70-633: [REDACTED] Look up طهماسب in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Tahmasp or Tahmasb may refer to: Tahmasb (character) , a character in the Shahnameh Tahmasp I (reigned 1524–1576), Safavid shah of Persia Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp , illustrated manuscript of the Shahnameh Tahmasp II (reigned 1729–1732), Safavid shah of Persia Tahmasp's campaign of 1731 , into
140-476: 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 1010. 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 , and Ferdowsi followed in the footsteps of these writers. Details about Ferdowsi's education are lacking. While it
210-493: A Persian tradition. Some of the biographies of Ferdowsi are now considered apocryphal, nevertheless, this shows the important impact he had in the Persian world. Among the famous biographies are: Famous poets of Persia and the Persian tradition have praised and eulogized Ferdowsi. Many of them were heavily influenced by his writing and used his genre and stories to develop their own Persian epics, stories and poems: The candle of
280-649: A continuation of the work of his fellow poet Daqiqi, who had been assassinated by his slave. Like Daqiqi, Ferdowsi employed the prose Shahnameh of Abd-al-Razzaq 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
350-468: 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 , Khayyam , 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. Ferdowsi in fact was a motivation behind many future Persian figures. One such notable figure
420-463: A reference to the Muslim invaders who despoiled Zoroastrianism. After the 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 the Shahnameh , but none of them could quite achieve the same degree of fame and popularity. Some experts believe the main reason
490-536: 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 Reza Shah , 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
560-584: A son, who died at the age of 37, and was mourned by the poet in an elegy which he inserted into the Shahnameh . The Islamic conquests of the 7th century brought gradual linguistic and cultural changes to the Iranian Plateau. By the late 9th century, as the power of the caliphate had weakened, several local dynasties emerged in Greater Iran. Ferdowsi grew up in Tus, a city under the control of one of these dynasties,
630-429: 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 is one of the undisputed giants of Persian literature . After Ferdowsi's Shahnameh , a number of other works similar in nature surfaced over
700-453: Is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran . Consisting of some 50,000 distichs or couplets (two-line verses), the Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems, and the longest epic poem created by a single author. It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of
770-479: Is a round figure; most of the relatively reliable manuscripts have preserved a little over fifty thousand distichs. Nizami Aruzi reports that the final edition of the Shahnameh sent to the court of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni was prepared in seven volumes. The Shirvanshah dynasty adopted many of their names from the Shahnameh . The relationship between Shirvanshah and his son, Manuchihr, is mentioned in chapter eight of Nizami's Layla and Majnun . Nizami advises
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#1732858447039840-549: Is briefly mentioned with his son Nariman , whose own son Sam acted as the leading paladin of Manuchehr while reigning in Sistan in his own right. His successors were his son Zal and Zal's son Rostam , the bravest of the brave, and then Faramarz. Among the stories described in this section are the romance of Zal and Rudaba , the Seven Stages (or Labors) of Rostam , Rostam and Sohrab , Siyavash and Sudaba , Rostam and Akvan Div,
910-456: Is given in Persian sources as حکیم ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی / Ḥakīm Abo'l-Qâsem Ferdowsī Țusī . Due to the non-standardised transliteration from Persian into English, different spellings of his name are used in English works, including Firdawsi , Firdusi , Firdosi , Firdausi , etc. The Encyclopaedia of Islam uses the spelling Firdawsī , based on the standardised transliteration method of
980-484: Is known with any certainty about his full name. According to Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh, the information given by the 13th-century author Bundari about Ferdowsi's name should be taken as the most reliable. Bundari calls the poet al-Amir al-Hakim Abu'l-Qasem Mansur ibn al-Hasan al-Ferdowsi al-Tusi. From an early period on, he has been referred to by different additional names and titles, the most common one being حکیم / Ḥakīm ("philosopher"). Based on this, his full name
1050-430: Is likely that he learned Arabic in school, there is no evidence in the Shahnameh that he knew either Arabic or Pahlavi. Ferdowsi was a Shiite Muslim, although varying views exist on what Shiite sect he belonged to. Khaleghi-Motlagh, following Theodor Nöldeke , notes that Ferdowsi displays a contradictory attitude towards religion in the Shahnameh : on the one hand, he shows a "lenient" attitude towards religion, but on
1120-459: Is regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of the ethno-national cultural identity of Iran. Ferdowsi started writing the Shahnameh in 977 and completed it on 8 March 1010. 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
