This book is aimed at demonstrating the continuity of a characteristic Iranian artistic genius which is marked by the capacity for appreciation of nature sufficiently sensitive for the leap to be made from the reality of natural objects to abstract symbols representative of them. The persistence of a distinctive way of looking at nature, reproducing it in art, and illustrating Man’s close, congenial relationship with his environment, are the themes which this book sets out to expose as peculiar to Iranian culture. It is perhaps superfluous to say that this peculiarity harks back to Man’s special relationship with nature as inculcated in Zoroastrianism: as well as an ancient and continuing Iranian trait, it is sanctified by Iran’s ancient religious tradition. As for political history, no book on the fibrous continuity of Iranian artistic aspirations and techniques can ignore the vicissitudes of the Iranian region’s history. They have tempered and tested the Iranian genius as if it were in a crucible. As for the literary history, no such essay can be without constant citations of the poets of Iran and its annalists. In Persian poetry reposes one of Iran’s greatest art forms, which is to say, one of the world’s. In the historians are to be found descriptions of the sufferings of the Iranian people that made up so much of this people’s history, and which their historians intended should be recorded for posterity to know what those sufferings entailed. Further, it has been considered appropriate as far as possible to tell some of the story of Iran in the words of Iranians themselves. It might be observed that the modern period, principally the 19th and 20th centuries, has been treated scantily. This defect, if defect it is in a book of this kind, can readily be corrected: the author is willing sympathetically to consider extending the narrative to deal in more detail with recent years, although the complexity of their political history might only be included insofar as they offer evidence of the particular kind of psychology of the Iranians, and the continuing vitality, in face of grave adversity, of their genius.