Firdusi

Iranian poet

• Born: Between 932 and 941
• Birthplace: Tūs, Khorāsān Province (now in Iran)
• Died: Between 1020 and 1025
• Place of death: Tabaran, near Tūs (now in Iran)

Firdusi’s Shahnamah is the supreme example of the epic in the Persian language. Through centuries of foreign invasion and conquest, it has served as a major means of preserving Iran’s cultural identity.

Apart from a visit to Baghdad, Firdusi seems to have spent his entire life in Khorāsān or in the adjoining regions of Afghanistan and Mawarannahr (now Uzbekistan). Either in Tūs or in the course of his later wanderings, he would have imbibed the cultural traditions and the pride in the values of the pre-Islamic Iranian past that were cultivated among the dihqan class and at the courts of local Iranian dynasts such as the Sāmānids of Bukhara, the Buyids of western Iran, and the Ziyarids of Tabaristān. Among both rulers and landowners there lingered a nostalgic attachment to the memory of the imperial Sāsānid Dynasty, which had ruled over the Iranian plateau and the surrounding regions from the early third to the mid-seventh century.

In such a milieu, Firdusi began to compose and organize his great epic, the Shahnamah (c. 1010; the book of kings), a paean to the glories of ancient Iran and its famous rulers. The actual completion of this enormous undertaking (Shahnamah manuscripts can range from forty-eight thousand to more than fifty-five thousand distichs, or two-line units) is said to have taken at least thirty-five years, with perhaps sometime around 975 as its starting point and 1010 as its terminal date. Although the twelfth century belletrist NezŃāmī-ye ՙArūzŃī states that Firdusi’s reason for writing the Shahnamah was to earn a reward sufficient to provide a proper dowry for his daughter and sole surviving child, it is difficult not to imagine its composition as a labor of love, a self-appointed mission. Nevertheless, it does appear that at some time in middle life, Firdusi’s financial resources became depleted, for whatever reason, and that consequently, he was compelled to go in search of patrons.

Life’s Work

The late tenth century was an inauspicious time to find a patron for a poet who sang of ancient Iranian greatness. The openhanded Iranian rulers of Firdusi’s youth had all but disappeared, and the age of the Turkish warlord was dawning. In the north, beyond the Amu Dar՚ya (Oxus) River, the noble Sāmānids of Bukhara had been swept away by the seminomadic Qarakhanids. On the Iranian plateau itself, the celebrated Turkish conqueror Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazna (r. 997-1030) held sway from his capital in eastern Afghanistan. To him, perhaps as a last resort, Firdusi made his way. Almost everything that is known of the dealings of Maḥmūd with Firdusi originated a century or more after the death of both men and therefore partakes more of literary legend than of historical fact. Supposedly, Maḥmūd initially encouraged Firdusi to complete his epic and to dedicate it to him (Maḥmūd was a great “collector” of poets, mainly panegyrists, and men of letters, some of whom he forcibly recruited). On receiving it, however, he declined to pay Firdusi the princely sum originally promised, dismissing him with a payment the poet regarded as insulting. It is not clear whether Maḥmūd acted thus out of stinginess or because, as some scholars have suggested, Firdusi’s subject matter, the splendors of ancient Iran, offended the ruler’s self-esteem as a Turk and the son of a slave. More likely than either explanation is that Firdusi’s enemies at court whispered in the ear of the Sunni Muslim sultan that the poet was a secret Shīՙite.

Early Life

Firdusi (fihr-DEW-see), the national poet

According to NezŃāmī, Firdusi, bitterly disappointed at his paltry reward, went to a bathhouse in Ghazna, where he bathed and ordered a cup of sherbet. He then took the sultan’s gift and divided it between the bathhouse keeper and the sherbet seller. To offer so public an insult to a ruler was rash in the extreme, and Firdusi promptly fled from Ghazna to Herāt, and thence to Tūs and Tabaristān. His pursuers never caught up with him. Perhaps they lost the trail or more probably Maḥmūd called off the hunt, unwilling to go down in history as the persecutor of the greatest poet of the age. Finally, if NezŃāmī is to be believed, Maḥmūd relented and belatedly made amends by sending to Firdusi a valuable consignment of indigo loaded on the sultan’s own camels. As the caravan entered one of the gates of Tabaran, a town in the Tūs district where Firdusi had been living, however, the corpse of the poet was being carried out the opposite gate. Firdusi’s daughter, a woman “of very lofty spirit,” proudly spurned the sultan’s gift.

