THE most trustworthy materials for the life of Firdausí
are to be found in his own personal references, there
being probably no poem of considerable length in
which the writer keeps himself so much in evidence
as Firdausí does in the Sháhnáma. Next in authority
to his own statements we must place the account
given of him by Nizámí-i-'Arúdí of Samarkand in
his work entitled “Chahár Makála,” i.e. “Four Discourses.”
*
They are on Secretaries, Poets, Astrologers,
and Physicians respectively, and consist chiefly of
anecdotes. One of these, in the “Discourse on Poets,”
gives the valuable account of Firdausí. Unfortunately
it throws doubt on the authenticity of the extant
version of one of his compositions—the Satire on Sultán
Mahmúd, only a few lines of which, if Nizámí is to be
believed, can be regarded as Firdausí's own. They
suffice, however, to indicate one good reason for the
poet's difference with Mahmúd and the general line
that he took in his literary revenge, though that Sul-
Let us first confine ourselves to the statements in the poet's undoubted writings and to legitimate deductions therefrom. He calls himself Abú 'l Kásim, and we gather that he was born about A.D. 941. We arrive at this in the following way. In the whole Sháhnáma there is only one definite date—that on which he finished the poem. This, mixing up the Muhammadan era with the Zoroastrian calendar, he tells us he did on the day of Ard in the month of Sapandármad of the year 400 of the Hijra. This particular year, for the Muhammadan years are lunar and vary accordingly, began on August 25th, A.D. 1009, and ended on the 14th day of that month in the year following. Therefore Firdausí finished the Sháhnáma on February 25th, A.D. 1010. He gives his one date in the concluding lines of the poem, where he also says:—
When one and seventy years had passed me by
The heavens bowed down before my poetry.*
This we may fairly interpret as meaning that he finished his work when he was seventy-one years old, i.e. about sixty-nine, as we reckon, since thirty-four Muhammadan years go to about thirty-three of ours.
The poet was a Muhammadan of the Shí'ite sect. This is clear from his reference to 'Alí in his Prelude. *
Moreover, he was not a strict Muhammadan in the matter of wine-drinking:—
The time to quaff delicious wine is now,
For musky scents breathe from the mountain-brow,
The air resoundeth and earth travaileth,
And blest is he whose heart drink gladdeneth,
He that hath wine and money, bread and sweets,
And can behead a sheep to make him meats.
These have not I. Who hath them well is he.
Oh! pity one that is in poverty!*
And again:—
Bring tulip-tinted wine, O Háshimí!
From jars that never need replenishing.
Why seek I who am deaf at sixty-three
The world's grace and observance?*
He soon after has a fit of repentance:—
Old man whose years amount to sixty-three!
Shall wine be still the burden of thy lay?
Without a warning life may end with thee;
Think of repentance then, seek wisdom's way.
May God approve this slave. May he attain
In wisdom riches and in singing gain.*
He owned or occupied land; at least the following passages suggest that conclusion:—
A cloud hath risen and the moon's obscured,
From that dark cloud a shower of milk is poured,
No river plain or upland can I spy,
The raven's plumes are lost against the sky,
In one unceasing stream egg-apples fall:
What is high heaven's purpose in it all?
No fire-wood salted meat or barley-grain
Are left me, naught till harvest come again!
Amid this gloom, this day of tax and fear,
When earth with snow is like an ivory sphere,
All mine affairs in overthrow will end
Unless my hand is grasped by some good friend.*
And again:—
The hail this year like death on me hath come
Though death itself were better than the hail,
And heaven's lofty far extending dome
Hath caused my fuel sheep and wheat to fail.*
In some verses, complaining of the advance of old age, he alludes to a calamity that befell him when he was fifty-eight, or it may be that an escape from drowning, which he seems to have had about that time, had a sobering effect upon him. This accident will be referred to in another connection later on. He says:—
Since I took up the cup of fifty-eight
The bier and grave, naught else, I contemplate.
Ah! for my sword-like speech when I was thirty,
Those luscious days, musk-scented, roseate!*
At the age of sixty-five he lost his son:—
At sixty-five 'tis ill to catch at pelf.
