The footprints of Three poets on recent Revolution:

This  Persian revolution is our renaissance and came out from previous movements. Conquesting Iran by Arabs   1400 years ago led to numerous social changes. They came with their famous slogan: all Muslims are equal before Allah-god, but the reality was completely different. They abused their power and rooted up everything. They took women as an enslaved person. Many political and religious groups rose up. Many poets started writing. People began to confront them, groups, and movements, confronted hypocritical ascetics. I want to show how three poetry books hugely affect this Iranian revolution.

1. Shahnameh, (Ferdowsi)

2. Quatrains of Khayyam

3. Divan-e-Hafez

The Shahnameh شاهنامه, 'The Book of Kings', is a long epic poem written by Ferdowsi between 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Iran. . It tells mainly the mythical and the historical past of the Persian Empire from the world's creation until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century.
Ferdowsi, by documenting and preserving the warrior culture of ritual and by bringing heroic women in Shah Nameh, writing about our mythology and past history; saved our languages and nation. He gave us our Iranian Identity and dignity.
His poems shaped the Golden part of our culture. he is alive in our rituals, slogan, and even our modern arts.
Girls protesting on the street use and show many symbols of our mythology and culture that he wrote about:

1. Cutting hair. or gisoboran گیسو بران
   
   Cutting hair is still a ritual. When a woman wants to fight or show her fury or wants to start a new life and new things, she cuts her hair and uses it as a belt or sends it to her loved ones.
   Using hair as a belt gives them power.
    In our culture:
   Hair is not for hiding. It is for protesting or loving, or starting a new life.
   Or escaping from prison.in our fairy tales, many girls simply use their hair as a rope to escape from the place where they are imprisoned

2. Hijab is not a Persian cultural code.

   
   Ferdowsi belonged to a farmer family where women worked side by side with men; he knew that hijab has not belonged to these women.
   Hijab belonged to women from the higher class.
   
   Even in the higher class, women wore the Scarf, which was completely different. They wore Tulle headscarves in a special ceremony, and the head covering was not black. Instead, it was colorful depending on events, and black almost came with the Muslims. It is not a Persian color. Even in grief, people wore white clothes.

3. Protesting by the fire and throwing a scarf into the fire is not a simple act,
   
   It comes from our ethnic unconscious. For me, as a writer, Scarf is a sign of tradition. It is a metaphor. Fire is the symbol of Persian culture. So setting a scarf on fire has a special and powerful message for the nation. : enough o is enough, we want to get back to ourselves.
   
   It is said that the immense fire in the fireplace temple in Persia was turned off by itself when Mouslem invaded the country. These girls lit small bonfires around the cities and flamed the enormous fireplace.
   What do these bonfires tell us? are they together making the same fireplace temple that was turned off 1400 years ago?

4. In their slogen, they said: خامنه ای ضحاک-می کشمت زیر خاک

   We will bury you, Zahak.
   

   Zahak is the most brutal king in Shahnameh; he has two snakes on his shoulders, and every morning they have to eat two brains. Young brain. So every day, the king’s guards killed two young girls or boys to feed those snakes.
   You can't see any Iranian who doesn't know who Zahak is. Even though they don't read Shahnameh.
   5- The most fantastic characters are Gorafrid and the other women who fight, and Ferdowsi wrote about them in a time when women should hide. They didn't have any rights as human beings.

The book of kings helped us to get back to ourselves to find our Identity again. I am sure that IR couldn't win their battle with women because, in that land, many women like Gord Aferid lived and loved and fought.

Giving a title like Gord ( it means hero -knight-world beater) 1200 years ago to a woman has a message and signal to Persian girls. I imagined that he knew what would happen to them in the future. So he wanted to provide these girls with courage and bravery.

Next Sunday, I will tell you about two other poets and their effects on the revolution.

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Source: Substack