Renowned Iranian epical poet Abol-Qassem Ferdowsi was born in the year 329 AH in northeast of the great Iranian Plateau. His father was a farmer and his financial status was not so well. There are no authentic documents about his childhood and youth years, but we know that when he was young relying on the income he had from his father’s lands he did not have to rely on anyone. Yet, that wealth gradually vanished with the passage of time and he got entangled with relative poverty after a while.
As of very early years of acquiring academic studies, Ferdowsi got very interested in various sciences of the day, and he was particularly very fond of reading story books, especially literary stories about the history and acquiring information on ancient Persia.
It was that interest in ancient Iranian times that urged him to think about compiling a book of poems, namely his masterpiece, Shahnameh, or the Letter of the Kings. As he has clearly mentioned in his Shahnameh, he had been searching for the required source books to compose his masterpiece and invested some 30 of the best years of his youth for the purpose.
Ferdowsi began composing the poems of Shahnameh in the year 370 AH (lunar calendar), and at the time he had a noticeable material wealth and in addition to that some of the personalities of Khorasan, who were interested in the history of ancient Persia contributed to the completion of the great work. Yet, with the passage of time and when Ferdowsi had composed the major part of his masterpiece, he became very poor.
Contrary to the common belief, Ferdowsi began composing the Shahnameh inspired by his personal interest, and even many years before Sultan Mahmoud Qaznavi sat on the throne; yet since he had gradually lost both his wealth and the strength of his youth, he decided to acknowledge it in the name of a king. Assuming that Sultan Mahmoud, who had a circle of literary figures at his court, would recognize the real worth of is great masterpiece, Ferdowsi chose him for the purpose. Therefore, having inscribed his name in the acknowledgements part of Shahnameh, Ferdowsi headed for Mahmoud’s capital city, Qaznein.
Yet, the Sultan who was fonder of the works of those poets that praised him, rather than the stories of ancient Iranian champions, did not realize the great value of Ferdowsi’s masterpiece and did not praise him as he should have.
It is not quite clear why Shahnameh did not attract the due attention of the poetry lover sultan.
Some critics have opined that those who envied Ferdowsi began backbiting him at Mahmoud’s imperial court and even accused him of being a disbeliever (in fact Ferdowsi’s belonging to the Shi’a school of thought, that was not the Sultan’s official religion, further worsened the poet’s status in the king's eyes). Therefore, Mahmoud predominantly disrespected the great poet.
At any rate, the king went so far as considering Shahnameh “a worthless work” and referred to its unique champion, Rostam insultingly which enraged Ferdowsi and inspired him to compose a number of insulting verses against Mahmoud. After doing so, fearing the wrath of the Sultan, Ferdowsi left Qaznein and lived as a fugitive in cities such a Harat, Rey, and Taberestan for a while, till he managed to get back to his own home town, Tous, where he live till his demise.
His death year is recoded to be in the year 411 AH in lunar calendar, and some historians, too, have said that he died in the year 416. Ferdowsi was buried in his own garden in Tous.
It is also recorded in history that a few years later, Sultan Mahmoud remembered Ferdowsi due to the occurrence of an event and felt ashamed of the behavior he had had with that great man. Thinking about remunerating for his past mistake, he ordered his men to forward a great wealth from Qaznein to Tous and to seek Ferdowsi's pardon.
But according to historians, on the day when the sultan’s caravan of awards was entering Tous from the gates of the city, the poet’s dead corps was being carried out of the same gates simultaneously.
Ferdowsi’s only offspring after him was a daughter, because his son had died when the poet was alive and it is said that the poet’s noble daughter did not accept the sultan’s award and sent it back to Qaznein.
The Shahnameh is not only the greatest and richest collection of poetry inherited from the era of the Samanid and the Qaznavi sultans, but also the most important document proving the grandeur of the gracious Persian language and one of the manifestations of the ancient Iranian civilization. It is also a precious hoard of Persian words and a treasure of unique Persian literature.
Ferdowsi had a delicate soul and his work is mainly devoid of double sided connotations, curse, and praise, and he refrained from using unethical words as far a possible.
He was an enthusiast patriot and loved ancient stories and the history of Iran’s old traditions.
