Sometime in the late 18th century an Indian painter, clearly frustrated with his patron, scribbled a small prayer in the margins of a manuscript on which he was working: “Protect me O Lord, from oil, from water, from fire and from poor binding,” he wrote. “And save me from falling into the hands of a fool.” Most historians of Indian art have tended to look at their subject from the point of view of the patron.

Read More: The Spirit of Indian Painting – An Out-and-Out Masterpiece

BN Goswamy is to Indian art history what Tendulkar is to its cricket pitches or SRK to its movies: a towering colossus who has transformed the nature of his chosen field, as well as being, at the same time, a much-loved and irreplaceable national treasure. The 81-year-old art historian combines in one elegant frame the eye of the aesthete, the discrimination of a connoisseur and the soul of a poet, with the rigorous mind of a scholar and the elegant prose of a gifted writer. His new book, The Spirit of Indian Painting, is the summation of a lifetime’s loving dedication to his subject. It may well be his most beautiful, and heartfelt work too.

Read More: The Master of Small Things

In his small studio in Brooklyn Heights, New York, Hamid Rahmanian spent 10,000 hours in front of his computer cobbling together a new Shahnameh, the epic mythology of Iran. In the 1,000 years since the Persian poet Ferdowsi put the oral tradition into verse, there have been many versions produced in lithograph, miniature and manuscript form. To create Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings, Rahmanian meticulously researched and scanned images and texts spanning the 14th through the 19th centuries, from the Indian subcontinent to the Levant and beyond.

Read More: Shahnameh of the Digital Age

See also: Shahnameh Re-Imagined

Photo Essay: Shahnameh for the Digital Age

Video: Shahnameh for the Digital Age Presentation

Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings is the great epic of Persia, composed by the poet Ferdowsi between 980 and 1010. It tells the story of pre-Islamic Iran, beginning at the time of the mythic creation through the Arab invasion of the seventh century. Grieved by the fall of the Persian empire, Ferdowsi sought to create a work that would capture the memory, culture and nostalgia of the golden days of Persia.

Photo Essay: Shahnameh for the Digital Age

Video: Shahnameh for the Digital Age Presentation

See also: Shahnameh Re-Imagined

The ancient mythology of Iran is laden with heroic adventures of superhuman champions, magical creatures, heart-wrenching love stories, and centuries-long battles. Ferdowsi’s 10th-century text Shahnameh (The Book of Kings), which at 60,000 verses weighs in as the longest epic poems ever written, is a foundation for this mythology, comparable to The Odyssey, Nibelungenlied, and Ramayana.

Read More: Shahnameh Re-Imagined

See also: Shahnameh for the Digital Age and Video: Shahnameh for the Digital Age Presentation

Following in the footsteps of some of the world’s most famous explorers, a University of Wales Trinity Saint David lecturer has published the most detailed ever archaeological study into the route of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Containing evidence gathered from Dr. Andrew Petersen’s twenty plus years of research and fieldwork, The Medieval and Ottoman Hajj Route in Jordan: An Archaeological and Historical Study documents the archaeological and architectural remains that line the sacred route to Mecca, a route travelled yearly by devout Muslims during the Hajj pilgrimage.

Read More: Archaeological Study on the Hajj Route