Author of the Shahnameh, father of the Persian national epic
Persia’s greatest poet, who spent more than thirty years writing the sixty-thousand-couplet national epic the Shahnameh (Book of Kings), tracing the legends of Persia’s kings and heroes from the creation to the Arab conquest. With Persia already under Arab rule and the Persian language facing oblivion, he deliberately used almost no Arabic loanwords, writing in pure Persian — all but single-handedly, with one epic, he preserved a people’s language and memory. Iranians still regard the Shahnameh as the soul of the nation.
In an age when Persian was fading under the Arab conquest, Ferdowsi resolved to write his people’s history in the purest Persian. He said: "I labored thirty years, and with this Persian I gave this nation new life." It is the Shahnameh that carried the Persian language and Persian identity across a thousand years undimmed.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.