translations of his books have spread the thought of Avicenna far and wide in the west. His thought, blended with that of St. Augustine, the Christian philosopher and theologian, was a basic ingredient in the thought of many of the medieval Scholastics, especially in the Franciscan schools. In medicine the Canon became the medical authority for several centuries, and Avicenna enjoyed an undisputed place of honour equalled only by the early Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen. In the east his dominating influence in medicine, philosophy, and theology has lasted over the ages and is still alive within the circles of Islamic thought.
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Hafez (Hafiz)  Mohammad Shams od-din Hafez Shirazi as one of the finest lyric poets of Persia was born in about 1324 A.D. in Shiraz in Iran and died in 1389 A.D. He received a classical religious education, lectured on Koran and other theological subjects. He designates as one who has learned the Koran by heart and was titled 'Hafez of Koran' which means one who memorizes the whole Koran; he also wrote commentaries on religious classics. As a court poet he enjoyed the patronage of several rulers of Shiraz. In his poetry there are many echoes of historical events as well as biographical descriptions and details of life in Shiraz. One of the guiding principles of his life was Sufism, the Islamic mystical movement that demanded of its adherents complete devotion to the pursuit of union with the ultimate reality.
Hafez's principal verse form, one that he brought to a perfection never achieved before or since, was the ghazel, a lyric poem of 6 to 15 couplets linked by unity of subject and symbolism rather than by a logical sequence of ideas. The extraordinary popularity of Hafez's poetry in all Persian-speaking lands stems from his simple and often colloquial though musical language, free from artificial virtuosity, and his unaffected use of homely images and proverbial expressions. Above all, his poetry is characterized by love of humanity, contempt for hypocrisy and mediocrity, and an ability to universalize everyday experience and to relate it to the mystic's unending search for union with God. His appeal in the West is indicated by the numerous translations of his poems which is known as 'Dinvan-e Hafez'.
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Ferdossi
 Haim Abulqasim Mansur Ferdossi was born in about 940 A.D. near Toos in Iran. He was famous for developing the Ruba'i (quartrain) style of 'epic' historic poems.
He is the well-known author of the Shah Nameh ('Book of Kings'), the Persian national epic. In the course of the centuries many legends have been woven around the poet's name but very little is known about the real facts of his life. The only reliable source is given by Nezami-ye 'Aruzi, a 12th-century poet who visited Ferdowsi's tomb in 1116 or 1117 and collected the traditions that were current in his birthplace less than a century after his death.
Ferdossi is considered as the savior of Farsi, which he chose to use at a time when the culture was being steadily Arabised. Pahlavi which is the original of Farsi is a pure Persian with only the slightest admixture of Arabic. His writings contain many details of old Persian history and culture which might also have been lost. The exact date of Ferdowsi's death is not clear but it is between 1020 and 1026.
The Persians regard Ferdossi as one of their greatest poets. The Shah Nameh of Ferdowsi, a poem of nearly 60,000 couplets, is based mainly on a prose work of the same name compiled in the poet's early manhood in his native Toos. It contains the history of the kings of Persia from mythical times down to the reign of Khosrow II (590-628), but it also has additional material continuing the story of the overthrow of the Sassanians by the Arabs in the middle of the 7th century. To the Iranians it is the history of their country's glorious past, preserved for all time in sonorous and majestic verse.
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Molana
 Jalal ad-din ar-Rumi also called Molana who was born in 1207, in Balkh, in Ghurid empire (now in Afghanistan) and died in 1273, was the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language. He was famous for his lyrics and didactic epic Masnavi-ye Ma'navi ('Spiritual Couplets'), which widely influenced Muslim mystical thought and literature. After Rumi's death, his disciples were organized as the Molavieh order, called in the West the Whirling Dervishes.
This experience of love, longing, and loss during his life turned Rumi into a poet. His mystical poems (about 30,000 verses and a large number of roba'iyat or quatrains) reflect the different stages of his love, until he found Shams in himself a radiant like the moon. The complete identification of lover and beloved is expressed by inserting the name of Shams instead of his own pen name at the end of most of his lyrical poems. The Divan-e Shams (the collected Poetry of Shams) is a true translation of his experiences into poetry; its language, however, never becomes lost in lofty spiritual heights or nebulous speculation. The fresh language, propelled by its strong rhythms, sometimes assumes forms close to popular verses. He often accompanied his verses by a whirling dance. The Masnavi, which shows all the different aspects of Sufism in the 13th century, often carries the reader away with loose associations of thought, so that one understands what subjects the master had in mind at a particular stage of his life.
