Contents

About the Poet

Life As A Poet

Works
Ferdowsi and the Shahnameh
 The sources of the Text
 The Work Itself
 Shāhnāma and its impact on Modern Persian
 The Shāhnāma's message

Influence

Tomb And Legend

About the Poet

Ferdowsi Tousi, (935–1020) is considered to be one of the greatest Persian poets to have
ever lived. Among the national heroes and literary greats of all time, Ferdowsi has a very
special place. His life-long endeavour, dedication and   personal sacrifices to preserve the
national identity, language and heritage of his homeland put him in great hardship during
his lifetime, but won him fame and honour for one of the greatest poetic masterpieces of all
time: the Shahnameh.

The poet had a wife, who was probably literate and came from the same dehqan class. He
had a son, who died aged 37, and was mourned by the poet in an elegy which he inserted
into the Shahnameh.

Ferdowsi was born into a family of Iranian landowners ( dehqans) in 935 (or 940) C.E. in
the village of Paj, near the city of Tus, in the Khorasan region of the Samanid Empire,
currently in the Razavi Khorasan Province of northeastern Iran. Little is known about
Ferdowsi's early life.

Ferdowsī was a Shia Muslim, which is apparent from the Shahnameh itself and confirmed
by early accounts. In recent times, however, some have cast doubt on his religion and his
Shi'ism, and have suggested that he was a deist.

Statue of Ferdowsi in Ferdowsi Square in Tehran

Ferdowsi belonged to the class of dehqans. These were landowning Iranian aristocrats who
had flourished under the Sassanid dynasty (the last pre-Islamic dynasty to rule Iran) and
whose power, though diminished, had survived into the Islamic era which followed the
Arab conquests of the 7th century. The dehqans were intensely patriotic (so much so that
dehqan is sometimes used as a synonym for "Iranian" in the Shahnameh) and saw it as their
task to preserve the cultural traditions of Iran, including the legendary tales about its kings.

The Muslim conquests of the 7th century had been a watershed in Iranian history,
bringing the new religion of Islam, submitting Iranians to the rule of the Arab caliphate
and promoting Arabic culture and language at the expense of Persian. By the late 9th
century, the power of the caliphate had weakened and local Iranian dynasties emerged.
Ferdowsi grew up in Tus, a city under the control of one of these dynasties, the Samanids,
who claimed descent from the Sassanid general Bahram Chobin (whose story Ferdowsi
recounts in one of the later sections of the Shahnameh).[10] The Samanid bureaucracy used
the New Persian language rather than Arabic and the Samanid elite had a great interest in
pre-Islamic Iran and its traditions and commissioned translations of Pahlavi (Middle
Persian) texts into New Persian. Abu Mansur Muhammad, a dehqan and governor of Tus,
had ordered his minister Abu Mansur Mamari to invite several local scholars to compile a
prose Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"), which was completed in 1010CE. Although it no
longer survives, Ferdowsi used it as one of the sources of his epic. Samanid rulers were
patrons of such important Persian poets as Rudaki and Daqiqi. Ferdowsi followed in the
footsteps of these writers.

Details about Ferdowsi's education are lacking. Judging by the Shahnameh, there is no
evidence he knew either Arabic or Pahlavi.

Although New Persian was permeated by Arabic vocabulary by Ferdowsi's time, there are
relatively few Arabic loan words in the Shahnameh. This may have been a deliberate
strategy by the poet.
Life As A Poet

Ferdowsi and the three Ghazaznavid court poets

It is possible that Ferdowsi wrote some early poems which have not survived. He began
work on the Shahnameh around 977, intending it as a continuation of the work of his
fellow poet Daqiqi, who had been assassinated by a slave. Like Daqiqi, Ferdowsi employed
the prose Shahnameh of ʿAbd-al-Razzāq as a source. He received generous patronage from
the Samanid prince Mansur and completed the first version of the Shahnameh in 994.
When the Turkic Ghaznavids overthrew the Samanids in the late 990s, Ferdowsi continued
to work on the poem, rewriting sections to praise the Ghaznavid Sultan Mahmud.
Mahmud's attitude to Ferdowsi and how well he rewarded the poet are matters which have
long been subject to dispute and have formed the basis of legends about the poet and his
patron (see below). The Turkic Mahmud may have been less interested in tales from
Iranian history than the Samanids. The later sections of the Shahnameh have passages
which reveal Ferdowsi's fluctuating moods: in some he complains about old age, poverty,
illness and the death of his son; in others, he appears happier. Ferdowsi finally completed
his epic on 8 March 1010. Virtually nothing is known with any certainty about the last
decade of his life.
Works

