Tag: Shahnameh

 Ahmad Shahvary. Ferdowsi and his Shahnameh

Article 001 

Shahnameh [1]Book of Kings is composed by Abu’l Qasim Ferdowsi (935–1020) 

The Shahnameh is a long epic poem composed in Lines of 22 syllables with two rhyming couplets in the same meter (bahr-i mutaqarib-i mahzuf) [2]
by 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), [3] the Shahnameh is one of the world’s longest epic poems.
Shahnameh tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the world’s creation until the Muslim aggression in the seventh century.
Iran and the greater region influenced by Persian culture such as Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, and Dagestan celebrate this national epic.
The work is of central importance in Persian culture and Farsi/Persian language, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of the ethno-national cultural identity of Iran [4].
Shahnameh is also important to the contemporary adherents of Zoroastrianism, in that it traces the historical links between the beginnings of the religion and the death of the last Sasanian emperor, which ended the Zoroastrian influence in Iran.
Composition
Ferdowsi started composing the Shahnameh in 977 and completed it on 8 March 1010 [5]. The Shahnameh is a monument of poetry and historiography, 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, for example, the Abu-Mansuri Shahnameh. In passages scattered throughout the Shahnameh, a small portion of Ferdowsi’s work is entirely of his own conception.
The Shahnameh is an epic poem of over 50,000 couplets written in Early New Persian. This book 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 Xwadāynāmag “Book of Kings [6]”. Ferdowsi added material continuing the story of the overthrow of the Sasanians by the Muslim armies in the middle of the seventh century.
The first poet who undertook the versification of the Pahlavi chronicle was Daqiqi, a contemporary of Ferdowsi, a poet at the court of the Samanid Empire, who came to a violent end after completing only 1,000 verses. These verses 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 [7].
Many other Pahlavi sources were used in composing the epic, prominent being the Kārnāmag-ī Ardaxšīr-ī Pābagān, 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 Farsi. 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 [8].
Content
Traditional historiography in Iran has claimed that Ferdowsi was grieved by the fall of the Sassanid 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 they could learn and try to build a better world [9]. Although most scholars have contended that Ferdowsi’s main concern was the preservation of the pre-Islamic legacy of myth and history, several authors have formally challenged this view [10].
Mythical age
Scenes from the Shahnameh carved into reliefs at Ferdowsi’s mausoleum in Tus, Iran
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 Khoda, which means the Being that is created by itself, and Wisdom, the Shahnameh gives an account of the creation of the world and of man as believed by the Man, Someone who has common sense.
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 Sīyāmak, accidentally discovered fire and established the Sadeh Feast in its honor. Stories of Tahmuras, Jamshid, Zahhāk, Kawa or Kaveh, Fereydūn 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 is devoted to the age of heroes, extending from Manouchehr’s reign until the death of Zal, the father of Rustam.
This age is also identified as the kingdom of Keyaniyan, which established a long history of heroic age in which myth and legend are combined [11].
The main feature of this period is the major role played by the Sistānī heroes who appear as the backbone of Iran’s Empire. Garshāsp is briefly mentioned with his son Narimān, whose own son Sām acted as the leading paladin of Manuchehr while reigning in Sistān in his own right. His successors were his son Zāl and Zal’s son Rostam, the bravest of the brave, and then Farāmarz.
Among the stories described in this section are the romance of Zal and Rudāba, the Seven Stages (or Labors) of Rostam, Rostam and Sohrab, Sīyāvash and Sudāba, Rostam and Akvān Dīv, the romance of Bijan and Manijeh, the wars with Afrāsīyāb, Daqiqi’s account of the story of Goshtāsp and Arjāsp, and Rostam and Esfandyār.

