Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings

1032 Pages·2016·32.72 MB·English

by  Abolqasem Ferdowsi

PENQUIN CLASSICS
SHAHNAMEH
was born in Khorasan in a village near Tus, in 940 .
ABOLQASEM FERDOWSI CE
His great epic the Shahnameh, to which he devoted most of his adult
life, was originally composed for the Samanid princes of Khorasan, who
were the chief instigators of the revival of Persian cultural traditions
after the Arab conquest. During Ferdowsi’s lifetime, the Samanid
dynasty was conquered by the Ghaznavid Turks. Legend has it that
Ferdowsi’s lifework was not appreciated by King Mahmud of Ghazneh.
He is said to have died around 1020 in poverty and embittered by royal
neglect, though confident of his poem’s ultimate fame.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, is Emeritus
DICK DAVIS
Professor of Persian at Ohio State University. His other translations
from Persian include Borrowed Ware: Medieval Persian Epigrams, The
Legend of Seyavash, Vis and Ramin, Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets
of Shiraz, and, with Afkham Darbandi, The Conference of the Birds.

PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006
Published in Penguin Books 2007
This expanded edition published 2016
Copyright © 1997, 2000, 2004, 2016 by Mage Publishers Introduction copyright © 2006 by Azar Nafisi
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Originally published in three volumes entitled The Lion and the Throne, Fathers and Sons,
and Sunset of Empire by Mage Publishers, Washington, D.C.
Illustrations provided by Dr. Ulrich Marzolph from his archive of Persian lithographed book illustrations in Goettingen, Germany.
eBook ISBN 9781101993231
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: Firdawsåi, author. | Davis, Dick, 1945– translator.
Title: Shahnameh : the Persian book of kings / Abolqasem Ferdowsi ; translated by Dick Davis ; foreword by Azar Nafisi.
Other titles: Shåahnåamah. English
Description: New York : Penguin Books, 2016. | Series: Penguin classics Identifiers: LCCN 2015045006 | ISBN 9780143108320
(paperback) Subjects: | BISAC: POETRY / Epic. | POETRY / Ancient, Classical & Medieval. |
POETRY / Middle Eastern.
Classification: LCC PK6456.A13 D3813 2016 | DDC 891/.5511—dc23
Cover art: (detail) Siyavush Plays Polo before Afrasiyab, Qasim ibn ‘Ali, c.1520–30. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of
Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. / Image source. Art Resource, NY.
Version_1
This translation is dedicated to
Mohammad and Najmieh Batmanglij,
with my gratitude and affection.
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
FOREWORD BY AZAR NAFISI
INTRODUCTION
A NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
THE FIRST KINGS
THE DEMON-KING ZAHHAK
THE STORY OF FERAYDUN AND HIS THREE SONS
THE STORY OF IRAJ
THE VENGEANCE OF MANUCHEHR
THE TALE OF SAM AND THE SIMORGH
THE TALE OF ZAL AND RUDABEH
ROSTAM, THE SON OF ZAL-DASTAN
THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR BETWEEN IRAN AND TURAN
ROSTAM AND HIS HORSE RAKHSH
ROSTAM AND KAY QOBAD
KAY KAVUS’S WAR AGAINST THE DEMONS OF MAZANDERAN
THE SEVEN TRIALS OF ROSTAM
THE KING OF HAMAVERAN AND HIS DAUGHTER SUDABEH
THE TALE OF SOHRAB
THE LEGEND OF SEYAVASH
GIV BRINGS KAY KHOSROW AND FARIGIS TO IRAN
FORUD, THE SON OF SEYAVASH
THE AKVAN DIV
BIZHAN AND MANIZHEH
THE DEATH OF PIRAN
THE DEATH OF AFRASYAB
THE OCCULTATION OF KAY KHOSROW
ROSTAM AND ESFANDYAR
THE DEATH OF ROSTAM
THE STORY OF DARAB AND THE FULLER
SEKANDAR’S CONQUEST OF PERSIA
THE REIGN OF SEKANDAR
THE ASHKANIANS
THE REIGN OF ARDESHIR
THE REIGN OF SHAPUR, SON OF ARDESHIR
THE REIGN OF SHAPUR ZU’L AKTAF
THE REIGN OF YAZDEGERD THE UNJUST
THE REIGN OF BAHRAM GUR
THE STORY OF MAZDAK
THE REIGN OF KESRA NUSHIN-RAVAN
THE REIGN OF HORMOZD
THE REIGN OF KHOSROW PARVIZ
THE STORY OF KHOSROW AND SHIRIN
THE REIGN OF YAZDEGERD
GLOSSARY OF NAMES
INDEX OF HEADINGS
FOREWORD
BY
A N
ZAR AFISI
I have two books in front of me. One is the galley for Dick Davis’s Shahnameh,
The Persian Book of Kings; the other is a much thinner book, designed for
young readers and on its cover, above a Persian miniature painting of men on
horses, is written in Persian: Selections from Shahnameh, by Ahmad Nafisi. In
his introduction to this selection, my father mentions that the idea for this book
goes back to the time he started telling stories from Persia’s classical literature,
beginning with Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, to my brother and me when we were no
more than three or four years old and later to our children. My father always
insisted that Persians basically did not have a home, except in their literature,
especially their poetry. This country, our country, he would say, has been
attacked and invaded numerous times, and each time, when Persians had lost
their sense of their own history, culture and language, they found their poets as
the true guardians of their true home. Citing the poet Ferdowsi and how, after the
Arab invasion of Persia, he rescued and redefined his nation’s identity and
culture through writing the epic of Persian mythology and history in his Book of
Kings, my father would say, We have no other home but this, pointing to the
invisible book, this, he would repeat is our home, always, for you and your
brother, and your children and your children’s children.
Thus it was that like so many other Persian children my brother and I and
later our children grew up with the Shahnameh and in the kingdom of
imagination our father had created for us. Rostam, Tahmineh, Seyavash, Bizhan
and the other fictional characters in Ferdowsi’s stories became our brothers and
sisters, cousins and neighbors. Ferdowsi’s devoted readers throughout the
centuries rewarded him by creating their own legends around him. When I was a
married woman with children of my own, my father, in the same manner he used
when I was a small child, would tell my children of the conflict between the
noble poet Ferdowsi and the fickle king, Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi. Dick Davis