The Shahnameh is a monument of poetry and historiography, being mainly the poetical recast of what Ferdowsi, his contemporaries, and his predecessors regarded as the account of Iran's ancient history. Originally composed by Abolqasem Ferdowsi in the 10th century, the Shahnameh enjoys the distinction of being the longest epic poem by a single author in existence. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Georgian versions of the Šāh-nāma are quite popular, and the stories of Rostam and Sohrāb, or Bījan and Maniža became part of Georgian folklore.[21]. The illustrations in the book are breathtakingly beautiful. It took him thirty years to write the sixty thousand verses that comprise the Shahnameh or "The Book of Kings." The critical apparatus is extensive and a large number of variants for many parts of the poem were recorded. Shahnameh is a lengthy epic poem which vividly intertwines the mythical and historical history of Persia, thereby enchanting and impressing readers for many centuries. Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings, illustrated by Mr. Hamid Rahmanian, a noted filmmaker and graphic designer, and translated by Dr. Ahmad Sadri, Gorter Professor of Islamic World Studies and Professor of Sociology at Lake Forest College, affords the reader an exciting introduction to Ferdowsi's epic saga of ancient Persian triumphs, tragedies, romances, and heroic exploits. I first heard about this book watching a BBC programme "Art of Persia". Shah Ismail I was also affected deeply by Ferdowsi’s work and his use of the Persian literary tradition of Iran and named all of his sons after characters in the Shahnameh. 2 Stars, 0 product ratings 0. In this sense, it would be pleasant to learn about the most ancient Persians and quickly follow them up to the present day at an all the more free and steady pace. Borjian, Habib and Maryam Borjian. (spit on your face, oh heavens spit! Enjoyed the multi-coloured pages what made the text more readable - the English text was clear and lucid and well spaced out making the stories easier to follow. This calls into question the idea of Ferdowsi's deliberate eschewing of Arabic words.[15]. [18] After defeating Muhammad Shaybāni's Uzbeks, Ismāil asked Hātefī, a famous poet from Jam (Khorasan), to write a Shahnameh-like epic about his victories and his newly established dynasty. Shop books, stationery, devices and other learning essentials. For them, it was considered de rigueur for the members of the family to have personal copies of the epic poem. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 January 2021, Such an amazing book i wasn’t expecting it to be so large however I’m not complaining the design and illustration is crazy. According to Dick Davis, professor of Persian at Ohio State University, it is "by far the best edition of the Shahnameh available, and it is surely likely to remain such for a very long time".[69]. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Translated by Helen Zimmern. The book is lovely and well worth the money. I've paid triple the price for books like this. The first modern critical edition of the Shahnameh was prepared by a Russian team led by E. E. Bertels, using the oldest known manuscripts at the time, dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, with heavy reliance on the 1276 manuscript from the British Museum and the 1333 Leningrad manuscript, the latter of which has now been considered a secondary manuscript. Originally written in couplets, the new translation and adaptation by Ahmad Sadri retells the mythological tales in prose format. There have been a number of English translations, almost all abridged. You won't be disappointed with this book. [64], In 2013 Hamid Rahmanian illustrated a new English translation of Shahnameh (translated by Ahmad Sadri) using images from various pictures of old manuscripts of the book to create new imagery.[65][66]. International experts including Charles Melville, Barbara Brend, Dick Davis and Firuza Abullaeva shed light on the epic… Ferdowsi concludes the Shahnameh by writing: I've reached the end of this great history This monumental work begins with legends of the birth of the Persian nationhood and ends with the Arab conquest of Iran. [23] The Turanians of Shahnameh are an Iranian people representing Iranian nomads of the Eurasian Steppes and have no relationship to the culture of the Turks. Abolqasem Ferdowsi was born in Khorasan in a village near Tus in 940.His great epic, Shahnameh, was originally composed for the Samanid princes of Khorasan.Ferdowsi died around 1020 in poverty. Unable to add item to List. After an opening in praise of God and Wisdom, the Shahnameh gives an account of the creation of the world and of man as believed by the Sassanians. The Shahnameh is a collection of stories and myths from ancient Iran - kings, heroes, princesses, magical animals and demons are all here. [13] These include the line: tofu bar to, ey charkh-i gardun, tofu! عجم زنده کردم بدین پارسی. During the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah, the epic was largely ignored in favor of the more obtuse, esoteric and dryly intellectual Persian literature. [58] The Safavids commissioned elaborate copies of the Shahnameh to support their legitimacy. [31] Goethe was inspired by Persian literature, which moved him to write his West-Eastern Divan. Something went wrong. Not only is the translation more pithy and digestible than other attempts that I've read, the artwork alone is enough to justify buying it! This new prose translation of the national epic is illuminated with over 500 pages of illustrations and will be published in April 2013. Both editions lacked critical apparatuses and were based on secondary manuscripts dated after the 15th century; much later than the original work. 