Statue of Ferdowsi and Shahnameh stories in Delfan, Iran

Ferdowsi's Shahnameh is the most popular and influential national epic in Iran and other
Persian-speaking nations. The Shahnameh is the only surviving work by Ferdowsi regarded
as indisputably genuine. He may have written poems earlier in his life but they no longer
exist. A narrative poem, Yūsof o Zolaykā (Joseph and Zuleika), was once attributed to him,
but scholarly consensus now rejects the idea it is his. There has also been speculation about
the satire Ferdowsi allegedly wrote about Mahmud of Ghazni after the sultan failed to
reward him sufficiently. Nezami Aruzi, Ferdowsi's early biographer, claimed that all but six
lines had been destroyed by a well-wisher who had paid Ferdowsi a thousand dirhams for
the poem. Introductions to some manuscripts of the Shahnameh include verses purporting
to be the satire. Some scholars have viewed them as fabricated; others are more inclined to
believe in their authenticity.
Ferdowsi and the Shahnameh
The Shahnameh  is an enormous poetic opus written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi around
1000AD, is the national epic of the Persian speaking world. The Shahnameh  tells the
mythical and historical past of Iran from the creation of the world up until the Islamic
conquest of Iran in the 7th century.

Aside from its utmost literary importance, the Shahnameh written in almost pure Persian,
had been pivotal for reviving the Persian language subsequent to the influence of Arabic.
This voluminous work, regarded by Persian speakers as a literary masterpiece, also reflects
Iran's history, cultural values, its ancient religions (Zoroastrianism), and its profound
sense of nationhood. Ferdowsi completed the Shahnameh at the point in time when
national independence had been compromised. While there are memorable heroes and
heroines of the classical type in this work, the real, ongoing hero is Iran itself.

The sources of the Text

There is an ongoing controversy among scholars about the sources of the Shahnameh.
Ferdowsi's epic is probably based mainly on an earlier prose version which itself was a
compilation of old Iranian stories and historical facts and fables. However, there is without
any doubt also a strong influence of oral literature, since the style of the Shahnameh
shows characteristics of both written and oral literature.Some of the characters of the Epic
are of Indo-Iranian heritage, and are mentioned in sources as old as the ancient Avesta.
The Shahnameh itself was written in Pahlavi Persian, which at the time was looking
towards a bleak end.

The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, an epic poem of over 60,000 couplets, is based mainly on a
prose work of the same name compiled in the poet's earlier life in his native Tus. This
prose Shahnameh was in turn and for the most part the translation of a Pahlavi work, a
compilation of the history of the kings and heroes of Iran from mythical times down to the
reign of Khosrau II (590-628), but it also contains additional material continuing the
story to the overthrow of the Sassanids by the Arabs in the middle of the 7th century. The
first to undertake the versification of this chronicle of pre-Islamic and legendary Persia
was Daqīqī-e Balkhī, a poet at the court of the Samanids, who came to a violent end after
completing only 1000 verses. These verses, which deal with the rise of the prophet
Zoroaster, were afterward incorporated by Ferdowsi, with due acknowledgements, in his
own poem.

The Work Itself

The Shahnameh recounts the history of Iran, beginning with the creation of the world and
the introduction of the arts of civilization (fire, cooking, metallurgy, law) to the Aryans
and ends with the Arab conquest of Persia. The work is not precisely chronological, but
there is a general movement through time. Some of the characters live for hundreds of
years (as do some of the characters in the Bible), but most have normal life spans. There
are many shāhs who come and go, as well as heroes and villains, who also come and go.
The only lasting images are that of Greater Iran itself, and a succession of sunrises and
sunsets, no two ever exactly alike, yet illustrative of the passage of time.

Father Time, a Saturn-like image, is a reminder of the tragedy of death and loss, yet the
next sunrise comes, bringing with it hope of a new day. In the first cycle of creation, evil is
external (the devil). In the second cycle, we see the beginnings of family hatred, bad
behavior, and evil permeating human nature. Shāh Fereydūn's two eldest sons have greed
and envy toward their innocent younger brother and, thinking their father favors him,
they murder him. The murdered prince's son avenges the murder, and all are immersed in
the cycle of murder and revenge, blood and more blood.

In the third cycle, we encounter a series of flawed shahs. There is a Phaedra-like story of
Shāh Kay Kāūs, his wife Sūdāba, and her passion and rejection by her stepson, Sīyāvash.

In the next cycle, all the players are unsympathetic and selfish and evil. This epic on the
whole is darker over all than most other epics, most of which have some sort of resolution
and catharsis. This tone seems reflective of two things, perhaps: the conquest of the
Persians by the Arabs, and a reflection of the last days of Persian Zoroastrianism. The old
religion had been fraught with heresies, and somehow Zoroaster's optimistic view of man's
ability to choose had become life denying and negative of this world. There is an
enormous amount of bad luck and bad fate here.