Unique Artistic Features of Shahnameh
The Shahnameh is the true guardian of the Iranian tribes’ national traditions and the shared identity card of the entire Iranians. May be if this masterpiece had not been created many of the positive aspects of our ancestors’ culture and civilization would have evaded in the storms of the historic events and no trace of them would have been left for us.
Ferdowsi was a believer poet who loved the Imams (P) from the infallible household the Prophet Muhammad (P) and humbly considered himself as the slave of the prophet and the one who deserved to rub the feet of his spiritual inheritor, Imam Ali (P), from dust.
By composing his great masterpiece, Ferdowsi very well and in best possible way managed to provide for the encounter and intermingling of the Iranian and Islamic cultures. Contemplation in the poems of Shahnameh and comprehending the intellectual background of the Iranians, the way of their thinking and their traditions and customs lead us to conclude that the Iranians, just like a fertile land, were ready for the acceptance of the seeds of the new divine faith and welcoming its advent.
The significance of Shahnameh is not restricted to its literary and poetic values since before being a collection of stories in poems framework, it is an ancestral record each of whose verses, and rather, any of its words has roots in the depth of an ancient nation’s wishes and desires. A nation that has throughout its entire historic eras praised and backed up goodness and light and hated and fought against badness and darkness.
The Shahnameh is a detailed book of poems on ancient Persian history, comprised of sixty thousand verses, describing three eras, namely the epical, the heroic, and the historic eras of ancient Iran.
Ferdowsi constructs such a hi-rising palace of words over the foundations of the inherited ancient texts that as he has rightly stated, neither any heavy storm, nor any torrential rain, nor even the passage of time, would ham it the slightest bit. Shahnameh is the story of the eternal war between goodness and badness and the story of great Iranian heroes and warriors that are the shining stars of that war of existence.
The war of Kaveh against the tyrant ruler Zahhak, revenge seeking of Manouchehr from Salm and Tour, the sad death of Siavosh in a plot hatched by Soudabeh and… which are all but episodes of that war and its battles.
Ferdowsi’s mentality and the reigning soul over his masterpiece, Shahnameh, have always been the supporters of the entire manifestations of goodness in their confrontation against all forms of oppression and wretchedness. Iran, that is the land of gallantry, has always been invaded and teased by its near and far neighbors.
The beauty and grandeur of Iran have always been subject to various types of miseries, and that has been the cause for its heroes to defend its entity, its values and its people with their entire might, and to sacrifice their dear lives in that bright path.
Some of the heroes of Shahnameh are exalted samples of humanity that have invested their entirety at the service of the well being of the entire mankind.
Heroes and champions such as Fereidoun, Siavosh, Keykhosrow, Rostam, Goodarz and Tous are from that gallant group.
The entirety of other personalities, such as Zahhak, Selm and Toor, is filled with wretchedness, negative traits and corruption.
They are the missioners of the Black Mass, commissioned to spread destruction and corruption around the globe.
The heroes of Shahnameh are also engaged in an eternal war against death and this enmity is not because they fear it, or wish to avoid it for good, or even because they wish to live leisurely lives free from all sorts of trouble; since the hero of Shahnameh recklessly ventures to fight great perils in his fight against death and in fact seizes life from the embrace of death.
Most of Shahnameh’s stories remind the reader of the infidel and untrustworthy nature of this world and the need to take lessons of the passage of time, but at the same time, when talking of love, Ferdowsi magnificently describes the grandeur and beauty of that heavenly phenomenon.
Image Building
Image building is of great significance in Ferdowsi’s poetry. The poet manifests the events and adventures of the history before the eyes of the readers clearly, carrying him along to view the context of events, as if the reader of the story were watching the events on the broad screen of a cinema hall.
Image building and nurturing the imaginations is so strong and matches the context of events so well that even the majority of natural phenomena, such as the sunrise, the sunset, the day, the night and… are clad with an epical attire in Ferdowsi’s poetry and the delicacy and painstaking accuracy employed by the sagacious master of Tous in description of such points leads to the emergence of harmony between the most minute details of Shahnameh that is observed in the entirety of the work and its stories.