1190-539: 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
1260-470: Is thought to be highly accurate. The text is written in the late Middle Persian, which was the immediate ancestor of Modern Persian . A great portion of the historical chronicles given in Shahnameh is based on this epic and there are in fact various phrases and words which can be matched between Ferdowsi's poem and this source, according to Zabihollah Safa . Traditional historiography in Iran holds that Ferdowsi
1330-571: The Shahnameh of Abu-Mansur . A small portion of Ferdowsi's work, in passages scattered throughout the Shahnameh , is entirely of his own conception. The Shahnameh is an epic poem of over 50,000 couplets written in Early New 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
1400-541: The German Oriental Society . The Encyclopædia Iranica , which uses a modified version of the same method (with a stronger emphasis on modern Persian intonations), gives the spelling Ferdowsī . The modern Tajik transliteration of his name in Tajik Cyrillic is Ҳаким Абулқосим Фирдавсӣ Тӯсӣ ( Hakim Abdulqosim Firdavsí Tŭsí ). Ferdowsi was born into a family of Iranian landowners ( dehqans ) in 940 in
1470-492: 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 the 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
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#17328584470391540-511: The Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. Iran , Azerbaijan , Afghanistan , Tajikistan and the greater region influenced by Persian culture such as Armenia , Dagestan , Georgia , Turkey , Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan celebrate this national epic. The work is of central importance in Persian culture and Persian language . It
1610-474: The Persian literary tradition , particularly by the Shahnameh , which probably explains the fact that he named all of his sons after Shahnameh characters. Dickson and Welch suggest that Ismail's Shāhnāma-i Shāhī was intended as a present to the young Tahmasp . After defeating Muhammad Shaybani's Uzbeks , Ismail asked Hatefi , a famous poet from Jam (Khorasan) , to write a Shahnameh -like epic about his victories and his newly established dynasty. Although
1680-695: The Qarakhanid dynasty in Central Asia calling itself the 'family of Afrasiyab' and so it is known in the Islamic history." Turks, as an ethno-linguistic group, have been influenced by the Shahnameh since the advent of Seljuks . The Seljuk sultan Toghrul III is said to have recited the Shahnameh while swinging his mace in battle. According to Ibn Bibi , 1221 the Seljuk sultan of Rum Ala' al-Din Kay-kubad decorated
1750-465: The Shahnameh are dedicated to Alexander, running over 2,500 verses in total, and Alexander's life is the work's turning point between mythic and historical rulers of Persia. It also represents a turning point of Persian-language representations of Alexander, from negative in pre-Islamic Zoroastrian writings to positive. After the Shahnameh introduced the Alexander Romance tradition into Persian,
1820-614: The Shahnameh are devoted to the age of heroes, extending from Manuchehr's reign until the conquest of Alexander the Great . This age is also identified as the kingdom of the Kayanians , which established a long history of heroic age in which myth and legend are combined. The main feature of this period is the major role played by the Saka or Sistani heroes who appear as the backbone of the Empire. Garshasp
1890-510: The Shahnameh shows characteristics of both written and oral literature. Some claim that Ferdowsi also used Zoroastrian nasks , such as the now-lost Chihrdad , as sources as well. Many other Pahlavi sources were used in composing the epic, prominent being the Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan , which was originally written during the late Sassanid era and gave accounts of how Ardashir I came to power which, because of its historical proximity,
1960-508: The Shahnameh teaches a wide variety of moral virtues, like worship of one God; religious uprightness; patriotism; love of wife, family and children; and helping the poor. There are themes in the Shahnameh that were viewed with suspicion by the succession of Iranian regimes. During the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah , the epic was largely ignored in favor of the more abstruse, esoteric and dryly intellectual Persian literature. Historians note that
2030-454: The Šāh-nāma are quite popular, and the stories of Rostam and Sohrāb , or Bījan and Maniža became part of Georgian folklore. Farmanfarmaian in the Journal of Persianate Studies : Distinguished scholars of Persian such as Gvakharia and Todua are well aware that the inspiration derived from the Persian classics of the ninth to the twelfth centuries produced a 'cultural synthesis' which saw, in
2100-477: The Šāh-nāma that is no longer extant. ... The Šāh-nāma was translated, not only to satisfy the literary and aesthetic needs of readers and listeners, but also to inspire the young with the spirit of heroism and Georgian patriotism. Georgian ideology, customs, and worldview often informed these translations because they were oriented toward Georgian poetic culture. Conversely, Georgians consider these translations works of their native literature. Georgian versions of
