The Shahnameh, also romanized Shahnama (), is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between 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 of the mainly mythical but to some extent historical past of Iran from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and the greater region influenced by Persian culture such as Armenia, Dagestan, Georgia, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan celebrate this national epic. It took Ferdowsi 33 years to complete the Shahnameh in its entirety.
The work is of central importance in Persian culture and Persian language. It is regarded as a literary masterpiece, and is the definitive work of the ethno-national cultural identity of Iran.
Composition
Ferdowsi began writing the Shahnameh in 977 AD 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 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 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 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 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, 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 are 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.
Content
Traditional historiography in Iran holds that Ferdowsi 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 the preservation of the pre-Islamic legacy of myth and history, a number of authors have formally challenged this view.
Mythical age
This portion of the Shahnameh is relatively short, amounting to some 2100 verses or four percent of the entire book.
After an opening in praise of God and Wisdom, the Shahnameh gives an account of 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.
Heroic age Almost two-thirds of 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 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, the romance of Bijan and Manijeh, the wars with Afrasiab, Daqiqi's account of the story of Goshtasp and Arjasp, and Rostam and Esfandyar.
Historical age A brief mention of the Arsacid (Parthian) 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.
Message According to Jalal Khaleghi Mutlaq, 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 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 a reference to the Muslim invaders who despoiled Zoroastrianism.
Historical analysis According to orientalist scholars Josef Markwart and Theodor Nöldeke, much of the story and world of the Shahnameh incorporated Parthian history that was reshaped by Ferdowsi. By Ferdowsi's time, much of Parthian history itself had already been altered through varying narratives originating during the Sasanian period.
The character of Rostam was also not an invention of Ferdowsi. By the end of the Sasanian period, legends of Rostam were well known across all Iranian lands. Ferdowsi was chiefly responsible for glorifying his fame. A substantial collection of Pahlavi texts spoke of the legend of Rostam. Josef Markwart traced the background of Rostam, showing his Parthian (Arsacid) origins. The home of Rostam in the Shahnameh was Sakastan, the ancestral seat of the House of Suren, one of the seven Great Parthian Families of Iran (the Seven Parthian Clans). This indicates that the House of Rostam, in the epic, is directly parallel to a Parthian noble house. Rostam's dragon banner was also directly influenced by the Parthians.
Various other miscellaneous elements of the Shahnameh are influenced by Iranian history too. The narratives found in the Pahlavi texts influenced Ferdowsi's world of the Shahnameh, specifically with regards to the construction of the Babylon being attributed to the Pishdādian kings, two of these being Tahmuras and Jamshid. Additionally, the Bundahishn credits Manuchehr with creating the Euphrates, which also referenced in the epic. The centuries-long lifespan attributed to some of the Pishdādian and to most of the Kayanian kings in the Shahnameh directly parallel the durations of the Bronze Age and Iron Age. The heroes of the Shahnameh were meant to reflect the lifespan of city-states themselves, meaning many characters directly reflected political entities of history.
Scholars have also argued that the Shahnameh was the historical expression of Iran's national character over the course of its existence up until the emergence of Islam. Ferdowsi composed the Shahnameh based on all the lore and surviving records of pre-Islamic Iran, both oral and written, that were available to him. The Shahnameh was also replete with moral philosophy and subtle moral lessons relevant for the period. According to Afshin Zand:
Other scholars have applied the structuralist theory of Claude Lévi-Strauss to the Shahnameh, demonstrating that the influences behind the epic were inspired by underlying structural factors like culture, religion, and dominant worldviews. This is expressed as the general contrast between good and evil, exemplified by factors like disparity between Rostam and Esfandiyār. The division of good and evil comes from a lack of advanced scientific perspectives that were not the forefront of phenomenological analysis during Ferdowsi's time. Consequently, Ferdowsi's work is based significantly on prior mythology and religion, such as doctrine of dualism found in Zoroastrianism. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh can be characterized as a continuation of the old Aryan, Indo-European tradition.
Historian Dariush Zolfaghari has argued that the Shahnameh presents warfare not merely as a struggle over territory, but also as a struggle over the survival of Iranian cultural identity and heritage. In this analysis, Ferdowsi is said to portray both tangible heritage and intangible heritage as central elements to the endurance of a society in times of war and conflict. Tangible heritage includes cities, fortresses, palaces, banners, and monuments, while intangible heritage are customs such as language, festivals, rituals, and collective memory. Zolfaghari proposes a dual framework where physical monuments and symbols act as forms of “cultural deterrence” by raising the moral and symbolic cost of attack, while language, ritual traditions, and narrative memory serve as “cultural prevention” by preserving identity even after destruction or invasion. The Shahnameh heroes like Rostam, Fereydun, and Kay Khosrow are interpreted both as military champions and as protectors of cultural continuity, whose success is measured by their ability to safeguard Persian identity, customs, and political legitimacy. The epic is seen as both a literary work and a cultural model for preserving national heritage during and after a war.
Influence on Persian language
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.