Oh! let me read that lesson to myself
And muse upon the passing of my son.
My turn it was to go yet he hath gone.
…
Seven years and thirty o'er the youth had sped
When he distasted of the world and fled.
…
He hurried off alone. I stayed to see
The outcome of my labours.*
In the year following his son's death he speaks of himself as being much broken:—
While three score years and five were passing by,
Like Spring-winds o'er the desert, poverty
And toil were mine; next year like one bemused
I leaned upon a staff, my hands refused
The rein, my checks grew moon-like pale, my beard
Lost its black hue and camphor-like appeared,
Mine upright stature bent as age came on
And all the lustre of mine eyes was gone.*
He never speaks of himself as having any profession or official position, but if we may hazard a conjecture it is that he or his son or both were educated for the office of scribe. He puts the following glorification of that profession into the mouth of Búzurjmihr, the famous chief minister of the still more famous Sháh Núshírwán:* —
Teach to thy son the business of the scribe
That he may be as life to thee and thine,
And, as thou wouldest have thy toils bear fruit,
Grudge not instructors to him, for this art
Will bring a youth before the throne and make
The undeserving fortune's favourite.
Of all professions 'tis the most esteemed,
Exalting even those of lowly birth.
A ready scribe who is a man of rede
Is bound to sit e'en in the royal presence
And, if he be a man of diligence,
Will have uncounted treasure from the Sháh,
While if endowed with fluency and style
He will be studious to improve himself,
Use his endeavours to be more concise
And put his matter more attractively.
The scribe hath need to be a man of wisdom,
Of much endurance and good memory,
A man of tact, accustomed to Court-ways,
A holy man whose tongue is mute for evil,
A man of knowledge, patience, truthfulness,
A man right trusty pious and well-favoured.
If thus endowed he cometh to the Sháh
He cannot choose but sit before the throne.*
However this may be, from the time when he became his own master he appears to have devoted himself to poetry. Referring to the completion of the Sháhnáma he says:—
My life from youth to eld hath run its course
In hearing other and mine own discourse.*
We have already had an allusion to his “sword-like speech” when he was thirty, and we know that between the ages of thirty-five and sixty-nine he was occupied on the Sháhnáma. He tells us in a passage that will be quoted later on that he spent thirty-five years on that poem, i.e. about thirty-four years as we reckon. The prose materials for this, he informs us, already had been embodied in book-form,* and the idea of turning them into verse had suggested itself to the poet Dakíkí, a young man of brilliant parts but of vicious habits, who was murdered by the hand of one of his own slaves.* Dakíkí had only just begun his great task when he was cut off, but Firdausí admits his priority:—
Although he only rhymed the veriest mite—
One thousand couplets full of feast and fight—
He was my pioneer and he alone
In that he set the Sháhs upon the throne.
From nobles honour and emolument
Had he; his trouble was his own ill bent.
To sing the praises of the kings was his
And crown the princes with his eulogies.*
Dakíkí seems to have died about A.D. 976, for Firdausí took up the work and it employed him for the next thirty-four years as we reckon. At first he found himself hampered through lack of the necessary materials. What those were will be explained later on in the present chapter. He made countless inquiries and began to despair, fearing that like Dakíkí he should not live to complete his undertaking. He also suffered from lack of patronage and encouragement. The times were troublous and men's minds were otherwise occupied. At length both the needful materials and the patron were vouchsafed him. The former were obtained for him by a friend and fellow-townsman. * The latter he found somewhat later in the person of Abú Mansúr bin Muhammad, probably a local magnate, who warmly encouraged him and treated him with the greatest kindness and generosity. This, we may venture to assume, was one of the happiest epochs in the poet's life. He was in the first flush of a great and enduring enthusiasm; the means of gratifying it were in his possession; he held the field, and his material future seemed assured: his noble, rich, and generous patron would see to that. Alas! that patron died—murdered like Dakíkí, but by whom and in what circumstances we know not. The poet was overwhelmed for a time, but he persevered and kept in mind his patron's counsel that the Book of Kings (Sháhnáma) when completed should be dedicated to kings.* In course of time the poet found other patrons, notably one Ahmad ibn Muhammad of Chálandshán, to whom in A.D. 999 he dedicated a complete Sháhnáma. Firdausí was staying with Ahmad when he had the escape from drowning already referred to, and he seems to have been rescued either by Ahmad himself or by Ahmad's son. This passage is not in our printed texts.* The poet, however, had never forgotten the advice of his former patron, the beloved Abú Mansúr, and in this same year his opportunity came. The last king of the Sámánid dynasty died and Mahmúd became supreme in Eastern Írán. Henceforth it was to Mahmúd that the poet looked for patronage, and he appears to have left no stone unturned to gain it. If adulation could have achieved his end he ought to have succeeded. The reader will find a specimen in the present volume.* Elsewhere in another elaborate panegyric he says:—
God bless the Sháh, the pride of crown and throne
And signet-ring, bless him whose treasuries groan
With his munificence what while the fame
Of majesty is heightened by his name.