The Iranians have always ranked Firdusi among their greatest poets, along with Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (c. 1207-1273), Saՙdi (c. 1200-c. 1291), Hafiz (c. 1320-1389 or 1390), and Jīmī (1414-1492). Unlike these other poets, however, Firdusi displays virtually no interest in contemporary religious issues or values and no trace whatsoever of a mystical calling. Still, his writing is rooted in a strong tradition of personal ethics, tempered by a strain of unmistakable pessimism, both of which are integral to his thematic concerns. The subject matter of the Shahnamah, which is composed in metrical rhymed couplets of ten syllables, is the entire history of Iran down to the Arab-Islamic conquests of the mid-seventh century. For the Sāsānid period (third to seventh centuries), the epoch preceding the Arab invasions, Firdusi provides detailed narratives, partly legendary and partly historical, derived from both chronicles and oral traditions. Of the long-lived Parthian regime that the Sāsānids overthrew, he has almost nothing to say; the same is true with regard to the prior Seleucids and Achaemenids, except for a fantastic episode in which King Dārāb (Darius II) marries a daughter of King Philip of Rum (in this instance, Greece) but then sends her back to her father in disgrace. He does not know, however, that she is already pregnant by him and soon to give birth to a child “splendid as the sun,” Iskandar (Alexander). Meanwhile, Darab takes a new wife, who provides him with an heir, Dara, who eventually succeeds him. In this way, the stage is set for the great duel between Persia and Greece, the Achaemenids and the Macedonians, and also for the inclusion of much colorful material derived from Iskandar nama (an Alexander romance often referred to as the Pseudo-Callisthenes).

It serves no purpose to look to Firdusi for the early history of Iran, for he does not provide it. Instead, he offers an epic spanning the life histories of two wholly legendary dynasties, the Pishdadian and the Kayanian, redolent with the splendors of mighty monarchs and the heroic deeds of peerless warriors. Here is a gallery of memorable figures: wise, rash, and foolish kings, and their paladins, among whom the most famous is the Iranian Hercules or Roland, the giant Rustam (also spelled Rostam). Action centers on the ceaseless conflict between the warriors of Iran and Turan, the latter subjects of the malevolent but ultimately tragic King Afrāsiyāb. Nor is there any lack of romance, such as in the love story of Zāl and Rūdābah and that of Bijan (Bīzhan) and Manija (Manīzhah). The obsession of the impetuous Sudaba (Sudabah) for her stepson, Siyavush (Siyāvūsh), is resonant of the Qur՚ānic version of the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, as well as of the myth of Phaedra. Finally, in the mortal conflict of Rostam (Rustam) and Sohrab (Suhrāb), father and son, there is tragic denouement of a high order (as the Victorian Matthew Arnold was quick to perceive and adapt in his 1853 poem “Sohrab and Rustum”). It is these legendary scenes in the Shahnamah that have so endeared it to generations of Iranian readers and audiences.

It is scarcely possible to overestimate the influence of the Shahnamah. Rulers and members of the elite vied among themselves to acquire sumptuous manuscripts, finely bound and illustrated. Familiarity with Firdusi’s masterpiece, however, was not restricted to the literate. The epic was conceived as much for recitation as for reading, and there eventually emerged a class of professional reciters of the Shahnamah (known as Shahnamah-Khvand), who were perhaps heirs to a minstrel tradition of Sāsānid or even Parthian times. Bards who memorized the entire epic were particularly revered, and a few such have been heard of even today. Recitations took place on festive occasions such as weddings or at the time of the Nuruz (the pre-Islamic New Year celebrations), but reciters also entertained humbler audiences more informally in village teahouses or in caravansaries, where travelers sheltered for the night. Thus, the Shahnamah became better known among the general population than any other book (the Qur՚ān excepted), influencing ordinary speech and molding popular attitudes and values, as well as contributing to a literary tradition of many imitations.

The Shahnamah was no less influential in the development of Persian painting. Islam prohibited representational art, especially religious subject matter, an injunction that only the Shīՙites at times disregarded. The Shahnamah, however, contained no material that could in any sense be viewed as Islamic, and it was brimful of graphic and picturesque episodes (battles, hunting scenes, durbars, and banquets) that were natural subjects for illustration. Consequently, both in Iran and in those lands influenced by the Persian iconographic tradition, scenes from the Shahnamah became favorite subjects for book illustration and miniature painting. Were an inventory to be taken of all surviving Persian miniatures down to the nineteenth century, it is probable that the great majority would consist of scenes from the Shahnamah.