Rumi lived for a short while after completing the Masnavi. Besides his poetry, Rumi left a small collection of occasional talks as they were noted down by his friends; in the collection, known as Fihi ma fihi ('There is in it what is in it').
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Sa'di
Sheikh Mohammad Shams-ed-din, known by his pen name of Sadi, is one of the 7th century A.H. (Lunar Calendar) philosophers who presented his literacy works into verse and poem. He was born and lived in Shiraz from 1207 to 1291; like Hafez, he lost his father at a tender age and his education was entrusted to some of the leading teachers of Shiraz. However, unlike Hafez, Sadi spent a large part of his life traveling to many countries, even becoming involved in the Crusades, before he settled down to writing in his hometown of Shiraz. Many of his elegantly phrased verses he developed during his travels, reflect the philosophy of humility and compassion which are still commonly used in conversation. His famous works are Golestan (Rose Garden) and Boostan that have been translated into many languages. Mausoleum of Sa'di is now one of the important pilgrimage sites in Shiraz.
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Nizami Ganjavi Nizami Ganjavi whose real name is Ilyas Yusif Oglu (1141-1209) is a great Azari poet and philosopher. He never traveled out of Ganja and rejected to be the poet of the court. He wrote a large divan with lyric pomes and was famous as a ghazal and gasside author. Nizami’s lyrics are outstanding and highly professional which are about worldly attitude to love and thoughts about a man’s destiney.
But his Khamseh (Quintuple), a pentalogue of five poems “ Treasury of Mysteries”, “Khosrov and Shirin”, “Leili and Medjnun”, “Seven Beauties” and “Iskandar-nameh”, was written in masnavi form. His creation consists of bright artistic reflection of most humane, universal soico-political, social and moral-ethnic ideals of his epoch. He always tried to relate the literature to life, though taken images from history, he treated them from his present day and being a great humane poet, he sang of a man, a man’s dignity.
He believed only a working man deserves respect and love. Nizami was also a great patriot. In each work he tried to connect the described events with Azarbaijan and to praise the past powerful days of his country.
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Al-Razi Mohammad Ibn Zakariya Al-Razi (865-925) was born in Ray, Iran. Initially, he was interested in music but later on he learnt medicine, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry and philosophy. He was the greatest physician in Islamic world, and one of the great physicians of all time. His remarkable medical work was the monumental encyclopedia al Hawi, on which he worked for fifteen years. It contained important information on each medical subject that was available from Greek and Arab sources that he concluded giving his own remarks based on his experiences and views. His other works are: Kitab al-Mansoori, Kitab al-Mulooki and Kitab al-Judari & al-Hasabah. He was also an expert surgeon who was the first to use opium for anesthesia. In addition to being a physician, he compounded medicines and, in his later years, gave himself over to experimental and theoretical sciences. Kitab-al-Asrar, one of his books, deals with the preparation of chemical materials and their utilization.
As a chemist, he was the first to produce sulfuric acid together with some other acids, and he also prepared alcohol by fermenting sweet products.
He was a prolific author, who has left important treatises on numerous subjects. He has more than 200 outstanding scientific contributions to his credit, out of which about half deal with medicine and 21 of them concern alchemy. He also wrote on physics, mathematics, astronomy and optics. Many of his books have been translated and published in European languages. And about 40 of them can be found in museums and libraries of Iran, Paris, Britain, Rampur and Bankipur.
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Omar Khayyam
Born in 1048 A.D. in Nishabur in Iran and died in 1131, Omar Khayyam was a Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer, renowned in his own country and time for his scientific achievements but known to English-speaking readers for his roba'iyat (quatrains) in the version The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam published in 1859 by Edward FitzGerald. He received a good education in the sciences and philosophy in his native Neyshabur and in Balkh and then went to Samarkand, where he completed an important treatise on algebra. He was commissioned to build an observatory in Isfahan in collaboration with other astronomers.
He also taught and served the court of his time from time to time by predicting events to come. Philosophy, jurisprudence, history, mathematics, medicine, and astronomy are among the subjects mastered by this brilliant man. Unfortunately, few of his prose writings survive; these include a few brief tracts on metaphysics and a treatise on Euclid.
Each of Omar's quatrains was originally composed on a particular occasion and forms a complete poem in itself.
A close reading of the authentic verses reveals Omar as a man of deep thought, troubled by the questions of the nature of reality and the eternal, the impermanence and uncertainty of life, and man's relationship to God. Omar doubts the existence of divine providence and the afterlife, derides religious certainty, and is disturbed by man's frailty and ignorance. Finding no acceptable answers to his perplexities, he chooses to put his faith instead in a joyful appreciation of the fleeting and sensuous beauties of the material world. The idyllic nature of the modest pleasures he celebrates, however, cannot dispel his honest and straightforward brooding over fundamental metaphysical questions.