…
O'er all the world one carpet hath been placed—
His token nevermore to be effaced—
And on it are a cushion and a seat
For Fazl, son of Ahmad, a man replete
With justice, prudence, rede, and godly fear;
No Sháh before had such a minister.
In his hands is the peace of all the state
For he is good and chief of all the great,
Frank-spoken, with clean hands and single heart;
To serve God and his sovereign is his part.
With this wise upright minister for friend
My far-extending labour reached its end.
I framed this story of the days of yore,
Selected from the book of men of lore,
That it in mine old age might yield me fruit,
Give me a crown dínárs and high repute,
But saw no bounteous worldlord; there was none
Who added to the lustre of the throne.
I waited for a patron patiently—
One whose munificence required no key.
…
When I was fifty-eight, and when in truth
I still felt young though I had lost my youth,
A proclamation reached mine ears at last
Whereat care aged and all my troubles pass'd.
It ran:—“Ye men of name who long to find
Some trace of Farídún still left behind!
See bright-souled Farídún alive again
With earth and time for bondslaves. He hath ta'en
The world by justice and by largessings,
And is exalted o'er all other kings.
Bright are the records of his earlier day,
And may he flourish, root and fruit, for aye.”
Now since that proclamation reached mine ear
I wish not any other sound to hear;
In his name have I fashioned this my lay,
And may his end be universal sway.*
The reader will note that both in § 12 of the Prelude and in the passage just quoted Firdausí couples Mahmúd and his minister in eulogy. As the Prelude is retrospective, we may venture to assume who that minister was, because as it was written last the reference if inopportune would not have been inserted. There can hardly be a doubt that in both passages the same minister is referred to—Fazl, son of Ahmad.
The passage from which the above extracts are taken is a very important one. It seems to have been penned a few years before the completion of the Sháhnáma, for the poet was over sixty-five at the time. The extracts suggest that he had lately received some definite encouragement, some promise of patronage or reward from Mahmúd or his minister or both, whereupon he wrote this panegyric and prefixed it to the section that he had been engaged on or had taken in hand when the announcement of Mahmúd's accession first reached him. If Mahmúd, who was of Turkman descent, had strong racial proclivities, the section in point hardly seems to be well chosen, for it tells of the final overthrow of Afrásiyáb, the great protagonist of the Turkman race, at the hands of the Íránian Sháh Kai Khusrau. Perhaps Mahmúd had become more Íránian than the Íránians. Such cases are not unknown in history. At all events we know that his minister Fazl, son of Ahmad, or to give him his full title Abú'l 'Abbás Fazl bin Ahmad, had Íránian leanings, for he changed the official language for state documents from Arabic to Persian. After his fall his successor, Ahmad Hasan Maimandí, returned to the old arrangement.* At the time when the poet wrote the above passage Abú'l 'Abbás Fazl must have been at the height of his power, say about A.D. 1006. We are told on the authority of Al 'Utbí that he was one of the most celebrated of book-students, and Al 'Utbí, who was Mahmúd's secretary, ought to have known.* It is very hard to resist the inference that Abú'l 'Abbás Fazl had given the poet encouragement, and that the latter looked to him to secure a fitting reception by Mahmúd of the poem when finished. The poet's idea seems to have been that the Sháhnáma was to be regarded as Mahmúd's memorial, while the profits of his great work were to be devoted to some special object which was to be regarded as his own memorial:—
Of all the things that earn our monarch's praise,
The things of chiefest profit in his days,
This will best serve to keep his memory rife
And live as part and parcel of his life,
And I am hoping to live too till I
Receive his gold that when I come to die
I too may leave my monument with things
Drawn from the treasury of the king of kings.*
If the poet put his faith in Abú'l 'Abbás Fazl he was doomed to disappointment. In the meantime we have a lamentation over hopes deferred, royal neglect which may have been intentional or merely unwitting, and active opposition:—
Six times ten thousand couplets there will be
Well ordered—banishers of misery.
