Khusraw and Shirin in Persian literature: the history ad the legend

The article aims to analyse the birth and development of the legend of Khusraw and Shīrīn in a series of texts, in Arabic and Persian, belonging to a different tradition compared to that of the romantic narrative poems inaugurated by Niẓāmī’s Khusraw va Shīrīn (composed between 571/1176 and 576/1181, with later additions). The texts analysed, mostly belonging to works with a didactic and moral content or pertaining to the genre called ‘Mirrors for Princes’, echo a view of the couple different and of an earlier date than the Khusraw and Shīrīn story as re-elaborated by Niẓāmī and the poets responding to his poem. They preserve traits of the couple’s legend going back to ancient, mainly Christian, sources in Greek, Syriac and Armenian. Firdawsī’s recounting of the story of Khusraw and Shīrīn rather belongs to this tradition. Though the romantic narrative tradition represents a partially autonomous literary development of the legend, the latter can be best understood in reference to these earlier sources, which are possibly relevant in reconstructing a supposed ‘Sasanid view’ of the couple.