Information about Ferdowsi
Hakīm Abul-Qāsim Firdawsī Tūsī (Persian: حکیم ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی), more commonly transliterated as Ferdowsi, (935–1020) is a highly revered Persian poet. He was the author of the Shāhnāma, the national epic of Persia (Iran).
When he was just 23-years old, he found a “Shāhnāma” written by Abu-Mansour Almoammari; it was not, however, in poetic form. It consisted of older versions ordered by Abu-Mansour ibn Abdol-razzagh. The discovery would be a fateful moment in the life of the poet. Ferdowsi started his composition of the Shahnameh in the Samanid era in 977 A.D[1]. During Ferdowsi’s lifetime the Samanid dynasty was conquered by the Ghaznavid Empire.
After 30 years of hard work, he finished the book and two or three years after that, Ferdowsi went to Ghazni, the Ghaznavid capital, to present it to the king. There are various stories in medieval texts describing the lack of interest shown by the new king, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, in Ferdowsi and his lifework. According to historians, Mahmud had promised Ferdowsi a dinar for every distich written in the Shahnameh (60,000 dinars), but later retracted and presented him with dirhams (20,000 dirhams), which were at that time much less valuable than dinars (every 100 dirhams worth 1 dinar). Some think it was the jealousy of other poets working at the king’s court that led to this treachery; the incident encouraged Ferdowsi's enemies in the court. Ferdowsi rejected the money and, by some accounts, he gave it to a poor man who sold wine. Wandering for a time in Sistan and Mazandaran, he eventually returned to Tus, heartbroken and enraged.
He had left behind a poem for the King, stuck to the wall of the room he had worked in for all those years. It was a long and angry poem, more like a curse, and ended with the words:
"Heaven's vengeance will not forget. Shrink tyrant from my words of fire, and tremble at a poet's ire."
Ferdowsi is said to have died around 1020 in poverty at the age of 90, embittered by royal neglect, though fully confident of his work’s ultimate success and fame (clearly seen especially in last verses of his book). One tradition claims Mahmud re-sent the amount promised to Ferdowsi’s village, but when the messengers reached his house, he had died a few hours earlier. The gift was then given to his daughter, since his son had died before his father at the age of 37. However, his daughter refused to receive the sum, thus making Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh immortal.
Later the king ordered the money be used for repairing an inn in the way from Merv to Tus, named “Robat Chaheh” so that it may remain in remembrance of the poet. This inn now lies in ruins, but still exists.
Some say that Ferdowsi's daughter inherited her father's hard earned money, and she built a new and strong bridge with a beautiful stone caravanserai nearby for travellers to rest and trade and tell stories.[2]
Ferdowsi was buried at the yard of his own home, where his mausoleum now lies. It was not until Reza Shah Pahlavi's rule, in 1925, that a mausoleum was built for the great poet.
The Shāhnāma, or the "Book of Kings," consists of the translation of an even older Pahlavi (Middle Persian) work. It has remained exceptionally popular among Persians for over a thousand years. It tells the history of old Persia before the Arab conquest of the region. This tale, all written in poetic form and in Darī Persian, starts 7,000 years ago, narrating the story of Persian kings, Persian knights, Persian system of laws, Persian Religion, Persian victories and Persian tragedies.
Illustrations, especially those of Master Mahmoud Farshchian, are historical and use the different themes for the stories.
According to popular legend, Ferdowsi was commissioned by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni to write a book about his valour and conquests. However, the poet, though dedicating the book to the King for an agreed fee of 30 camels loaded with gold coins, decided to tell the story of the Kings that had made the land of Persia into an Empire throughout the ages. This task was to take the poet some thirty years or more, during which he included the verse:
Upon the presentation of the Shāhnāma, Sultan Mahmud was furious for not being the subject of the book and finally betrayed the agreement by offering Ferdowsi thirty camels loaded with Silver; the offer was refused by the poet. Heartbroken and poor the poet returned to his home town of Tus, the Sultan eventually realising his error and the true value of the Shāhnāma sent the agreed fee to the poet yet, upon the arrival of the camels the Ferdowsi's coffin was being carried out through the exit gate of Tus to his grave.
