A private Serbian library ‘Adligat’ has a 92-year-old copy of the Shahnameh in Persian, published in 1923 in Germany.
The Shahnameh, (Book of Kings) is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Iran.
The library started operation in 1690 with merely 10 volumes, said Viktor Lazic, owner of Adligat in a meeting with Mahmood Shalooei, Iranian cultural attaché to Serbia, Mehr news agency reported.
The library is located at Vojvodina, a northern state in Serbia. Lazic noted that cultural enthusiasts developed the library and now after 325 years, it has over half a million books on culture and literature, besides documents.
Shahnameh was added to the rich treasury of Persian literature at Adligat in 1923, attracting more enthusiasts, he added.
Viktor Lazic is one of Serbia’s well-known modern travel writers.
He is a lawyer, journalist, PhD student of Chinese law, authorized translator, ambassador of the Serbian Bibliophilic Society, an associate of the Geographical Institute ‘Jovan Cvijic’ of Serbian Academy of Science and Arts (2009-2011), philatelist and numismatist. He is also a member of the Association of Writers of Serbia.
He evinced interest in visiting Persian libraries, in particular the Mar’ashi Najafi library in Qom, the third largest in Iran, after the Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi in Mashhad and the Library of Parliament. It is also the world’s third largest Islamic library, with more than 250,000 books, including 25,000 available online.
Shalooei appreciated Lazic’s efforts in collecting Iranian works and presented several well-known poetry books by renowned Persian poets, namely, ‘Divan-e-Hafez’ by Hafez, ‘Masnavi’ and ‘Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi’ by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi, to the Serbian library.
