Central BookCity is hosting “Qabus-nama and Our Contemporary Lives,” a course taught by Dr Mohsen Masoudian, a faculty member of the Institute for Humanities Research and Development (SAMT). The course consists of 20 weekly sessions, held on Sundays from 4 to 6 p.m.; its fifth session will take place on Sunday, 19 July 2026 (28 Tir 1405).
Participation is open and free to all interested readers. The programme has attracted many readers of literature, the humanities and social studies, and registration for new participants will remain open until the fifth session.
The course reads Qabus-nama—the eleventh-century Persian advice book also known in English as A Mirror for Princes, written by Unsur al-Maʿali Kayka’us ibn Iskandar—in full, using a skills-based and sociological approach. At each session, passages are read and analysed; the aim is to relate the book’s messages and stories to contemporary life, draw out the human and social skills embedded in the text, and examine and critique its ideas through the perspectives of social-science theories.
Masoudian, who designed the course, pointed to its distinctive approach: “This is the first time in the country that a programme has been organised in this way—that is, rereading classical Persian texts in order to draw out life skills and analyse them sociologically. After Qabus-nama, works such as Marzban-nama, Saadi’s Gulistan, Kalila wa Dimna and the Tarikh-i Bayhaqi will be studied through the same approach.”
He added: “The aim of this course is to bring valuable classical Persian texts closer to the concerns of people today and to create a dialogue among literature, the humanities and contemporary social life, so that these works may be read again not only as literary heritage, but also as resources for understanding people, society, ethics and ways of living.”
See the Central BookCity address and details.