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. The text is written in the late Middle Persian, which was the immediate ancestor of Modern Persian. We use cookies and similar tools to enhance your shopping experience, to provide our services, understand how customers use our services so we can make improvements, and display ads. in order to keep Persian ajam (meaning non-Arabic, or specifically Iranian). Farmanfarmaian in the Journal of Persianate Studies: Distinguished scholars of Persian such as Gvakharia and Todua are well aware that the inspiration derived from the Persian classics of the ninth to the twelfth centuries produced a ‘cultural synthesis’ which saw, in the earliest stages of written secular literature in Georgia, the resumption of literary contacts with Iran, “much stronger than before” (Gvakharia, 2001, p. 481). The 1217 Florence manuscript is one of the earliest known copies of the Shahnameh, predating the Moghul invasion and the following destruction of important libraries and manuscript collections. 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. The Shahnameh has 62 stories, 990 chapters, and some 50,000 rhyming couplets, making it more than three times the length of Homer's Iliad, and more than twelve times the length of the German Nibelungenlied. Medieval Islamic Period", http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/shahnameh/, "Ferdowsi's "Shahnameh": The Book of Kings", "Shahnameh in the Kurdish and Armenian Oral Tradition (abridged)", "Šāh-nāma Translations ii. Ferdowsi started writing the Shahnameh in 977 and completed it on 8 March 1010. [57], The Timurids continued the tradition of manuscript production. The fall of the Sassanids and the Arab conquest of Persia are narrated romantically. [17], Shah Ismail I (d.1524), the founder of the Safavid dynasty of Iran, was also deeply influenced by the Persian literary tradition, particularly by the Shahnameh, which probably explains the fact that he named all of his sons after Shahnameh characters. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 June 2020. It contains magical birds, and superhuman heroes, and centuries-long battles. But New York based artist Hamid Rahmanian s recent illustrated rendition with translator Ahmad Sadri of, Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings could change that. An Italian translation has been published in eight volumes by Italo Pizzi with the title: Il libro dei re. 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. There are so many pictures too. [59], The production of illustrated Shahnameh manuscripts in the 15th century remained vigorous[58] during the Qarā-Qoyunlu or Black Sheep (1380–1468) and Āq Qoyunlu or White Sheep (1378–1508) Turkman dynasties. Combining Persian and jazz instruments, Kohesia Ensemble draws upon Ferdowsi's 10th Century masterpiece, exploring tales of creation, kings, dragons and demons through music. This modern edition was based on incomplete and largely imprecise fragmented copies found in Cambridge, Paris, Astana, Cairo and Berlin. Using it as the chief text, Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh began the preparation of a new critical edition in 1990. I wasn't expecting the book to be like this at all. This is a beautiful piece of literature illustrated to the highest of standards. Into English", "India's vanishing Parsis - Not fade away", "Iran animation invited to Cannes Film Festival - ISNA", Center for Iranian Studies, Columbia University, Ancient Iran’s Geographical Position in Shah-Nameh, A richly illuminated and almost complete copy of the, Ferdowsi millennial celebration in Berlin, Inscription of Xerxes the Great in Van Fortress, Achaemenid inscription in the Kharg Island, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shahnameh&oldid=1004177543, Articles containing Persian-language text, Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2012, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from May 2012, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2015, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2017, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2017, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Lines of 22 syllables with two rhyming couplets in the same metre (, Poet Moniruddin Yusuf (1919–1987) translated the full version of. 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