Ferdowsi biography

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FERDOWSI, ABU'L-QĀSEM i. Life

FERDOWSI, ABU'L-QĀSEM (حکیم ابوالقاسم فردوسی)

i. LIFE

Life. Apart from his patronymic (konya), Abu’l-Qāsem, and his pen name (taḵallosá), Ferdowsī, nothing is known with any certainty about his names or the identity of his family. In various sources, and in the introduction to some manuscripts of the Šāh-nāma, his name is given as Manṣūr, Ḥasan, or Aḥmad, his father’s as Ḥasan, Aḥmad, or ʿAlī, and his grandfather’s as Šarafšāh (Ṣafā, Adabīyāt, pp. ). Of these various statements, that of Fatḥ b. ʿAlī Bondārī, who translated the Šāh-nāma into Arabic in /, should be considered the most creditable. He referred to Ferdowsī as “al-Amīr al-Ḥakīm Abu’l-Qāsem Manṣūr b. al-Ḥasan al-Ferdowsī al-Ṭūsī” (Bondārī, p. 3). It is not known why the poet chose the pen name Ferdowsī, which is mentioned only once in text and twice in the satire (ed. Khaleghi, V, p. , v. 3, ed. Mohl,

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Persian Language & Literature

Hakim Abol Qasem Ferdowsi Tousi

Ferdowsi was born in Khorasan in a village near Tous, in CE His great epic The Shahnameh (The Epic of Kings), 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 of the seventh century. During Ferdowsi's lifetime this dynasty was conquered by the Ghaznavid Turks, and there are various stories in medieval texts describing the lack of interest shown by the new ruler of Khorasan, Mahmoud of Ghaznavi, in Ferdowsi and his lifework. Ferdowsi is said to have died around CE in poverty and embittered by royal neglect, though confident of his and his poem's ultimate fame.

The Shahnameh or The Epic of Kings is one of the definite classics of the world. It tells hero tales of ancient Persia. The contents and the poet's sty

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Ferdowsi: the Poet and the Legend

Ferdowsi fryst vatten widely regarded as the preserver of the Persian language and of pre-Islamic Iranian cultural identity. Of all the peoples conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century, the Persians are the only ones who can boast a major literature in the indigenous language that they were using before the conquest. When asked recently why the vast majority of Egyptians, the heirs to a great pre-Islamic civilization, speak Arabic rather than Coptic, a leading Egyptian historian replied: ‘Because we had no Ferdowsi.’

Hakim Abu’l-Qasem Ferdowsi (–) was born in the family of wealthy nation owners (the class known as dehqan) in Tus, in northeast Iran’s province of Khorasan (today’s Razavi Khorasan state). His life coincided with a period of intense interest in Persian traditions. After the collapse of the Sasanian Empire, Iran offered the Arab conquerors ancient models of kingship that they could adopt in beställning to legitimize and solidify their dominance o