TEHRAN -- Iran’s Ferdowsi Foundation will hold a cultural fortnight on Ferdowsi’s magnum opus Shahnameh during the upcoming Sarajevo Winter Festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina from February 7 to 29.

The event will be held in three parts. One part will be dedicated to a literary meeting and reciting Shahnameh; another part is dedicated to fine arts and artistic workshop. Dramatic arts will be performed in the third section, the head of the Ferdowsi Foundation Yaser Movahhedi-Fard told the Persian service of ISNA.
The fortnight will begin on February 9 with a literary meeting which will be attended by Persian scholars and students from the Balkan region, he said.
“I will present a paper entitled,‘World of Shahnameh’ at the meeting which focuses on countries that are named in the Shahnameh. Yadollah Ghaem-Panah will hold another meeting entitled ‘Mysticism in Shahnameh’,” he added.
The articles that will be presented at these two meetings will be published in a journal named “Baharestan” in Persian, English and Bosnian. The journal will be shown during the festival, he said.
Scholar Abolfazl Barmazyar will recite Shahnameh and he will also perform naqqali which is a style of storytelling dedicated to epic stories from Ferdowsi’s masterpiece Shahnameh by a naqqal or a morshed (mentor), Movahhedi-Fard announced.
Sculptor Afshin Esfandiari, painter and calligrapher, Ali Tan and illustrator Marzieh Mehrban-Pahueh will display their artwork from February 9 to 17. Workshops on the creation of their artwork, based on the theme of Shahnameh, will also be held at the exhibit, he said.
A bust of Ferdowsi created by Afshin Esfandiari will be built in one of the cultural centers of Bosnia Herzegovina, he mentioned.
Setareh Theater Troupe led by Mohammadreza Emami will perform “The Seven Adventures of Rustam” and two plays “All My Friends” and “Kakoli” by the Simorgh Theater Troupe led by Mohammad Borumand will also have performances from February 20 to 28.
The event is co-sponsored by Iran’s cultural attaché office in Sarajevo, Iran’s Ferdowsi Foundation and the International Peace Center in Sarajevo.
With the motto of “Art is Love”, International Sarajevo Winter Festival is a traditional meeting place for artists and citizens of the world.
The organizer of the festival is the International Peace Center, who is a member of the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA) as well as the New York and European Festival Association (EFA), Geneva. The Festival “Sarajevo Winter” has been held under the patronage of the European Union, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and the City and Canton of Sarajevo.