Shahnameh facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Shahnameh 

The Book of Kings
by Ferdowsi
Court of Keyumars, Miniature by Sultan Muhammad from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp . Aga Khan Museum
Original title	شاهنامه
Written	977–1010 CE
Country	Iran
Language	Classical Persian
Subject(s)	Persian mythology, history of Iran
Genre(s)	epic poem
Meter	Lines of 22 syllables with two rhyming couplets in the same metre (bahr-i mutaqarib-i mahzuf)
Publication date	1010
Published in English	1832
Media type	manuscript
Lines	c. 50,000 depending on manuscript
Preceded by	Khwaday-Namag
Read online	"Shahnameh" at Wikisource

Plate with a hunting scene from the tale of Bahram Gur and Azadeh. The imagery on this plate represents the earliest known depiction of a well-known episode from the story of Bahram Gur, which seems to have been popular for centuries, but was only recorded in the Shahnameh, centuries after this plate was created. Iran, c. 5th century A.D. Metropolitan Museum of Art

Shahnameh

The Shahnameh (Persian: شاهنامه, romanized: Šāhnāme, lit. 'The Book of Kings'), also transliterated Shahnama, is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet 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), the Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems. It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the greater region influenced by Persian culture such as Armenia, Dagestan, Georgia, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan celebrate this national epic.

The work is of central importance in Persian culture and Persian language, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of the ethno-national cultural identity of Iran.

Illustrated copies

Gushtasp Displays His Prowess at Polo before the Qaisar of Rum, Folio from the Peck Shahnama. Shiraz, 1589–1590. Princeton University Library

Illustrated copies of the work are among the most sumptuous examples of Persian miniature painting. Several copies remain intact, although two of the most famous, the Houghton Shahnameh and the Great Mongol Shahnameh, were broken up for sheets to be sold separately in the 20th century. A single sheet from the former was sold for £904,000 in 2006. The Baysonghori Shahnameh, an illuminated manuscript copy of the work (Golestan Palace, Iran), is included in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register of cultural heritage items.

The Mongol rulers in Iran revived and spurred the patronage of the Shahnameh in its manuscript form. The "Great Mongol" or Demotte Shahnameh, produced during the reign of the Ilkhanid Sultan Abu Sa'id, is one of the most illustrative and important copies of the Shahnameh.

The Timurids continued the tradition of manuscript production.

The production of illustrated Shahnameh manuscripts in the 15th century remained vigorous during the Qarā-Qoyunlu or Black Sheep (1380–1468) and Āq Qoyunlu or White Sheep (1378–1508) Turkman dynasties. Many of the extant illustrated copies, with more than seventy or more paintings, are attributable to Tabriz, Shiraz, and Baghdad beginning in about the 1450s–60s and continuing to the end of the century.

The Safavid era saw a resurgence of Shahnameh productions. Shah Ismail I used the epic for propaganda purposes: as a gesture of Persian patriotism, as a celebration of renewed Persian rule, and as a reassertion of Persian royal authority. The Safavids commissioned elaborate copies of the Shahnameh to support their legitimacy. Among the high points of Shahnameh illustrations was the series of 250 miniatures commissioned by Shah Ismail for his son's Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp. Two similar cycles of illustration of the mid-17th century, the Shahnameh of Rashida and the Windsor Shahnameh, come from the last great period of the Persian miniature.

In honour of the Shahnameh's millennial anniversary, in 2010 the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge hosted a major exhibition, called "Epic of the Persian Kings: The Art of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh", which ran from September 2010 to January 2011. The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC also hosted an exhibition of folios from the 14th through the 16th centuries, called "Shahnama: 1000 Years of the Persian Book of Kings", from October 2010 to April 2011.

In 2013 Hamid Rahmanian illustrated a new English translation of the Shahnameh (translated by Ahmad Sadri) creating new imagery from old manuscripts.

Modern editions

Illuminated frontispiece (sarlawh) from the Shahnameh of Shah Abbas, made by Zayn al-‛Abidin Tabrizi. Qazvin, c. 1590–1600. Chester Beatty Library

Esfandiyar's Fifth Trial - He Slays the Simurgh, Folio from the Shahnameh in the Kangra style. Kangra, 1695. Chester Beatty Library

Rostam kills the White Div, illustration from the Shahnameh-ye Kajuri, first Iranian lithographed Shahnameh. Tehran, 1851–53. Bavarian State Library

English translations

There have been a number of English translations, almost all abridged. James Atkinson of the East India Company's medical service undertook a translation into English in his 1832 publication for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, now part of the Royal Asiatic Society. Between 1905 and 1925, the brothers Arthur and Edmond Warner published a translation of the complete work in nine volumes, now out of print. There are also modern incomplete translations of the Shahnameh: Reuben Levy's 1967 prose version (later revised by Amin Banani), and another by Dick Davis in a mixture of poetry and prose which appeared in 2006. Also a new English translation of the book in prose by Ahmad Sadri was published in 2013.

The Parsis, Zoroastrians, whose ancestors had migrated to India in the 8th or 10th century so they could continue practice of their religion in peace, have also kept the Shahnameh traditions alive. Dr. Bahman Sohrabji Surti, assisted by Marzban Giara, published between 1986 and 1988 the first detailed and complete translation of the Shahnameh from the original Persian verse into English prose, in seven volumes.

Other languages

There are various translations in French and German. An Italian translation was published in eight volumes by Italo Pizzi with the title Il libro dei re. Poema epico recato dal persiano in versi italiani da Italo Pizzi, 8 voll., Torino, Vincenzo Bona, 1886–1888 (later reissued in two volumes with a compendium, from UTET, Turin, 1915).

Dastur Faramroz Kutar and his brother Ervad Mahiyar Kutar translated the Shahnameh into Gujarati verse and prose and published 10 volumes between 1914 and 1918.

A Spanish translation was published in two volumes by the Islamic Research Institute of the Tehran Branch of McGill University.

See also

In Spanish: Shāhnāmé para niños

Images for kids

• 

  Shahnameh (Book of Kings) Abu'l Qasim Firdausi (935–1020)

• 

  Scenes from the Shahnameh carved into reliefs at Ferdowsi's mausoleum in Tus, Iran

• 

  Courtiers of Bayasanghori playing chess

• 

  Rustam kills the Turanian hero Alkus with his lance

• 

  A battle scene from the Baysonghori Shahnameh

• 

  Georgian manuscript of Shahnameh written in the Georgian script.

• 

  Sohrab and Rustum fighting (painted/published circa 1522)

• 

  A battle between the hosts of Iran and Turan during the reign of Kay Khusraw

• 

  Bizhane receives an invitation through Manizheh's nurse

• 

  An image illustrating the parable of the ship of faith from the Houghton Shahnameh (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

• 

  An illustration from the Shahnameh