It is only in the characterizations of the work's many figures, both male and female, that
Zoroaster's original view of the human condition comes through. Zoroaster emphasized
human free will. We find all of Ferdowsi's characters complex. Nobody is an archetype or
a puppet. The best characters have bad flaws, and the worst have moments of humanity.

Shāhnāma and its impact on Modern Persian

After Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, a number of other works similar in nature surfaced over the
centuries within the cultural sphere of the Persian language. Without exception, all such
works were based in style and method on Ferdowsi's Shāhnāma, but none of them could
quite achieve the same degree of fame and popularity.

Some experts believe the main reason the Modern Persian language today is more or less
the same language as that of Ferdowsi's time over 1000 years ago is due to the very
existence of works like Ferdowsi's Shahnameh which have had lasting and profound
cultural and linguistic influence. In other words, the Shahnameh itself has become one of
the main pillars of the modern Persian language. Studying Ferdowsi's masterpiece also
became a requirement for achieving mastery of the Persian language by subsequent
Persian poets, as evidenced by numerous references to the Shahnameh  in their works.

The Shahnameh is one of the few original national epics in the world. Many peoples of the
world have their "own" national epics, but more often than not, the original theme of such
national epics are borrowed from other, usually neighbouring, cultures. This is not the
case with the Shahnameh, which is based on original Iranic stories.

The Shahnameh has 62 stories, 990 chapters, and contains 60,000 rhyming couplets,
making it more than seven times the length of Homer's Iliad, and more than twelve times
the length of the German Nibelungenlied. There have been a number of English
translations, almost all abridged. In 1925, the brothers Arthur and Edmond Warner
published the complete work in nine volumes, now out of print.

The mythical age

After an opening in praise of God and Wisdom, the Shahnameh gives an account of the
creation of the world and of man as believed by Sasanians. This introduction is followed
by the story of the first man, Keyumars, who also became the first king after a period of
mountain dwelling. His grandson Hushang, son of Sīyāmak, accidentally discovered fire
and established the Sadeh Feast in its honor. Stories of Tahmuras, Jamshid, Zahh āk, Kāwa,
Fereydūn and his three sons Salm, Tur, and Iraj, and his grandson Manuchehr are
explained in this section. This portion of the Shāhnāma is relatively short, amounting to
some 2100 verses or four percent of the entire book, and it narrates the events with the
simplicity, predictability, and swiftness of a historical work. Naturally, the strength and
charm of Ferdowsi's poetry have done much to make the story of this period attractive and
lively.

The heroic age

Almost two-thirds of the Shahnameh is devoted to the age of heroes, extending from
Manuchehr's reign until the conquest of Alexander the Great (Sekandar). The main
feature of this period is the major role played by the Sagzi (Saka) or Sistānī heroes who
appear as the backbone of the Persian Empire. Garshāsp is briefly mentioned with his son
Narimān, whose own son Sām acted as the leading paladin of Manuchehr while reigning
in Sistān in his own right. His successors were his son Zāl and his son Rostam, the bravest
of the brave, and then Farāmarz.

The feudal society in which they lived is admirably depicted in the Shahnameh with
accuracy and lavishness. Indeed, the Masters' descriptions are so vivid and impressive that
the reader feels himself participating in the events or closely viewing them. The tone is
significantly epic and moving, while the language is extremely rich and varied.

Among the stories described in this section are the romance of Zal and Rudāba, the Seven
Stages (or Labors) of Rostam, Rostam and Sohrāb, Sīyāvash and Sudāba, Rostam and Akvān
Dīv, the romance of Bižan and Manīža, the wars with Afrāsīyāb, Daqiqi's account of the
story of Goshtāsp and Arjāsp, and Rostam and Esfandyār.

It is noteworthy to mention that the legend of Rostam and Sohrāb is attested only in the
Shahnameh and, as usual, begins with a lyrical and detailed prelude. Here Ferdowsi is in
the zenith of his poetic power and has become a true master of storytelling. The thousand
or so verses of this tragedy comprise one of the most moving tales of world literature.

The historical age

A brief mention of the Ashkānīyān dynasty follows the history of Alexander and precedes
that of Ardashir I, the founder of Sassanid dynasty. After this, the Sassanid history is
related with a good deal of accuracy. The fall of the Sassanids and the Arab conquest of
Iran are narrated romantically, and in a most moving poetic language. Here, the reader
could easily see Ferdowsi himself lamenting over this catastrophe, and over what he calls
the arrival of "the army of darkness".

The Shāhnāma's message

Ferdowsi's style is that of a superb poet. His epic language is so rich, moving and lavish
that it truly enchants the reader. Personal touches in the Shahnameh prevent it from
falling into a dry reproduction of historical narratives. No history has been so eagerly
read, so profoundly believed, and so ardently treasured in Iran, as has the Shahnameh of
Ferdowsi. If a history were ever to influence its readers, the Shāhnāma has done and still
does so in the finest way. Where many "Tājīk" military and religious leaders failed,
Ferdowsi succeeded.

Thus, to such an extent, the Master is righteously confident of his masterpiece's endurance
and immortality that he versifies in the following exhilaratingly magical couplets:

‫بناهاى آباد گردد خراب‬

‫ز باران و از تابش آفتاب‬

‫پى افكندم از نظم كاخي بلند‬

‫كه از باد و باران نيابد گزند‬

‫نميرم از اين پس كه من زنده‌ام‬

‫كه تخم سخن را پراكنده‌ام‬

"Prosperous buildings are ruined

By rainfall and exposure to sunlight"

"Ergo, I established a towering palace of verse

That sees no harm of neither gusts nor rainfall"

"I shall not demise as I am alive, henceforth

For I have disseminated the seeds of discourse"
Ferdowsi did not expect his reader to pass over historical events indifferently, but asked
him to think carefully, to see the grounds for the rise and fall of individuals and nations;
and to learn from the past in order to improve the present, and to better shape the future.

The Shahnameh stresses that since the world is transient, and since everyone is merely a
passerby, one is wise to avoid cruelty, lying, avarice, and other evils; instead one should
strive for justice, truth, order, and other virtues which bring happiness, ease, and honor.

The singular message that the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi strives to convey is the idea that the
history of Sassanid Empire was a complete and immutable whole: it started with
Keyumars, the first man, and ended with his fiftieth scion and successor, Yazdegerd III, six
thousand years of history of Iran. The task of Ferdowsi was to prevent this history from
losing its connection with future Iranian generations.
Influence

Ferdowsi is one of the undisputed giants of Persian literature. After Ferdowsi's Shahnameh,
a number of other works similar in nature surfaced over the centuries within the cultural
sphere of the Persian language. Without exception, all such works were based in style and
method on Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, but none of them could quite achieve the same degree of
fame and popularity as Ferdowsi's masterpiece.

Ferdowsi has a unique place in Persian history because of the strides he made in reviving
and regenerating the Persian language and cultural traditions. His works are cited as a
crucial component in the persistence of the Persian language, as those works allowed much
of the tongue to remain codified and intact. In this respect, Ferdowsi surpasses Nizami,
Khayyám, Asadi Tusi and other seminal Persian literary figures in his impact on Persian
culture and language. Many modern Iranians see him as the father of the modern Persian
language.
One of Ferdowsi’s couplet: Think for your lord's Gratification - Be intellectual and truthful

Ferdowsi's influence in the Persian culture is explained by the Encyclopædia Britannica:

The Persians regard Ferdowsi as the greatest of their poets. For nearly a thousand
years they have continued to read and to listen to recitations from his masterwork,
the Shah-nameh, in which the Persian national epic found its final and enduring
form. Though written about 1,000 years ago, this work is as intelligible to the
average, modern Iranian as the King James Version of the Bible is to a modern
English-speaker. The language, based as the poem is on a Dari original, is pure
Persian with only the slightest admixture of Arabic.

Tomb And Legend

Mausoleum of Ferdowsi in Tus, Iran

Ferdowsi was buried in his own garden, burial in the cemetery of Tus having been
forbidden by a local cleric. A Ghaznavid governor of Khorasan constructed a mausoleum
over the grave and it became a revered site. The tomb, which had fallen into decay, was
rebuilt between 1928 and 1934 by the Society for the National Heritage of Iran on the
orders of Rezā Shāh, and has now become the equivalent of a national shrine.

According to legend, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni offered Ferdowsi a gold piece for every
couplet of the Shahnameh he wrote. The poet agreed to receive the money as a lump sum
when he had completed the epic. He planned to use it to rebuild the dykes in his native Tus.
After thirty years of work, Ferdowsi finished his masterpiece. The sultan prepared to give
him 60,000 gold pieces, one for every couplet, as agreed. However, the courtier Mahmud
had entrusted with the money despised Ferdowsi, regarding him as a heretic, and he
replaced the gold coins with silver. Ferdowsi was in the bath house when he received the
reward. Finding it was silver not gold, he gave the money away to the bathkeeper, a
refreshment seller and the slave who had carried the coins. When the courtier told the
sultan about Ferdowsi's behaviour, he was furious and threatened to execute him. Ferdowsi
fled Khorasan, having first written a satire on Mahmud, and spent most of the remainder of
his life in exile. Mahmud eventually learned the truth about the courtier's deception and
had him either banished or executed. By this time, the aged Ferdowsi had returned to Tus.
The sultan sent him a new gift of 60,000 gold pieces, but as the caravan bearing the money
arrived in Tus, it met a funeral procession: the poet had died from a heart attack.