Ḥamla-yi Ḥaydarī, the title of several epic poems in Persian composed by authors in Iran and the Indian Subcontinent in the 12th–14th/18th–20th centuries. The subject matter of these poems, typically composed in the mutaqārib metre—the same metre as Firdawsī’s Shāhnāmah—is the life of the Prophet and that of the Imam and caliph ʿAlī (q.v. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib). The title of the work alludes to one of the honorary nicknames of ʿAlī, ‘Ḥaydar’ (meaning ‘lion’).

Persian Islamic poetry on religious themes began in the 4th/10th century. Possibly the earliest example of the genr…