Lba 104
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Background
The Shahnameh or Shah-nama "The Book of Kings") is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 AD and is the national epic of the Iran (Persia) and the Persian speaking world. Consisting of some 50,000 verses,[1] the Shahnameh tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian empire from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century. Today Iran, Persian speakers of the neighboring nations such as Afghanistan and Tajikestan, and the greater region influenced by the Persian culture celebrate this national epic. The work is of central importance in Persian culture, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of ethno-national cultural identity of Iran.[2] It is also important to the contemporary adherents of Zoroastrianism, in that it traces the historical links between the beginnings of the religion with the death of the last Sassanid ruler of Persia during the Muslim conquest and an end to the Zoroastrian influence in Iran. Ferdowsi started writing the Shahnameh in 977 A.D and completed it on 8 March 1010.[3] The Shahnameh is a monument of poetry and historiography, being mainly the poetical recast of what Ferdowsi, his contemporaries, and his predecessors regarded as the account of Iran's ancient history. Many such accounts already existed in prose, an example being the Shahnameh of AbuMansur Daqiqi. A small portion of Ferdowsi's work, in passages scattered throughout the Shahnameh, is entirely of his own conception.
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The Shahnameh is an epic poem of over 50,000 couplets, written in early Modern Persian. It is based mainly on a prose work of the same name compiled in Ferdowsi's earlier life in his native Tus. This prose Shahnameh was in turn and for the most part the translation of a Pahlavi (Middle Persian) work, known as the Xvatāynamāk ("Book of Kings"), a late Sassanid compilation of the history of the kings and heroes
Background
The Shahnameh or Shah-nama "The Book of Kings") is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 AD and is the national epic of the Iran (Persia) and the Persian speaking world. Consisting of some 50,000 verses,[1] the Shahnameh tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian empire from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century. Today Iran, Persian speakers of the neighboring nations such as Afghanistan and Tajikestan, and the greater region influenced by the Persian culture celebrate this national epic. The work is of central importance in Persian culture, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of ethno-national cultural identity of Iran.[2] It is also important to the contemporary adherents of Zoroastrianism, in that it traces the historical links between the beginnings of the religion with the death of the last Sassanid ruler of Persia during the Muslim conquest and an end to the Zoroastrian influence in Iran. Ferdowsi started writing the Shahnameh in 977 A.D and completed it on 8 March 1010.[3] The Shahnameh is a monument of poetry and historiography, being mainly the poetical recast of what Ferdowsi, his contemporaries, and his predecessors regarded as the account of Iran's ancient history. Many such accounts already existed in prose, an example being the Shahnameh of AbuMansur Daqiqi. A small portion of Ferdowsi's work, in passages scattered throughout the Shahnameh, is entirely of his own conception.
2|Page
The Shahnameh is an epic poem of over 50,000 couplets, written in early Modern Persian. It is based mainly on a prose work of the same name compiled in Ferdowsi's earlier life in his native Tus. This prose Shahnameh was in turn and for the most part the translation of a Pahlavi (Middle Persian) work, known as the Xvatāynamāk ("Book of Kings"), a late Sassanid compilation of the history of the kings and heroes