Dr. Fatima Fayyaz is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Creative Arts at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore, Pakistan. Her teaching portfolio includes courses on Persian epic and mystical literature, with particular focus on Firdausī’s Shāhnāmeh and Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’s Maṡnavī and Dīvān. She also teaches exile literature produced by Afghan and Iranian diasporic writers over the past two decades.
Her primary field of research is Persian mystical and epic literature across Iran and the broader Persianate world, including Central Asia, Afghanistan, and South Asia. She received her doctorate in Persian Literature from the University of Tehran, where her research focused on the hagiographical-mystical literature of Central Asia. Her dissertation examined the cross-cultural connections between Central Asian and Indian mystics during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as reflected in Persian hagiographical texts produced by Central Asian Sufi orders of that period.
Dr. Fayyaz has also pursued extensive research on Persian epics, especially Firdausī’s Shāhnāmeh and its profound influence on a range of nineteenth-century South Asian literary genres, including the Urdu ġhazal, dāstān, and marṡiyah. Her study of the Shāhnāmeh’s influence on Urdu marṡiyah led her to a deeper engagement with ʻāshūrā poetry, predominantly composed in the form of marṡiyah, in both Urdu and Persian.
As part of her postdoctoral research fellowship at the Mittal Institute, Harvard University, Dr. Fayyaz undertook a comparative study of ʻāshūrā poetry in Urdu and Persian, tracing its development from the sixteenth century onward in South Asia and Iran. This project offered fresh insights into this rich literary tradition of marṡiyah, particularly during the late Safavid and Mughal periods, when cultural and literary exchange between South Asia and Iran was especially vibrant.
Current Projects:
Translation of Contemporary Afghan Poetry into English and Urdu
Comparative Study of Urdu and Persian Ashura Elegy
Persian Epic Hero Rostam in Cultural Imagination of South Asia
Portrayal and Evolution of the Character of Farhad in South Asian Shirin-Farhad Masnavis
Recent Publications:
