The Shahnamah, or Persian Epic

The Homer of Persia was Abul Casim Mansur, better known by his nom de plume, Firdousi. He was a Persian poet of marked ability, but his universal fame rests upon his magnificent epic poem the Shahnamah, "Book of Kings." He was born at Shadab, a suburb of Tus, about 941 A. D. His father, Maulana Ahmed, belonged to the class of Dihkans, or native landed proprietors of Persia, who preserved their influence and standing even under Arab rule. He possessed an estate in the neighborhood of Tus, and was able to give such a liberal education to his son, both in the modern and ancient languages of Persia, as fitted him for the gigantic task which he subsequently undertook.

The antiquity of the empire of Persia, the vicissitudes through which it passed, the magnificent monuments erected by its ancient sovereigns, could not fail to impress so imaginative a people as the modern Persians. Little is known of the early life of Firdousi, but between the age of thirty and forty years he went to Ghaznin, where the Shah Mahmud, a great patron of Letters and Art, resided. He soon had an opportunity to prove his knowledge of ancient Persian history and legendary lore before the Sultan Mahmud who, hearing that he was from Tus, asked him to explain the origin of his native town. This he died in such a manner that the Sultan, nothing his knowledge of ancient history, at once selected him as court-poet.

After further exhibitions of the talent of Firdousi, the Shah ordered him to write, in verse, a history of Persia from the Creation to the end of the Sassanian dynasty, and to include all the popular tales and legends relating to the ancient Kings. Such a work had long been contemplated, and had even been begun by the poet Dakiki, but the assassin's hand brought his labors to a sudden close. Shah Mahmud, with the assistance of neighboring princes and some influential Dihkans, had already collected a vast amount of material for the work, and he was searching for a man of sufficient learning and ability to edit it when Abul Casim Mansur appeared at his court. The Shah bestowed the name "Firdousi" (Paradise) upon him because, as he explained, his exquisite verse transported his hearers to Paradise.

For thirty years Firdousi studied and labored over his great epic poem. He was forty years old when the undertook the task, and was seventy when an exquisite, complete copy was presented to Shah Mahmud. The Sultan in the beginning had ordered his Treasurer to pay to Firdousi a thousand pieces of gold for every thousand verses; but the poet preferred to let the amount accumulate until his work was completed, hoping thereby to be able to carry out a dream of his childhood, to construct a dyke for his native town of Tus.

The poem, consisting of sixty thousand rhymed couplets, was entrusted to Ayaz, a favorite of the Sultan, for presentation to him. But Shah Mahmud had meanwhile listened to the jealous counsel of his Treasurer, Hasan Meimendi, and ordered sixty thousand pieces of silver to be placed in a sack and loaded on an elephant, to be presented to Firdousi, instead of the sixty thousandgold pieces, as promised. Firdousi was in a public bath when the elephant bearing the treasure arrived at Tus. Eager to receive the long-promised reward, he opened the sacks, and finding only silver, was so indignant that the divided it among the servants of the bath. He then wrote his famous satire upon Shah Mahmud, ordering it to be put into the hands of the Sultan, and fled the city. Firdousi lived the life of an exile for ten years; at the end of that time he returned, a broken-down old man, to his native city to die. The Sultan, having repented of the wrong done Firdousi, sent to him the sixty thousand pieces in gold and a rich robe of honor. But the camels, bearing the bags of gold, entered at one age of the city as the train of mourning citizens bearing the dead body of the great poet passed out of the other. The Sultan's present was offered to his daughter, but it was rejected. His aged sister, however, remembering the poet's wish, accepted the gold, and had the dyke constructed (a stone embankment along the river of Tus) and a large caravanserai built. These works were dedicated to the memory of Persia's great poet, Abul Casim Mansur, the author of her epic, which ranks with the Iliad, the Mahabharata, and the Niebelungen Lied.

Truth and fiction, history and fairy-lore, all the gorgeous imagery of the East and its quaintest conceits, together with homely and touching descriptions of human joy and human sorrow, of valor and love, have combined to make the Shahnamah one of the most interesting of epic poems; while studied in the light of modern criticism, the poem forms a store house of native traditions which will prove of great service to future historians and ethnologists.

The entire poem has been published, with a French translation, at the expense of French Government, by the late Jules de Mohl. Madame de Mohl has published a cheaper edition of the French translation of her husband with his critical notes (1876-77). This is the present standard work on the subject, containing a resume, also, of everything that has been written on the Shahnamah.