Significance

The Shahnamah has always held a special place in Iranian hearts. In the twentieth century, nationalists and modernizers seized on Firdusi’s glorification of the remote Iranian past to belabor the “Islamic centuries” between the seventh century Arab conquests and their own day as the source of the obscurantism and backwardness of Iranian society. For such as these, Firdusi provided the model of a distant Golden Age. During the rule of the Pahlavi Dynasty (1925-1979), Firdusi’s praise for the monarchical tradition of ancient Iran, associated with the concept of farr (in Old Persian, the divine favor reserved for kings) and of hvarna (the charisma of kingship), provided the government with readymade propaganda. Thus, Reza Shah Pahlavi (1878-1944), the shah of Iran, ordered the construction of a conspicuous monument on the alleged site of Firdusi’s grave, proclaimed in 1934 the 1000th anniversary of the poet’s birth, and issued commemorative postage stamps. Under his son Moḥammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980), dramatic scenes from the Shahnamah, especially those emphasizing loyalty or gratitude to the monarch, were regularly performed on state-run television. With the advent of the Islamic Revolution, however, Firdusi, the least Islamic among Persian poets, fell from official favor.

Western students of Persian literature have been almost unanimous in praise of Firdusi’s genius, the one obvious exception being the English scholar Edward Granville Browne (1862-1926), who found the Shahnamah monotonous and repetitive. More typical was the Czech Iranologist Jan Rypka (1886-1968). The Shahnamah, he wrote,

has become the common property of all Iranians and has contributed in no small measure to the strengthening and consolidation of the national consciousness. For the rest this was the ultimate aim of the poet himself. . . . In depicting the illustrious past the poet appeals for a rebuilding of erstwhile greatness. . . . This call to action lent strength to the nation whenever it had to raise itself up again after disintegration and subjugation.

Bibliography

Browne, Edward G. A Literary History of Persia. 4 vols. 1902-1924. Reprint. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1964-1969. This is still the standard account of classical Persian literature, usefully woven into a historical narrative that places authors’ lives and works in their contemporary setting. Vol. 2 contains valuable information relating to Firdusi. Bibliography provided in Vol. 1.

Davis, Dick. “The Problem of Ferdowsi’s Sources.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 116, no. 1 (January-March, 1996). Argues that Firdusi used mainly versified oral sources rather than written sources for his epic, and any written sources used likely were in verse form that came from an oral tradition. Bibliographic footnotes.

Firdusi. The Epic of the Kings: Shāh-nāma, the National Epic of Persia, by Ferdowsi. Translated by Reuben Levy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Few translators have dared to tackle the Shahnamah, most of them in the nineteenth century. This volume contains the free-flowing prose translation of some of its most famous episodes. Part of UNESCO’s Persian Heritage series. (An abridged 1996 translation with a new introduction is also available from Mazda Publishers, Costa Mesa, Calif.)

Firdusi. The Tragedy of Sohráb and Rostám: From the Persian National Epic, the Shahname of Abol-Qasem Ferdowsi. Translated by Jerome W. Clinton. Rev. ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996. A verse translation accompanied on facing pages by a recent edition by Russian scholars of the Persian text. The preface is helpful for putting the work into the context of its time. Illustrations, bibliography.

Huart, Claude, and Henri Massé. “Firdawsī.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol. 2. 2d ed. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1965. This is still the best short account of Firdusi and his work. The encyclopedia contains many other entries of interest regarding Islamic writers and their sociopolitical contexts. Includes bibliographies.

Meisami, Julie Scott. Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Explores the writing of Persian-Iranian history during the time of the Sāmānid, Ghaznavid, and Seljuk dynasties, and discusses Firdusi’s Shahnamah as historical prose. Maps, bibliography, index.

Nizāmī Arūzī Samarqandi. The Chahár Maqála (The Four Discourses) of Nizāmī Arūzī Samarqandi. Translated by Edward G. Browne. 1921. Reprint. London: Luzac, 1978. These anecdotal accounts of poets, astrologers, and others by a twelfth century belletrist include the earliest surviving biographical information about Firdusi. Bibliography, index.

Robinson, B. W. The Persian Book of Kings: An Epitome of the Shahnama of Firdawsi. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002. Illustrations, bibliography, index. A concise introduction to and summary of Firdusi’s epic work. Illustrations include early Persian paintings depicting events and actions. Includes a table listing kings in the book, a bibliography, and an index.

Rypka, Jan, with Otakar Klíma. History of Iranian Literature. Edited by Karl Jahn. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1968. Pages 151-166 offer an exceptionally interesting account of Firdusi within the context of the tradition of epic poetry in Iran. Map, extensive bibliography.

Von Grunebaum, Gustave E. “Firdausi’s Concept of History.” In Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition. 1955. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981. This is a stimulating essay by a distinguished Islamicist on Firdusi’s vision of the past. Bibliography, index.

Yarshater, Ehsan, ed. Persian Literature. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988. Essays of particular interest in this volume cover such topics as early Persian court poetry, the development of epic Persian verse, and Firdusi and the tragic epic. Bibliography, index.