ABSTRACT
It would be agreeable to leave the reader at the close of this book with an image of Khusraw as an uniformly tolerant man whose works without fail promoted conciliation and equality among religions and ethnicities – to leave him or her with an image of the Khusraw who passionately declared, “For me it matters not whether love of God is found in the qiblah or the idol-temple/For the lovers of God, there is no difference between faith and infidelity!”1 Yet such, obviously, is not the case. As with the poet’s attitude toward women, the thorny question of Khusraw’s views toward those of different religious and ethnic backgrounds defies easy answers. The derogatory portrayals of Hindus, not only in the Nuh sipihr but in many of the author’s other works, are too stinging and pervasive to dismiss.