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Professor Hesabi
Dr. Mahmoud Hesabi, a famous contemporary scientist was born in Tehran in 1903. He was one of the pioneers who established Tehran University in 1934. Dr. Hesabi finished his preliminary education in “Ferrer”, a French school in Beyrut, and his intermediate studies in an American College also in Beyrut where he received his BA degree. He was known as an electrical engineer at Paris Electrical High School; and received his Ph.D. in Physics from Sorbun University only in 7 years.
He was a successful student and a member of Atomic Institution Council of Chicago. He received 8 degrees in different majors, literature, civil engineering, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, biology, electrical engineering, mine engineering and physics.
Before the age of seven his mother taught him the Koran. Then he learnt Hafiz’s book of poetry and Sadi’s Gulistan and Bustan.
Some of Dr. Hesabi’s works are Sensitiveness of Photoelectric cells, Our way, Iranian Names, “Physical Eyes” for physic students and several essays about the structure of basic elements of Atom.
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Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951) Recognized as the most significant Iranian writer of the century, Sadegh Hedayat is credited with having brought Iranian language and literature into the mainstream of international contemporary writing.
Sadegh Hedayat was born in Tehran in 1903 of an aristocratic family. After receiving his secondary education in 1925 he traveled to Europe on a government scholarship to study dentistry. He shortly gave up dentistry for engineering, and engineering for the study of pre-Islamic languages and ancient culture of Iran.
In Europe, Hedayat was exposed to the world literature, especially European literature, and read the works of Kafka, Poe, and Dostoevski. In his solitude, he became extremely self-conscious and devoted a great deal of his time to the problem of life and death.
Hedayat's language is both literary and scholarly. In addition to his novella and short stories, he was the first person to conduct serious and methodical research on the folklore of Iran. He also studied the ancient Iranian languages and wrote essays about archaelogy, anthropology and liguistics. Satire was also Hedayat's language. In his fiction, he criticizes the social and political problems of his society - the criticism that is very often expressed in satirical form.
Hedayat gradually improved his writing skill and developed a talent for philosophical, social, and eventually political themes. His career reached its peak in the late 1930s.
Buried Alive, The Stray Dog, Death & The Blind Owl which is regarded as his masterpiece and has been translated into many languages, are some of his writings.
He ended his life in 1951, in Paris.
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Dr. Ali Shariati
The Iranian philosopher, lecturer, romantic, and poet Dr. Ali Shariati was part of one of the most significant revolutions of the century. He was born in Mazinan, a suburb of Mashad, Iran in 1933. After high school he started as a teacher and had been a student as well. In his years at the Teacher's Training College, he came into contact with youth who were from the lower economic strata (class) of the society and tasted the poverty and hardship that existed.
After graduating from college in 1960, on a scholarship Dr. Ali Shariati pursued his studies in France. He as an honor student received his Ph.D in sociology in 1964 from Sorbonne University.
Dr. Shariati constantly fought to create humanitarian values in the young generation, a generation whose values have been defaced with the help of the most scientific and technical methods. He vigorously tried to re-introduce the Koran and Islamic history to the youth so that they may find their true selves in all their human dimensions and fight all the decadent societal forces.
Dr. Shariati wrote many books. In all his writings, he tried to present a clear and genuine picture of Islam. He strongly believed that if the intellectual and new generation realized the truth of this faith, attempts toward social change would be successful.
He was arrested and imprisoned on the pretext that he had participated in political activities while studying in France and teaching in Iran by the regim.
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Amir Kabir Mirza Taghi Farahani was born in 1807 in Farahan, Iran, entitled Ataback-e Azam (The Chief Minister), Amir Nezaam (The Prince of the State), and Amir Kabir (The Great Prince), is one of the greatest politicians in the recent two centuries of Iran.
He was the Prime Minister of Naaser-Al- Deen Shah Qajar from Qajar dynasty. Amir Kabir initiated reforms that marked the effective beginning of the modernization of Iran. He did several basic and important services, which were useful for the country such as decreasing the salaries of Qajar royal princes and preventing the aliens’ interference in domestic affairs of the country. He also established Dar-ul- Fonoon School.
Since, the courtiers were informed from Amir Kabir’s amiability among people and also knew, he was an obstacle against their aims, conspired against him. Finally, Naser-al-din Shah deposed him from ministership and then, ordered to murder him.
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