Haft Peykar ( Haft Peykar) also known as Bahramnameh (, The Book of Bahram, referring to the Sasanian king Bahram Gur) is a romantic epic by Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi written in 1197. This poem forms one part of his Khamsa. The original title in Persian Haft Peykar can be translated literally as "seven portraits" with the figurative meaning of "seven beauties". Both translations are meaningful and the poet doubtless exploited intentionally the ambiguity of the words. The poem was dedicated to the Ahmadili ruler of Maragha, Ala-al-Din Korpe Arslan bin Aq-Sonqor. The poem is a masterpiece of erotic literature, but it is also a profoundly moralistic work. Story The Haft Peykar consists of seven tales. Bahram sends for seven princesses as his brides, and builds a palace containing seven domes for his brides, each dedicated to one day of the week, governed by the day's planet and bearing its emblematic color. Bahram visits each dome in turn, where he feasts, drinks, enjoys the favors of his brides, and listens to a tale told by each. Editions and translations A critical edition of the Haft Peykar was produced by Helmut Ritter and Jan Rypka (Prague, printed Istanbul, 1934) on the basis of fifteen manuscripts of Khamsa and the Bombay lithograph. There is also an uncritical edition by Wahid Dastgerdi (Tehran, 1936 and reprints) and an edition by Barat Zanjani (Tehran, 1994). More recently, the poem was re-edited by the Azerbaijani scholar T. A. Maharramov (Moscow, 1987). A poetic German translation of a passage from the poem named Bahram Gur and Russian princess by orientalist was published in 1832 in Kazan. There are three complete translations in western European languages from original Persian language. First, in 1924 Charles Edward Wilson translated the poem to English in two volumes with extensive notes. Second, Alessandro Bausani in 1967 translated it to Italian. Finally, there is an English version by Julie Scott Meisami published in 1967. There is also an English metatranslation by E. Mattin and G. Hill (Oxford, 1976). A partial translation was also made by Rudolf Gelpke in German prose (Zurich, 1959). There is a complete poetic translation in Azerbaijani by (Baku, 1946). There are three complete translations in Russian: a poetic translation by Ryurik Ivnev (Baku, 1947), a poetic translation by (Moscow, 1959), and a prose translation by Rustam Aliyev (Baku, 1983). Cultural influence In the early 1940s, to mark the