The new style will dominate Persian poetry for the next two centuries until in the middle of the 18th century poets turn to a neoclassicism rejecting the excesses of the Indian style. The chapter presents a survey of poetry whose practitioners – among which Moshtaq and Hatef Isfahani – adopted a smooth, clear, flowing and free of ambiguities poetics closer to the stylistic principles of early Persian poetry. Later this movement became known as the “literary return” (bazgasht-e adabi).

The chapter also analyzes ta‘ziyeh – a unique form of serious drama to have developed in the world of Islam, which commemorates the sufferings of the 12 Shiʿite imams. The attention is paid to the genesis of ta‘ziyeh and its poetics.

Chapter III Development of Persian prose in the 13th–18th centuries describes different prose genres – frame stories (as Tuti-nama by Zia al-Din Nakhshabi), hagiography (ʿAbd al-Rahman Jami’s Nafahat al-ons), anthology with biographies of the poets (tazkera), an extensive work of diverse contents Badayeʿ al-waqayeʿ by memoirist and poet Zayn al-Din Wasifi and dastan, fictional narrative based on written and oral traditions.