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 Nezami, 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.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica: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 masterwork, 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 Pahlavi original, is pure Persian with only the slightest admixture of Arabic.[3]
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Life
Ferdowsi was born in the Iranian province of Razavi Khorasan, in a village near Tus, in 935. His father was a wealthy land owner. His great epic, the Shāhnāma ("The Epic of Kings"), to which he devoted more than 35 years, was originally composed for presentation to the Samanid princes of Khorasan, who were the chief instigators of the revival of Iranian cultural traditions after the Arab conquest of the seventh century.When he was just 23-years old, he found a “Shāhnāma” written by Abu-Mansour Almoammari; it was not, however, in poetic form. It consisted of older versions ordered by Abu-Mansour ibn Abdol-razzagh. The discovery would be a fateful moment in the life of the poet. Ferdowsi started his composition of the Shahnameh in the Samanid era in 977 A.D[1]. During Ferdowsi’s lifetime the Samanid dynasty was conquered by the Ghaznavid Empire.
After 30 years of hard work, he finished the book and two or three years after that, Ferdowsi went to Ghazni, the Ghaznavid capital, to present it to the king. There are various stories in medieval texts describing the lack of interest shown by the new king, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, in Ferdowsi and his lifework. According to historians, Mahmud had promised Ferdowsi a dinar for every distich written in the Shahnameh (60,000 dinars), but later retracted and presented him with dirhams (20,000 dirhams), which were at that time much less valuable than dinars (every 100 dirhams worth 1 dinar). Some think it was the jealousy of other poets working at the king’s court that led to this treachery; the incident encouraged Ferdowsi's enemies in the court. Ferdowsi rejected the money and, by some accounts, he gave it to a poor man who sold wine. Wandering for a time in Sistan and Mazandaran, he eventually returned to Tus, heartbroken and enraged.
He had left behind a poem for the King, stuck to the wall of the room he had worked in for all those years. It was a long and angry poem, more like a curse, and ended with the words:
"Heaven's vengeance will not forget. Shrink tyrant from my words of fire, and tremble at a poet's ire."
Ferdowsi is said to have died around 1020 in poverty at the age of 90, embittered by royal neglect, though fully confident of his work’s ultimate success and fame (clearly seen especially in last verses of his book). One tradition claims Mahmud re-sent the amount promised to Ferdowsi’s village, but when the messengers reached his house, he had died a few hours earlier. The gift was then given to his daughter, since his son had died before his father at the age of 37. However, his daughter refused to receive the sum, thus making Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh immortal.
Later the king ordered the money be used for repairing an inn in the way from Merv to Tus, named “Robat Chaheh” so that it may remain in remembrance of the poet. This inn now lies in ruins, but still exists.
Some say that Ferdowsi's daughter inherited her father's hard earned money, and she built a new and strong bridge with a beautiful stone caravanserai nearby for travellers to rest and trade and tell stories.[2]
Ferdowsi was buried at the yard of his own home, where his mausoleum now lies. It was not until Reza Shah Pahlavi's rule, in 1925, that a mausoleum was built for the great poet.
Books
His masterpiece, the Shāhnāma, is the most popular and influential national epics belonging to the countries and populations (Fars, Afghan, Armani, Lor, Kurd, Tajik, Azari, Khorasani, Bakhtari, Gilani, Turkman, Daghistani, Khazagh, Uzbak, Gorgi, Baluchi, sistani, Iraqi) that at one time made up the greater Arian territories, named in Prophet Zarathustra's Gatha as Aeran Vaege, in Shahnameh as Aeran (Iran), and in Greek as Persian Empire. In this context we use "Persians" to denote what the Greeks viewed as the people of Aeran Vaege and the word Persia for all its territories. Thus the greatest achievement of Ferdowsi is to have all of the named fragments of the former Persian Empire, once again recite together "if there is no Aeran, may my body be vanquished, and in this land and nation no one remain alive, if everyone of us dies one by one, it is better than giving our country to the enemy." If there is a single document in the Persian literature that can reunite Persia and all of its nations, it is this document.)
The Shāhnāma, or the "Book of Kings," consists of the translation of an even older Pahlavi (Middle Persian) work. It has remained exceptionally popular among Persians for over a thousand years. It tells the history of old Persia before the Arab conquest of the region. This tale, all written in poetic form and in Darī Persian, starts 7,000 years ago, narrating the story of Persian kings, Persian knights, Persian system of laws, Persian Religion, Persian victories and Persian tragedies.