2170-481: The Caucasus Tahmasp Khan Jalayer , a general of Nader Shah Tahmasb Mazaheri , Iranian politician and economist Tahmasb Quli , various people so named, including Nader Shah [REDACTED] Topics referred to by the same term This disambiguation page lists articles about people with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to
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2240-542: 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
2310-403: The Islamic era which followed the Islamic conquests of the 7th century. The dehqans were attached to the pre-Islamic literary heritage, as their status was associated with it (so much so that dehqan is sometimes used as a synonym for "Iranian" in the Shahnameh ). Thus they saw it as their task to preserve the pre-Islamic cultural traditions, including tales of legendary kings. He had
2380-478: The Persian language by subsequent Persian poets, as evidenced by numerous references to the Shahnameh in their works. Although 19th-century British Iranologist E. G. Browne has claimed that Ferdowsi purposefully avoided Arabic vocabulary, this claim has been challenged by modern scholarship, specifically Mohammed Moinfar, who has noted that there are numerous examples of Arabic words in the Shahnameh which are effectively synonyms for Persian words previously used in
2450-620: The Samanids, who claimed descent from the Sassanid general Bahram Chobin (whose story Ferdowsi recounts in one of the later sections of the Shahnameh ). The Samanid bureaucracy used the New Persian language, which had been used to bring Islam to the Eastern regions of the Iranian world and supplanted local languages, and commissioned translations of Pahlavi texts into New Persian. Abu Mansur Muhammad ,
2520-552: The Shahname inscribed on the walls of Konya and Sivas . When we take into consideration domestic life in the Konya courts and the sincerity of the favor and attachment of the rulers to Persian poets and Persian literature, then this fact [i.e., the importance of Persian influence] is undeniable. Shah Ismail I (d.1524), the founder of the Safavid dynasty of Iran, was also deeply influenced by
2590-514: The areas of Central Asia beyond the Oxus up to the 7th century (where the story of the Shahnameh ends), was generally an Iranian-speaking land. According to Richard Frye , "The extent of influence of the Iranian epic is shown by the Turks who accepted it as their own ancient history as well as that of Iran ... The Turks were so much influenced by this cycle of stories that in the eleventh century AD we find
2660-441: 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
2730-632: The creation of the world and of man as believed by the 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 Siamak , accidentally discovered fire and established the Sadeh Feast in its honor. Stories of Tahmuras , Jamshid , Zahhak , Kawa or Kaveh , Fereydun and his three sons Salm , Tur , and Iraj , and his grandson Manuchehr are related in this section. Almost two-thirds of
2800-417: 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. Ferdowsi was buried in his own garden, burial in the cemetery of Tus having been forbidden by a local cleric who considered him a heretic. A Ghaznavid governor of Khorasan constructed a mausoleum over the grave and it became
2870-569: The earliest stages of written secular literature in Georgia, the resumption of literary contacts with Iran, "much stronger than before" (Gvakharia, 2001, p. 481). Ferdowsi's Shahnama was a never-ending source of inspiration, not only for high literature, but for folklore as well. "Almost every page of Georgian literary works and chronicles [...] contains names of Iranian heroes borrowed from the Shahnama " (ibid). Ferdowsi, together with Nezāmi , may have left
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2940-461: The end of this great history And all the land will talk of me: I shall not die, these seeds I've sown will save My name and reputation from the grave, And men of sense and wisdom will proclaim When I have gone, my praises and my fame. Another translation of by Reza Jamshidi Safa: Much I have suffered in these thirty years, I have revived the Ajam with my verse. I will not die then alive in
3010-456: The epic was left unfinished, it was an example of mathnawis in the heroic style of the Shahnameh written later on for the Safavid kings. The Shahnameh 's influence has extended beyond the Persian sphere. Professor Victoria Arakelova of Yerevan University states: During the ten centuries passed after Firdausi composed his monumental work, heroic legends and stories of Shahnameh have remained
3080-421: 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 whom 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
3150-452: The four main bodies of world literature. Goethe was inspired by Persian literature, which moved him to write his West-Eastern Divan . Goethe wrote: When we turn our attention to a peaceful, civilized people, the Persians, we must—since it was actually their poetry that inspired this work—go back to the earliest period to be able to understand more recent times. It will always seem strange to
3220-559: The genre would become popular and numerous Alexander legends would be composed in the language, with the most significant works owing much to the Shahnameh . These include the anonymous Iskandarnameh , the Iskandarnameh of Nizami , the Ayina-i Iskandari of Amir Khusrau , and others. Illustrated copies of the work are among the most sumptuous examples of Persian miniature painting . Several copies remain intact, although two of
