A heady mixture of history and legend, The Adventures of Shāh Esmāʿil recounts the dramatic formative years of the Safavid empire (1501-1722), as preserved in Iranian popular memory by coffeehouse storytellers.

Barry Wood, Ph.D. (2002, Harvard University) is Assistant Professor of Humanities at Dixie State University. He has published articles on Persian art, manuscripts, and cultural memory in journals including Ars Orientalis and Iranian Studies. This is his first book.