Ferdowsi Millenary Celebration
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The Ferdowsi millennial celebration () was a series of celebrations and scholarly events in the year 1934 to commemorate the thousandth anniversary of
Ferdowsi Abu'l-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi (also Firdawsi, ; 940 – 1019/1025) was a Persians, Persian poet and the author of ''Shahnameh'' ("Book of Kings"), which is one of the world's longest epic poetry, epic poems created by a single poet, and the gre ...
's birth. The Ferdowsi millennial was held at the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi and was announced at the beginning of the year by the government of
Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
. The Millennial Congress convened for five days, from 2 to 6 October 1934, in
Tehran Tehran (; , ''Tehrân'') is the capital and largest city of Iran. It is the capital of Tehran province, and the administrative center for Tehran County and its Central District (Tehran County), Central District. With a population of around 9. ...
, and more than eighty notable European and Iranian scholars attended the congress. The celebrations lasted for nearly a month. Various official ceremonies were held simultaneously in a number of European countries including
France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
, Britain,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, and the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, in universities, clubs, and embassies. Also, a number of other countries, including the
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
,
Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
and
Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...
, held festivities.


Participants in the Millennial Congress

The gathering in Tehran and
Mashhad Mashhad ( ; ), historically also known as Mashad, Meshhed, or Meshed in English, is the List of Iranian cities by population, second-most-populous city in Iran, located in the relatively remote north-east of the country about from Tehran. ...
of about a hundred distinguished scholars as well as many dignitaries of various nationalities was a most beneficial event for
Iranian studies Iranian studies ( '), also referred to as Iranology and Iranistics, is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the research and study of the civilization, history, literature, art and culture of Iranian peoples. It is a part of the wider field ...
in general and for research on
Ferdowsi Abu'l-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi (also Firdawsi, ; 940 – 1019/1025) was a Persians, Persian poet and the author of ''Shahnameh'' ("Book of Kings"), which is one of the world's longest epic poetry, epic poems created by a single poet, and the gre ...
and the
Shahnameh The ''Shahnameh'' (, ), also transliterated ''Shahnama'', is a long epic poem written by the Persian literature, Persian poet Ferdowsi between and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 distichs or couple ...
in particular. Distinguished participants included: Henri Massé (France), Vladimir Minorsky (England), Sebastian Beck (Germany), Evgenii Eduardovich Bertels (Soviet Union), Georges Contenau (France), Arthur Christensen (Denmark), Friedrich Sarre (Germany), Denison Ross (England), A.A. Bolotnikof (Soviet Union), Jan Rypka (Czechoslovakia), Franklin Gunther (United States), Alexsandr Freiman (Soviet Union), Yuri N. Marr (Soviet Union), Aleksandr A. Romaskevich (Soviet Union), Iosef Orbeli (Soviet Union), Jamshedji Unvala (India), Bahramgor Anklesaria (India), Antonio Pagliaro (Italy), Ernst Kühnel (Germany), L. A. Mayer (Israel), John Drinkwater (England), Syed Abdul Kareem Hussaini (Hyderabad–Deccan, India). The Persian delegation, with forty members, was led by Mohammad-Ali Foroughi (who delivered the inaugural speech) and included, among others: Mohammad-Taqi Bahar, Ali-Asghar Hekmat, Ahmad Bahmanyar, Abbas Eqbal Ashtiani, Badiozzaman Forouzanfar, Ahmad Kasravi, Mojtaba Minovi, Said Nafisi, Hassan Pirnia, and Ebrahim Pourdavoud. The final event of the celebrations was the inauguration of the new building for the mausoleum of Ferdowsi in Toos, by the congress participants, with the presence of Reza Shah Pahlavi.


Scholarly publications related to the millennial

An important outcome of the Ferdowsi millennial was the publication of a large number of scholarly works dedicated to the study of Ferdowsi and the Shahnameh, notably: * Mohammad Ramazani published the
Shahnameh The ''Shahnameh'' (, ), also transliterated ''Shahnama'', is a long epic poem written by the Persian literature, Persian poet Ferdowsi between and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 distichs or couple ...
(based on Macan's edition) a year before the millennial (Tehran, in five volumes). * Sayf Azad edited and published the Shahnameh and illustrated it with pictures of ancient kings inspired by Achaemenid and Sasanian sculptures (4 vols., Berlin, 1934–1935). * Henri Massé's ''Firdausi et l'épopée nationale'' (Paris, 1934) * Mohammad-Taqi Bahar's collected articles on Ferdowsi's life and works and the chronology of the Shahnameh, in a special issue of Bāḵtar monthly (Isfahan, 1934) * A collection of papers presented by various Persian scholars to the congress in ''Ferdowsī-nāma-ye Mehr'' (Tehran, 1934) * A collection by Armenian scholars in Yerevan under the title ''Firdusi Žolovacus'' (Ferdowsī celebration) * A collection by Soviet scholars titled Ferdovsi (Moscow, 1934) * ''Firdausi Celebration'' (New York, 1934), a collection of articles that included a catalog of the principal manuscripts of the Shahnameh then known. *In 1935, Bertels wrote a small popular monograph on Ferdowsi (; "Firdowsi and His Poetry"), translated into Persian by S. Izadi. * The 1935 volume of the French periodical '' Journal Asiatique'', devoted to Ferdowsi * A special commemorative issue of ''Īrān-e Bāstān'' (Berlin, 1936) by Sayf Āzād. * A collection of 33 papers read by the participants in the congress, under the title ''Ketāb-e hazāra-ye Ferdowsī'' (Tehran, 1943)


Impact of the Ferdowsi millennial on Iranian Studies

Several participants of the congress expressed the opinion that the greatest service that the scholarly world could render to the Persian-speaking people would be the publication of a critical and reliable edition of the ''Shahnameh''. The Borūḵīm Publishing House in Tehran tried to address this issue and published the complete text of the Šāh-nāma, based on the Vullers edition under the supervision of Mojtaba Minovi, Abbas Eqbal Ashtiani, Solayman Haïm and Said Nafisi. However, it was Bertels who started the preparation of a critical edition of ''Shahnameh'', he edited two volumes, both published after his death in 1960 and 1962, the whole nine-volume edition was completed in 1971 under the editorship of Abdolhossein Noushin, and became the standard edition of Shahnameh, prior to Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh edition (1990–2008). Fritz Wolff made a lasting contribution with the publication of his glossary of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (''Glossar zu Ferdosis Schahname''), which was presented as a gift to the Persian people by the German ambassador on the first day of the congress. These contributions greatly advanced Iranian scholarship, and led to the appearance of a number of monumental scholarly works on
Ferdowsi Abu'l-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi (also Firdawsi, ; 940 – 1019/1025) was a Persians, Persian poet and the author of ''Shahnameh'' ("Book of Kings"), which is one of the world's longest epic poetry, epic poems created by a single poet, and the gre ...
and the
Shahnameh The ''Shahnameh'' (, ), also transliterated ''Shahnama'', is a long epic poem written by the Persian literature, Persian poet Ferdowsi between and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 distichs or couple ...
in subsequent decades.


See also

* Ferdowsi millenary celebration in Berlin


Sources

* * * ''Ketāb-e hazāra-ye Ferdowsī'' (in Persian), Tehran 1943 * * {{Ferdowsi 1930s in Iraq 1934 in Egypt 1934 in France 1934 in Iran 1934 in the Soviet Union 1934 in the United States Jubilees Ferdowsi Iranian studies Shahnameh