Illustrations, especially those of Master Mahmoud Farshchian, are historical and use the different themes for the stories.
According to popular legend, Ferdowsi was commissioned by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni to write a book about his valour and conquests. However, the poet, though dedicating the book to the King for an agreed fee of 30 camels loaded with gold coins, decided to tell the story of the Kings that had made the land of Persia into an Empire throughout the ages. This task was to take the poet some thirty years or more, during which he included the verse:
| ... I suffered during these thirty years, but I have revived the Iranians (Ajam) with the Persian language; I shall not die since I am alive again, as I have spread the seeds of this language ... |
Upon the presentation of the Shāhnāma, Sultan Mahmud was furious for not being the subject of the book and finally betrayed the agreement by offering Ferdowsi thirty camels loaded with Silver; the offer was refused by the poet. Heartbroken and poor the poet returned to his home town of Tus, the Sultan eventually realising his error and the true value of the Shāhnāma sent the agreed fee to the poet yet, upon the arrival of the camels the Ferdowsi's coffin was being carried out through the exit gate of Tus to his grave.
Influence
Ferdowsi is one of the undisputed giants of Persian literature. After Ferdowsi's Shāhnāma 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 Shāhnāma, 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 Nezami, 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.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica: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 masterwork, 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 Pahlavi original, is pure Persian with only the slightest admixture of Arabic.[3]
References
- E.G. Browne. Literary History of Persia. (Four volumes, 2,256 pages, and twenty-five years in the writing). 1998. ISBN 0-7007-0406-X
- Jan Rypka, History of Iranian Literature. Reidel Publishing Company. 1968 OCLC 460598 ISBN 90-277-0143-1
See also
- Shāhnāma
- List of Persian poets and authors
- Persian literature
- Sassanid dynasty
- Iranistics
- List of mausoleums
| Persian literature series | |
|---|---|
) |
شاهنامه فردوسی Shahnameh of Ferdowsi |
| Characters: | Abtin | Arash | Afrāsiāb | Bizhan | Esfandiār | Fereydun | Goodarz | Gordāfarid | Hushang | Jamshid | Kāveh | Kai Khosrow | Kiumars | Manuchehr | Manizheh | Rakhsh | Rohām | Rostam | Rostam Farrokhzad | Rudābeh | Sām | Shaghād | Siāmak | Siāvash | Simurgh | Sohrāb | Tahmineh | Tahmuras | Zāl | Zahhāk |
| Places: | Irān | Māzandarān | Samangān | Turān | Zābolestān | Kābul | Birjand |
Persian literature series | ||
|---|---|---|
| Middle Persian | Denkard Book of Jamasp Book of Arda Viraf Karnamak-i Artaxshir-i Papakan | |
| Classic literature | Rūdakī (900s) Daqīqī (900s) Ferdowsī (Šahnāma, 900s) Bābā Tāher (1000s) Nāṣir Khosrow (1004 - 1088) Omar Khayyām (1048-1131) Attār (1142 – ca. 1220) Mowlana Rumi (1200s) Amīr Khosrow (1253 - 1325) Sa'adī (Būstān (1257) and Golestān (1258)) Hāfez (Dīvān, 1300s) Nizāmī (1141 – 1209) Jāmī (1400s) | |
| Contemporary literature | Sādeq Hedāyat Forough Farrokhzad Šāmlū Khalilollāh Khalilī Shahriar Loiq Sherali Muhammad Iqbal . Parvin E'tesami | |
fɒːɾˈsiː in Perso-Arabic script (Nasta`liq style):
Pronunciation: [fɒːɾˈsiː]
Spoken in: Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and areas of Uzbekistan and Pakistan.
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Pronunciation: [fɒːɾˈsiː]
Spoken in: Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and areas of Uzbekistan and Pakistan.
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935 936 937 938
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900s 910s 920s 930s 940s 950s in poetry|960s |
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932 933 934 935 936 937 938
900s 910s 920s 930s 940s 950s in poetry|960s |
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50-60 million
(including all sub-groups)
Regions with significant populations
Iran [1]
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Tajikistan [2]
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(including all sub-groups)
Regions with significant populations
Iran [1]
[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ir.html#People]
Tajikistan [2]
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A poet is a person who writes poetry. This is usually influenced by a cultural and intellectual tradition. Some consider the best poetry to be, to some extent, and universal, and to address issues common to all humanity; others are more absorbed by its particular, personal and
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Shāhnāmé, or Shāhnāma (Persian: شاهنامه)(alternative spellings are Shahnama, Shahnameh, Shahname, Shah-Nama, etc.
