Ferdowsi

Abu'l-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi (also Firdawsi, ; 940 – 1019/1025) 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.

Name

Except for his '' kunya'' ( – , meaning 'father of Qasem') and his pen name ( – ''Ferdowsī'', meaning ' paradisic'), nothing 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 / ("philosopher"). Based on this, his full name is given in Persian sources as / . 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 the German Oriental Society.Huart/Massé/Ménage: ''Firdawsī''. In: ''Encyclopaedia of Islam.'' New Edition. Brill, Leiden. CD-Version (2011) 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 (''Hakim Abdulqosim Firdavsí Tŭsí'').

Life

Family

Ferdowsi was born into a family of Persian landowners (''dehqans'') in 940 in 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 the Islamic era which followed the Islamic conquests of the 7thcentury. 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 a son, who died at the age of 37, and was mourned by the poet in an elegy which he inserted into the ''Shahnameh''.

Background

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, 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, 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 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 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 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.

Life as a poet

It is possible that Ferdowsi wrote some early poems which have not survived. He began work on the ''Shahnameh'' around 977, intending it as 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 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 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.

Tomb

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 Afghanistan constructed a mausoleum over the grave and it became 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.

Legend

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 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 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 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.

Works

Ferdowsi's ''Shahnameh'' is the most popular and influential national epic in Iran and other Persian-speaking countries. The ''Shahnameh'' 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 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.

Gallery

File:The Sasanian King Khusraw and Courtiers in a Garden, Page from a manuscript of the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Firdawsi, late 15th-early 16th century.jpg, ''The Sasanian King Khusraw and Courtiers in a Garden'', page from a manuscript of the Shahnameh (Book of Kings), late 15th–early 16th century, Brooklyn Museum
File:Shahnameh - The Div Akvan throws Rustam into the sea.jpg, Scene from the ''Shahnameh'': the Akvan Div throws the sleeping Rostam into the sea
File:Bathscene.jpg, Bath scene

File:Ferdowsi phoenixferdowsi.jpg, The Simurgh, a mythical bird from the ''Shahnameh'', relief from Ferdowsi's mausoleum
File:Artaban and Ardashir.jpg, A scene from the ''Shahnameh'' depicting the Parthian king Artaban facing the Sassanid king Ardashir I

Influence

Ferdowsi is one of the undisputed giants of Persian literature. After Ferdowsi's ''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 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 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 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 is a university established in 1949 that also takes its name from Ferdowsi.

Ferdowsi's influence in the Persian culture is explained by John Andrew Boyle:

:The Persians regard Ferdowsi as the greatest of their poets. For nearly a thousand years they have continued to read and to listen to recitations from his master work, the ''Shah-nameh'', in which the Persian national epic found its final and enduring form. Though written about 1,000 years ago, this work is as intelligible to the average, modern Iranian as the King James Version of the Bible is to a modern English-speaker. The language, based as the poem is on a Dari original, is pure Persian with only the slightest admixture of Arabic.

The library at Wadham College, Oxford University was named the Ferdowsi Library, and contains a specialised Persian section for scholars.

See also

* Alexander the Great in the Shahnameh
*Iranian Studies
* Ferdowsi millennial celebration
* Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
* List of Persian poets and authors
** Daqiqi, Persian poet, who started Ferdowsi's epic
** Hafez, Persian poet
** Rumi (1207–1273), arguably the internationally most famous Persian poet
* Persian literature
*Sassanid Empire
* List of mausoleums
*Jerry Clinton (1937–2003), US Ferdowsi scholar
*''Ferdowsi'' (1934 film)

Notes

References

Works cited

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General references

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External links

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* Khosrow Nāghed
''In the Workshop of Thought and Imagination of the Master of Tūs'' (Dar Kargāh-e Andisheh va Khiāl-e Ostād-e Tūs)
in Persian, Radio Zamāneh, 5 August 2008.


Ferdowsi's poems in English
* Iraj Bashiri


Ferdowsi Museum photos

Ferdowsi Tomb photos''A king's book of kings: the Shah-nameh of Shah Tahmasp''
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF)

Ferdowsi Quotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ferdowsi

11th-century Persian-language writers
Poets from the Ghaznavid Empire
Poets from the Samanid Empire
Epic poets
Mythopoeic writers
Dehqans
Iranian folklore
People from Khorasan
People from Tus, Iran
Shahnameh
10th-century Persian-language writers
10th-century Persian-language poets
11th-century Persian-language poets
10th-century births
11th-century deaths
Year of birth uncertain
Year of death uncertain