Then the music started, and a crew of nine began a full run-through of “Song of the North,” an elaborate shadow puppet staging of stories from the 10th-century Persian epic the “Shahnameh.” ...

Its subject is Zahhak, a mythical ruler in the Persian national epic — the Shahnameh, or “Book of Kings” — whose evil, bloodthirsty reign lasted 1,000 years. Like many miniatures ...

A number of storytellers and narrators from various Iranian ethnic groups have been invited to hold Shahnameh recitations in ...

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