3290-504: The historians that no matter how many times a country has been conquered, subjugated and even destroyed by enemies, there is always a certain national core preserved in its character, and before you know it, there re-emerges a long-familiar native phenomenon. In this sense, it would be pleasant to learn about the most ancient Persians and quickly follow them up to the present day at an all the more free and steady pace. Sargozasht-Nameh or biography of important poets and writers has long been
3360-481: The imagery of Shahnameh heroes in their poetry. The Shahnameh 's impact on Persian historiography was immediate, and some historians decorated their books with the verses of Shahnameh. Below is sample of ten important historians who have praised the Shahnameh and Ferdowsi: The Shahnameh contains the first Persian legend of Alexander the Great in the tradition of the Alexander Romance . Three sections of
3430-566: The intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tahmasp&oldid=1157237647 " Category : Human name disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Shahnameh The Shahnameh ( Persian : شاهنامه , romanized : Šāhnāme , lit. 'The Book of Kings', modern Iranian Persian pronunciation [ʃɒːh.nɒː.ˈme] ), also transliterated Shahnama ,
3500-773: The king's son to read the Shahnameh and to remember the meaningful sayings of the wise. According to the Turkish historian Mehmet Fuat Köprülü : Indeed, despite all claims to the contrary, there is no question that Persian influence was paramount among the Seljuks of Anatolia . This is clearly revealed by the fact that the sultans who ascended the throne after Ghiyath al-Din Kai-Khusraw I assumed titles taken from ancient Persian mythology , like Kai Khosrow , Kay Kāvus , and Kai Kobad ; and that Ala' al-Din Kai-Qubad I had some passages from
3570-462: The main source of the storytelling for the peoples of this region: Persians, Kurds, Gurans, Talishis, Armenians, Georgians, North Caucasian peoples, etc. Jamshid Giunashvili remarks on the connection of Georgian culture with that of Shahnameh : The names of many Šāh-nāma heroes, such as Rostom-i , Thehmine, Sam-i , or Zaal-i , are found in 11th- and 12th-century Georgian literature. They are indirect evidence for an Old Georgian translation of
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#17328584470393640-522: The most enduring imprint on Georgian literature (...) Despite a belief held by some, the Turanian of Shahnameh (whose sources are based on Avesta and Pahlavi texts) have no relationship with Turks . The Turanians of the Shahnameh are an Iranian people representing Iranian nomads of the Eurasian Steppes and have no relationship to the culture of the Turks. Turan, which is the Persian name for
3710-747: The most famous, the Houghton Shahnameh and the Great Mongol Shahnameh , were broken up for sheets to be sold separately in the 20th century. A single sheet from the former was sold for £904,000 in 2006. The Baysonghori Shahnameh , an illuminated manuscript copy of the work (Golestan Palace, Iran), is included in UNESCO 's Memory of the World Register of cultural heritage items. Ferdowsi Abu'l-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi (also Firdawsi , Persian : ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی ; 940 – 1019/1025)
3780-400: The other hand, he believed that his sect was the "only true Islamic one." Khaleghi-Motlagh concurs with Nöldeke that Ferdowsi was "above all a deist and monotheist who at the same time kept faith with his forbears." Ferdowsi criticized philosophers and those who tried to prove the existence of God. He saw God's creation as the only evidence of His existence and believed everything in life to be
3850-421: The preservation of the pre-Islamic legacy of myth and history, a number of authors have formally challenged this view. This portion of the Shahnameh is relatively short, amounting to some 2100 verses or four percent of the entire book, and it narrates events with the simplicity, predictability, and swiftness of a historical work. After an opening in praise of God and Wisdom, the Shahnameh gives an account of
3920-505: The product of God's will. Khaleghi-Motlagh and others have suggested that a certain fatalism in Ferdowsi's work contradicts his "absolute faith in the unicity and might of God," and that this may have been the legacy of the Zurvanism of the Sasanian period. It is possible that Ferdowsi wrote some early poems which have not survived. He began work on the Shahnameh around 977, intending it as
3990-411: The reward. Finding it was silver and not gold, he gave the money away to the bath-keeper, 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 to Khorasan , having first written a satire on Mahmud, and spent most of the remainder of his life in exile. Mahmud eventually learned
4060-687: The romance of Bijan and Manijeh , the wars with Afrasiab , Daqiqi 's account of the story of Goshtasp and Arjasp, and Rostam and Esfandyar . A brief mention of the Arsacid dynasty follows the history of Alexander and precedes that of Ardashir I , founder of the Sasanian Empire. After this, Sasanian history is related with a good deal of accuracy. The fall of the Sassanids and the Arab conquest of Persia are narrated romantically. According to Jalal Khaleghi Mutlaq,
