Narrative and Iranian Identity in the New Persian Renaissance and the Later Perso-Islamicate World
Journal: eScholarship (California Digital Library)
Year: 2016

In tenth century Khurasan and Transoxania, at the frontier of the Iranian cultural world, mythical and historical narratives such as the Shahnama helped to shape and maintain a sense of group Iranian identity for the Samanids and other Iranian Islamic dynasties. The Shahnama can be considered what narrative theorist Margaret Somers terms an âontological narrative.â These narratives helped Islamic dynasties such as the Samanids understand what it meant to be Iranian, and also became sources o