Persian Prince

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of more than two dozen books, including The End of Two Illusions: Islam after the West (2022) and Iran: A People Interrupted (2007).

• Prelude: Who Is the Persian Prince—What Is the Persian Prince?Chapter One: The Idea and the Dominion of the Persian PrinceChapter Two: The Persian Prince Comes of AgeChapter Three: On the Histories, Geographies, and Iconographies of Muslim EmpiresChapter Four: The Persian Literary Provenance of Muslim EmpiresFive: In the Light and Shadows of the Persian PrinceSix: The Resurrection of the Persian Prince Under Colonial DuressSeven: Colonial Modernity and the Metamorphosis of the Persian PrinceEight: The Nomadic Fate of the Persian PrinceConclusion: The Sublimation of an Imperial Archetype

"Hamid Dabashi's book takes the reader on a journey across time and place. 'More a persona than a person,' the Persian Prince reunites in one archetype such different images as the rebellious poet, the just monarch, and the charismatic prophet. Both a historical investigation and a philosophical-political proposal, the book will reward readers with many unusual intellectual encounters."—Giovanni Giorgini, University of Bologna and Columbia University "Disarmingly accessible, laden with millennia of Persian cultural riches, The Persian Prince deftly and decisively shifts the axis of history and of the conception of subjectivity itself. Colonizers and ayatollahs are mere blips in the long temporality of the Persian Prince, a figure of transformation that ultimately resides in the collective heart of rebellion."—Laura U. Marks, Simon Fraser University, author of Enfoldment and Infinity "In this gorgeously written tour de force, Hamid Dabashi spins the contrapuntal narrative of an archaic Iranian archetype as it weaves its way through political-poetical history. Building on his impressive body of work, The Persian Prince is a unique and formidable text that encapsulates the brilliance, vivacity, and political ferocity of Dabashi's mind."—Jeanne Morefield, University of Oxford, author of Unsettling the World "Hamid Dabashi's illuminating study, while both provincializing and enriching the classic frameworks of Machiavelli and Gramsci, provides a provocative and compelling archetype for understanding political power and organization."—Michael Hardt, Duke University, author of The Subversive Seventies "Rejecting an ideologically and politically manufactured binary between 'Islam and the West' and arguing for an 'irretrievably pluralistic' view of cultures and history, Dabashi illuminates the model of the Persian Prince as the archetype of 'a human being best fitted to face and embrace the world.' He eschews an overemphasis on 'political ideals' over 'literary aspects' in defining the nature of sovereignty and relations between rulers and the ruled, and he advocates a rediscovery of democratic institutions in the Muslim and Persianate worlds, and far beyond. Recommended."—B. Tavakolian, CHOICE