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About Us |
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Since 1979 Ibex
hasbeen committed to publishing works which introduce the best of the
Persian language, literature, culture and history to the world.
We are an independent
press located in the Washington DC area. Our titles vary from those
mainly of interest to the scholar to those friendly to the general
layman.
We publish in both
English and Persian. Mainly because of the assimilation of the Iranian
population outside of Iran, we are publishing more English titles in
recent years. Along the years we have published reference books,
textbooks for the study of Persian and other Middle-Eastern languages,
autobiographies of notable Iranians and many books in Persian which
could not be published in Iran.
We have brought back
to life E.G. Browne’s eternal Literary History of Persian,
the first (and many say best) comprehensive Persian cookbook and
Wilberforce-Clarke’s detailed and complete translation of
Hafez. We also distribute the books of the historically important
Harvard University Iranian Oral History Project and Farhang Moaser.
Volume six of the revealing diaries of Alam, “the
Shah’s best friend,” should be out later this year.
We also have a soft spot for Hafez , the most beloved poet of the land
of poets. We have, so far, published four diverse translations of his
poetry. We have also published a few titles that had literary merit
outside of the main scope of our mission including a translation of a
prize winning novel from Haiti.
OUR
STORE
We have a store,
Iranbooks. If you are in the Washington DC area, please visit the
store. Iranbooks also sell books from other publishers about Iran. You
may visit their web site.
WHAT
IS AN IBEX?
The Ibex is a mountain
goat found in Iran. It resembles the animal in the logo we used before
we chose the name Ibex for our company. Ibex is also a phonetic play on
the name Iranbooks.
The Ibex is even found
in the United States. There are several hundred on the loose in
Arizona. Apparently two were given as a gift during Shah's time,
somehow got into the wild, and multiplied.
The Persian for an
ibex is pâzan or pâzhan. We have used
“Châp-e Pâzhan,” because it is
short, sounds okay, and contains three of the non-Arabic Persian
letters cheh, peh and zheh.
 The
oldest example of animation is apparently that of an ibex. A
5,200-year-old bowl found in Iran’s Burnt City in the 1970s features a
series of five images that researchers have only recently identified as
being sequential, much like those in a zoetrope. Giving the bowl a
spin, one would see a goat leaping to snatch leaves from a tree, as
seen in this image.
The remarkable piece of pottery was unearthed from a burial site by
Italian archaeologists, who hadn’t noticed the special relationship
between the images that adorned the circumference. That discovery was
made years later by Iranian archaeologist Dr. Mansur Sadjadi, who was
later hired to direct the excavation of The Burnt City, located 57
kilometers from the city of Zabol in the southeastern Iranian province
of Sistan-Baluchestan.
Mr. Mohammad
Nasserifard has collected photographs and information on Iranian
petroglyphs, some over 40,000 years old. In ninety percent of them, the
subjects are ibex. You may visit his web site at: homayen.com
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Copyright © 2008 Ibex Publishers, Inc.