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A national epic is an epic poem or similar work which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation; not necessarily a nation-state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with aspirations to independence or autonomy .
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BCE Zayandeh River Civilization Sialk civilization 7500–1000 Jiroft civilization (Aratta) Proto-Elamite civilization Bactria-Margiana Complex Elamite dynasties 2800–550 Kingdom of Mannai Median Empire 728–550 Achaemenid Empire Seleucid Empire Greco-Bactrian
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Anthem
Sorūd-e Mellī-e Īrān ²
Capital
(and largest city) Tehran
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Sorūd-e Mellī-e Īrān ²
Capital
(and largest city) Tehran
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Razavi Khorasan (in Persian: خراسان رضوی) is a province located in northeastern Iran. Mashhad is the centre and capital of the province.
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Toos (توس or طوس in Persian) also known as Tous or Tus, is an ancient city in the Iranian province of Razavi Khorasan.
The city was vanquished by Genghis Khan's Mongol conquest in 1220.
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The city was vanquished by Genghis Khan's Mongol conquest in 1220.
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Shāhnāmé, or Shāhnāma (Persian: شاهنامه)(alternative spellings are Shahnama, Shahnameh, Shahname, Shah-Nama, etc.
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The Samanids (819–999)[1] (Persian: سامانیان Sāmāniyān
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The Samanids (819–999)[1] (Persian: سامانیان Sāmāniyān
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The Samanids (819–999)[1] (Persian: سامانیان Sāmāniyān
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This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone and/or spelling.
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Sultan (Arabic: سلطان) is an Islamic title, with several historical meanings. Originally it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", or "rulership", derived from the Arabic
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Mahmud of Ghazni (Persian: محمود غزنوی Maḥmūd-e Ghaznawī) (November 2 971–April 30 1030), also known as
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Sistan (Persian: سیستان) is a border region, southeastern Iran and southwestern Afghanistan. One portion is part of the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan.
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State Party Turkmenistan
Type Cultural
Criteria ii, iii
Reference 886
Region Asia-Pacific
Inscription History
Inscription 1999 (23rd Session)
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Type Cultural
Criteria ii, iii
Reference 886
Region Asia-Pacific
Inscription History
Inscription 1999 (23rd Session)
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Toos (توس or طوس in Persian) also known as Tous or Tus, is an ancient city in the Iranian province of Razavi Khorasan.
The city was vanquished by Genghis Khan's Mongol conquest in 1220.
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The city was vanquished by Genghis Khan's Mongol conquest in 1220.
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mausoleum (plural: mausolea) is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or persons.
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Reign December 15, 1925 - September 16, 1941
Born March 16 1878
Alasht, Savad Kooh, Mazandaran
Died July 26 1944 (aged 66)
Johannesburg, South Africa
Buried
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Born March 16 1878
Alasht, Savad Kooh, Mazandaran
Died July 26 1944 (aged 66)
Johannesburg, South Africa
Buried
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mausoleum (plural: mausolea) is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or persons.
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Shāhnāmé, or Shāhnāma (Persian: شاهنامه)(alternative spellings are Shahnama, Shahnameh, Shahname, Shah-Nama, etc.
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In a political sense, the term Afghān refers to the citizens of Afghanistan. From an ethnological point of view, Afghān is the term by which ethnic Pashtuns are designated by Persian-speakers.
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Pahlavi script
ISO 15924 Phlv (Book Pahlavi)
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Pahlavi or Pahlevi denotes a particular and exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages.
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ISO 15924 Phlv (Book Pahlavi)
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
Pahlavi or Pahlevi denotes a particular and exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages.
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fɒːɾˈsiː in Perso-Arabic script (Nasta`liq style):
Pronunciation: [fɒːɾˈsiː]
Spoken in: Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and areas of Uzbekistan and Pakistan.
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Pronunciation: [fɒːɾˈsiː]
Spoken in: Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and areas of Uzbekistan and Pakistan.
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