For centuries, storytellers and scops recited epics and national, tribal, historical, and religious stories for people, through musical speeches. Some of these narrators wrote down what they recited, and some others dictated them for scribes to be recorded. Some kings and lords also had scops in their courts to recite the stories to scribes. One of the old, oral stories of Persian literature th...

abstract bazel mashadi′s heydary attack is one of the earliest and most famous attack epics written in the twelfth century. bazel exploits the style and format of shahname in his masnavi, composed in twenty to thirty thousand verses. the poet, after chanting the praise of god, prophet and his successor (vali), verses the history of islam beginning from the prophet’s mission (be’sat) to the orde...