Historical age
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.
Message
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 obtuse, esoteric, and dryly intellectual Persian literature [12]. Historians note that the theme of regicide and the incompetence of kings embedded in the epic did not sit well with the Iranian monarchy.
These include the lines: tofu bar tou, 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 [13].
Influence on Persian language
After the Shahnameh, several 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 the Modern Persian language today is more or less the same 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 the Persian language by subsequent Persian poets, as evidenced by numerous references to the Shahnameh in their works.
It is claimed that Ferdowsi went to great lengths to avoid any words drawn from the Arabic language, words which had increasingly infiltrated the Persian language following the Arab conquest of Persia in the 7th century. ،These claimants point out this verse of the Shahnameh to prove their claim:
بسی رنج بردم در این سال سی/‌عجم زنده کردم بدین پارسی
I have struggled much these thirty years
to keep Persian Ajam (meaning non-Arabic, or specifically Iranian).
But the fact is that on those days that Shahnameh was composing by Ferdowsi there was no threat toward the Farsi language since there were around 400 poets who were masters in Farsi language and literature only in the court of Sultan Mahmoud Ghaznavi, plus many others in Al-Buyids different courts.
Therefore, Ferdowsi did not follow this path to preserve and purify the Persian language since numerous examples of Arabic words in the Shahnameh are effectively synonyms for Persian words previously used in the text. Still, he did it rightly as a stark political statement against the Arab conquest of Persia.
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 is a round figure; most of the relatively reliable manuscripts have preserved a little over fifty thousand distichs. Nezami-e Aruzi reports that the final edition of the Shahnameh sent to the court of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni was prepared in seven volumes.
Cultural influence
The Shirvanshah dynasty adopted many of their names from the Shahnameh. The relationship between Shirwanshah and his son, Manuchihr, is mentioned in chapter eight of Nizami’s Leilee va Majnoon. Nizami advises the king’s son to read the Shahnameh and to remember the meaningful sayings of the wise [14]. 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 ed-Din Kay-Khosrow I assumed titles taken from ancient Persian mythology, like Kay Khosrow, Kay Kāvus, and Kai Qobad; and that Ala’ ed-Din Kay-Qobad I had some passages from the Shahnameh 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 [15].
Shah Ismail I (d.1524), the founder of the Safavid dynasty of Iran, was also deeply influenced by 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 Shāhnāmaye Shāhī was intended as a present to the young Tahmāsp [16]. After defeating Muhammad Shaybāni’s Uzbeks, Ismāil asked Hātefī, a famous poet from Jam (a small town in Khorasan province), to write a Shahnameh-like epic about his victories and his newly established dynasty. Although 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 [17]. The Shahnameh’s influence has extended beyond the Persian sphere. Professor Victoria Arakelova of Yerevan University states:
During the ten centuries passed after Ferdowsi composed his monumental work, heroic legends and stories of Shahnameh have remained the main source of the storytelling for the peoples of this region: Persians, Pashtuns, Kurds, Gurans, Talishis, Armenians, Georgians, North Caucasian peoples, etc [18].
Reference:
[1] -Also romanized as Šāhnāmeh, Shahnama, Šahname, Shaahnaameh or Şahname
[2] – “History” (PDF). eprints.soas.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020.25. 01
[3] – Lalani, Farah (13 May 2010). “A thousand years of Firdawsi’s Shahnama is celebrated”. The Ismaili. Retrieved 24 May 2010.
[4] – Ashraf, Ahmad (30 March 2012). “Iranian Identity iii. Medieval Islamic Period”. Encyclopædia Iranica
[5] – Khaleghi-Motlagh, Djalal (26 January 2012). “Ferdowsi, Abu’l Qāsem i. Life”. Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 27 May 2012. the poet refers… to the date of the Šāh- nāma’s completion as the day of Ard (i.e., 25th) of Esfand in the year 378 Š. (400 Lunar)/8 March 1010
[6] – the Xwadāynāmag was gathered and edited in the late Sasanian. This compilation of the history of the kings and heroes of Iran is covering from mythical times down to the reign of Khosrow II (590–628). The Xwadāynāmag 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). See. Zaehner, Robert Charles (1955). Zurvan: a Zoroastrian Dilemma. Biblo and Tannen. p. 10. ISBN 0819602809
[7] – “A possible predecessor to the Xwadāynāmag could be the Chihrdad, one of the destroyed books of the Avesta (known to us because of its listing and description in the Middle Persian Zoroastrian text, the Dinkard 8.13).” K.E. Eduljee, Zoroastrian Heritage, “Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh,” http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/shahnameh/
[8] – Safa, Zabihollah (2000). Hamase- sarâ’i dar Iran, Tehran 1945.
[9] – Shahbazi, A. Shapur (1991). Ferdowsī: A Critical Biography. Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers. p. 49. ISBN 0939214830.
[10] – Khatibi, Abolfazl (1384/2005). Anti- Arab verses in the Shahnameh. 21, 3, Autumn 1384/2005: Nashr Danesh. Check date values in: |year= (help)
[11] – Katouzian, Homa (2013). Iran: Politics, History and Literature. Oxon: Routledge. p. 138. ISBN 9780415636896.
[12] – Ansari, Ali (2012). The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 193. ISBN 9780521867627.
[13] – Fischer, Michael (2004). Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledge: Persian Poesis in the Transnational Circuitry. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 21. ISBN 9780822385516.
[14] -Sayyed- Gohrab, Ali Ashgar (2003). Laylī and Majnūn: Love, Madness and Mystic Longing in Niẓāmī’s Epic Romance. Leiden: Brill. p. 276. ISBN 9004129421.
[15] – Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad (2006). Early Mystics in Turkish Literature. Translated by Gary Leiser and Robert Dankoff. London: Routledge. p. 149. ISBN 0415366860.
[16] – Dickson, M.B.; and Welch, S.C. (1981). The Houghton Shahnameh. Volume I. Cambridge, MA and London. p. 34.
[17] – Savory, R. M. “Safavids”. Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.).
[18] -Arakelova, Victoria. “Shahnameh in the Kurdish and Armenian Oral Tradition (abridged)” (PDF). Retrieved 28 May 2012.