Music
Music is among the major elements in Ferdowsi's poetry. Choosing the proper symmetrical meters in which the long syllables are less than the short syllables increase the musical tone of Shahnameh several times, compared to those similar pieces that are devoid of such literary characteristics.
Masterly sensory exaggerations and purring on display the exciting moments of nature and life is among the other major cahrcteristics of Ferdowsi's poetry.
Sources for Shahnameh
The first independent literary prose book in Persian language is a Shahnameh that is regarded as the ancient history of Iran.
The main text of that book has been destroyed and only its first 15 pages, namely its prelude, is found today in some manuscript versions of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh.
After that text, in 4th century (AH) a poet called Daqiqi began composing poems on national folklore tales of Iran. Daqiqi was a Zoroastrian who had begun composing poems when he was very young. He had initially composed poems admiring some emirs and got precious prizes from them in return. Apparently, he was commissioned by the king of is time to compose in poems the text of the first Shahnameh that was originally in prose.
Daqiqi had composed only one thousand verses based on the text of that Shahnameh when he got killed at youth, and as a result, a major part of the stories of Shahnameh remained in prose.
Daqiqi's master in poetry and his fellow citizen, Hakim Abol-Qassem Ferdowsi Tousi, assumed the heavy task of completing his demised talented student's incomplete work.
Therefore, we can consider Daqiai's Shahnameh as the main source for composing Ferdowsi's masterpiece of the same name.
Major parts of the Shahnameh
The subject of this eternal masterpiece is the history of ancient Persia from the origins of the Iranian race till the fall of the last Iranian pre-Islamic dynasty of kings, the Sassanids, by the Arab Muslims. The book is, generally speaking, divided into three eras, namely the mythical, the Pahlavi, and the historic eras.
The Mythical Era
This era begins at the time of King Kiyoumars and continues till the rise of Fereidoun. During that era such kings as Kiyoumars, Houshang, Tahmoures, and Fereidoun came to throne and their stories are narrated.
The main skeleton of the Iranian civilization takes shape during this era. The discovery of fire, separation of iron from its stone, threading strings and weaving, agricultural activities and the like all took place during this era.
It was also during this era that most of the civil wars, including war against the monsters that had nests inside ancient Persia, and suppressing them, that was the most perilous task at the time, took place (Some literary experts have assumed that by using the word monster the ancient Persian historians probably meant the aborigines that lived in the great Iranian Plateau and were always at war with the invading Aryans – the ancestors of Persians).
At the end of this era, Zahhak, the enemy of pureness and the symbol of badness took the lead of the Persian Empire, but after his 1,000 year dark reign, finally Fereidoun, getting assistance from Kaveh the ironsmith, and relying on the support of the oppressed masses, first ousted and then chained him in Mount Damavand, where he was eventually turned to stone. Those events marked the beginning of a new era.
Era of Heroes
The era of heroes, or the mythical era, begins with the coming to throne of Fereidoun. Iraj, Manouchehr, Nouzar, and Garshasb were consecutively the kings that came to throne in this era. This was when the wars between Iran and Touran (aliens) begin.
The Kiani Dynasty, with kings such as Keyqobad, Keykavous and Keykhosrow reigned during the years of this era that is also the time for the rising of legendary heroes such as Zaal, Rostam, Goudarz, Tous, Bizhan, Sohrab and the like.
Siavosh, the son of Keykavous, gots killed by Afrasiab and Rostam invaded Touran to take revenge for the unjustly shed blood of Siavosh from Afrasiab.
At the time of Goshtasb's kingdom, Zoroaster, the prophet of the Iranians, declared his prophecy and Esfandiar gots killed by Rostam.
A while after that event, Rostam, too, gots killed by his own brother, Shoqad, and with his death the heroes' era of ancient Persia came to its doomed end.
Historic Era
This era began with the rise of King Bahman after whom Homay and then Darab and Dara come to power as kings.
It is during this era that Alexander of Macedonia invaded Iran, killed Dara, whose other name is Darius the 3rd, and took the lead of power in Iran personally.
After Alexander the era of the Ashkanid kings, too, came to its end and the Sassanids came take the lead and reign in Iran till the invasion of the Arab Muslims that lead to the defeat of the Iranians and also marked the end of Ferdowsi's masterpiece, the Shahnameh.