4130-634: The story to the overthrow of the Sasanians by the Muslim armies in the middle of the seventh century. The first to undertake the versification of the Pahlavi chronicle was Daqiqi , a contemporary of Ferdowsi, poet at the court of the Samanid Empire , who came to a violent end after completing only 1,000 verses. These verses, which deal with the rise of the prophet Zoroaster , were afterward incorporated by Ferdowsi, with acknowledgment, in his own poem. The style of
4200-497: The text. This calls into question the idea of Ferdowsi's deliberate eschewing of Arabic words. The Shahnameh has 62 stories, 990 chapters, and some 50,000 rhyming couplets, making it more than three times the length of Homer's Iliad and more than twelve times the length of the German Nibelungenlied . According to Ferdowsi himself, the final edition of the Shahnameh contained some sixty thousand distichs. But this
4270-462: The theme of regicide and the incompetence of kings embedded in the epic did not sit well with the Iranian monarchy. Later, there were Muslim figures such as Ali Shariati , the hero of Islamic reformist youth of the 1970s, who were also antagonistic towards the contents of the Shahnameh since it included verses critical of Islam. These include the line: tofu bar to, ey charkh-i gardun, tofu! (spit on your face, oh heavens spit!), which Ferdowsi used as
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#17328584470394340-535: The translation of a Pahlavi ( Middle Persian ) work, known as the Khwadāy-Nāmag "Book of Kings", a late Sasanian compilation of the history of the kings and heroes of Persia from mythical times down to the reign of Khosrow II (590–628). The Khwadāy-Nāmag contained historical information on the later Sasanian period, but it does not appear to have drawn on any historical sources for the earlier Sasanian period (3rd to 4th centuries). Ferdowsi added material continuing
4410-546: 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 just as the caravan bearing the money entered the gates of Tus, a funeral procession exited the gates on the opposite side: the poet had died from a heart attack. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh is the most popular and influential national epic in Iran and other Persian-speaking countries. The Shahnameh
4480-611: The village of Paj, near the city of Tus , in the Khorasan region of the Samanid Empire , which is located in the present-day Razavi Khorasan province of northeastern Iran . Little is known about Ferdowsi's early life. The poet had a wife, who was probably literate and came from the same dehqan class. The dehqans were landowning Iranian aristocrats who had flourished under the Sasanian dynasty (the last pre-Islamic dynasty to rule Iran) and whose power, though diminished, had survived into
4550-499: The walls of Konya and Sivas with verses from the Shahnameh . The Turks themselves connected their origin not with Turkish tribal history but with the Turanians of Shahnameh . Specifically in India, through the Shahnameh , they felt themselves to be the last outpost tied to the civilized world by the thread of Iranianism . Ferdowsi concludes the Shahnameh by writing: I've reached
4620-491: The wise in this darkness of sorrow, The pure words of Ferdowsi of the Tusi are such, His pure sense is an angelic birth, Angelic born is anyone who's like Ferdowsi. How sweetly has conveyed the pure-natured Ferdowsi, May blessing be upon his pure resting place, Do not harass the ant that's dragging a seed, because it has life and sweet life is dear. Many other poets, e.g., Hafez , Rumi and other mystical poets, have used
4690-500: The world, For I have spread the seed of the word. Whoever has sense, path and faith, After my death will send me praise. Many Persian literary figures, historians and biographers have praised Ferdowsi and the Shahnameh . The Shahnameh is considered by many to be the most important piece of work in Persian literature . Western writers have also praised the Shahnameh and Persian literature in general. Persian literature has been considered by such thinkers as Goethe as one of
4760-544: Was Reza Shah Pahlavi, who established an Academy of Persian Language and Literature , in order to attempt to remove Arabic and French words from the Persian language, replacing them with suitable Persian alternatives. In 1934, Reza Shah set up a ceremony in Mashhad , Khorasan , celebrating a thousand years of Persian literature since the time of Ferdowsi, titled " Ferdowsi Millennial Celebration ", inviting notable European as well as Iranian scholars. Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
4830-513: Was a Persian poet and the author of Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"), which is one of the world's longest epic poems created by a single poet, and the greatest epic of Persian-speaking countries . Ferdowsi is celebrated as one of the most influential figures of Persian literature and one of the greatest in the history of literature . Except for his kunya ( ابوالقاسم – Abu'l-Qâsem , meaning 'father of Qasem') and his pen name ( فِردَوسی – Ferdowsī , meaning ' paradisic '), nothing
4900-458: Was grieved by the fall of the Sasanian Empire and its subsequent rule by Arabs and Turks. The Shahnameh , the argument goes, is largely his effort to preserve the memory of Persia's golden days and transmit it to a new generation, so that, by learning from it, they could acquire the knowledge needed to build a better world. Although most scholars have contended that Ferdowsi's main concern was
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