Ferdowsi

Who is Ferdowsi?

Abu'l-Qasem Ferdowsi Tusi was a Persian poet born near Tus in the Khorasan region of present-day northeastern Iran. He is the author of the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings), the national epic of Greater Iran and one of the longest epic poems ever written by a single author, comprising roughly 50,000 couplets. Ferdowsi worked on the Shahnameh for around three decades, drawing on earlier prose sources to recount the mythical and historical past of the Persian world from the creation of the world to the Arab conquest. Written in a deliberately Persian vocabulary, the work is credited with helping preserve the Persian language and cultural identity after the Islamic conquest. Ferdowsi's characters — Rostam, Sohrab, Siyavash, Zal — remain central to Iranian cultural memory. He reportedly died in poverty in his native Tus, where his tomb is now a national monument.

Sources: Ferdowsi, Shahnameh (composed c. 977–1010) · Dick Davis (trans.), Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, 2006 · Encyclopaedia Iranica, entry 'Ferdowsi, Abu'l-Qasem'