Persian Literature, Volume 1, Comprising The Shah Nameh | Page 2

the past, trying even to lift the veil which hides from mortal
sight the beginnings of all things; intertwining fact with fiction,
building its mansions on earth, and its castles in the air.
The greatest of all Eastern national epics is the work of a Persian. The
"Sháh Námeh," or Book of Kings, may take its place most worthily by
the side of the Indian Nala, the Homeric Iliad, the German Niebelungen.
Its plan is laid out on a scale worthy of its contents, and its execution is
equally worthy of its planning. One might almost say that with it
neo-Persian literature begins its history. There were poets in Persia
before the writer of the "Sháh Námeh"--Rudagi, the blind (died 954),
Zandshi (950), Chusravani (tenth century). There were great poets
during his own day. But Firdusi ranks far above them all; and at the
very beginning sets up so high a standard that all who come after him
must try to live up to it, or else they will sink into oblivion.
The times in which Firdusi lived were marked by strange revolutions.
The Arabs, filled with the daring which Mohammed had breathed into
them, had indeed conquered Persia. In A.D. 657, when Merv fell, and
the last Sassanian king, Yezdegird III, met his end, these Arabs became
nominally supreme. Persia had been conquered--but not the Persian
spirit. Even though Turkish speech reigned supreme at court and the

Arabic script became universal, the temper of the old Arsacides and
Sassanians still lived on. It is true that Ormuzd was replaced by Allah,
and Ahriman by Satan. But the Persian had a glorious past of his own;
and in this the conquered was far above the conqueror. This past was
kept alive in the myth-loving mind of this Aryan people; in the songs of
its poets and in the lays of its minstrels. In this way there was, in a
measure, a continuous opposition of Persian to Arab, despite the
mingling of the two in Islam; and the opposition of Persian Shiites to
the Sunnites of the rest of the Mohammedan world at this very day is a
curious survival of racial antipathy. The fall of the only real Arab
Mohammedan dynasty--that of the Umayyid caliphs at Damascus--the
rise of the separate and often opposing dynasties in Spain, Sicily, Egypt,
and Tunis, served to strengthen the Persians in their desire to keep alive
their historical individuality and their ancient traditions.
Firdusi was not the first, as he was not the only one, to collect the old
epic materials of Persia. In the Avesta itself, with its ancient traditions,
much can be found. More than this was handed down and bandied
about from mouth to mouth. Some of it had even found its way into the
Kalam of the Scribe; to-wit, the "Zarer, or Memorials of the Warriors"
(A.D. 500), the "History of King Ardeshir" (A.D. 600), the Chronicles
of the Persian Kings. If we are to trust Baisonghur's preface to the
"Sháh Námeh," there were various efforts made from time to time to
put together a complete story of the nation's history, by Farruchani,
Ramin, and especially by the Dihkan Danishwar (A.D. 651). The work
of this Danishwar, the "Chodainameh" (Book of Kings), deserves to be
specially singled out. It was written, not in neo-Persian and Arabic
script, but in what scholars call middle-Persian and in what is known as
the Pahlavi writing. It was from this "Chodainameh" that Abu Mansur,
lord of Tus, had a "Sháh Námeh" of his own prepared in the
neo-Persian. And then, to complete the tale, in 980 a certain
Zoroastrian whose name was Dakiki versified a thousand lines of this
neo-Persian Book of Kings.
In this very city of Tus, Abul Kasim Mansur (or Ahmed) Firdusi was
born, A.D. 935. One loves to think that perhaps he got his name from
the Persian-Arabic word for garden; for, verily, it was he that gathered
into one garden all the beautiful flowers which had blossomed in the
fancy of his people. As he has draped the figures in his great epic, so

has an admiring posterity draped his own person. His fortune has been
interwoven with the fame of that Mahmud of Ghazna (998-1030), the
first to bear the proud title of "Sultan," the first to carry Mohammed
and the prophets into India. The Round Table of Mahmud cannot be
altogether a figment of the imagination. With such poets as Farruchi,
Unsuri, Minutsheri, with such scientists as Biruni and Avicenna as
intimates, what wonder that Firdusi was lured by the splendors of a
court life! But before he left his native place he must have finished his
epic, at least in its rough form; for we know that in 999 he dedicated it
to Ahmad ibn Muhammad of Chalandsha.