For thrice a thousand couplets one may look
In vain as yet in any Persian book,
And if thou cancellest each faulty strain
In sooth five hundred scarcely will remain.
That one—a bounteous king and of such worth
And lustre mid the monarchs of the earth—
Should disregard these histories is due
To slanderers and mine ill fortune too.
They have maligned my work, my marketing
Is spoiled through lack of favour with the king,
But when the royal warrior shall read
My pleasant histories with all good heed
I shall be gladdened by his treasures here,
And may no foeman's ill approach him near.
My book may then recall me to his mind
And I the fruitage of my labours find.
Be his the crown and throne while time shall run,
And may his destiny outshine the sun.*
At another time he is plunged in despair:—
The dear delights of earth, the sovereign sway,
What boot they? Soon thy rule will pass away.
Blest is the pious mendicant and wise,
Whose ears oft feel the world's rough pleasantries,
For when he passeth he will leave behind
A good name and a good conclusion find.
His portion is in Heaven and in God's sight
He will have honour. Such is not my plight
Who am in wretched case, calamitous,
With all that I possess sent Hellward thus
Beyond recall! No hope in Heaven I see,
My hand is void, both worlds have ruined me!*
In moments of disappointment, too, and at periods probably years apart, the poet gives vent to his feelings not only in respect to his own times but even to Mahmúd himself. The expression of them is put into the mouths of some of his characters, but the prophecies are of the sound type made after the event and evidently the poet's own handiwork:—
A time is coming when the world will have
A king that is devoid of understanding,
A king whose gloomy spirit will work woe;
The world will darken 'neath his tyranny
And good will ne'er be found among his treasures.
He will be ever gathering fresh hosts
To win his crown new fame but in the end
This monarch and his hosts will pass away,
And there will be a change of dynasty.*
And again:—
The warrior will despise the husbandman,
High birth and dignity will bear no fruit;
Then men will rob each other, none will know
A blessing from a curse, and secret dealing
Prevail o'er open, while the hearts of men
Will turn to flint, sire will be foe to son
And son will scheme 'gainst sire; a worthless slave
Will be the Sháh, high birth and majesty
Will count for nothing; no one will be loyal.
There will be tyranny of soul and tongue;
A mongrel race—Íránian, Turkman, Arab—
Will come to be and talk in gibberish.*
These passages, in Professor Nöldeke's opinion,* clearly refer to Mahmúd and to the circumstances of the poet's own time. The latter occurs nearly at the end of the poem, and is put into the mouth of the commander of the Persian host just before the fatal battle of Kádisiyya, A.D. 637.
At length the great work is finished, but the poet's mood is still one of despondence:—
When five and sixty years had passed me by
I viewed my work with more anxiety,
But as my yearning to achieve it grew
My fortune's star receded from my view.
Great men and learnéd Persians had for me
My work all copied out gratuitously
While I sat looking on, and thou hadst said
That I was toiling for my daily bread.
Naught but their praises had I for my part
And, while they praised, I had a broken heart.
The mouths of their old money-bags were tied,
Whereat mine ardent heart was mortified.
'Alí Dílam and 'bú Dulaf these two
Helped me to bear mine undertaking thro';
These ardent souls, my fellow townsmen, they
Were kind and sped my work in every way.
Ha'íy son of Kutíb, a Persian he,
Would not take from me and withhold my fee,
But furnished gold and silver, clothes and meat;
From him I got incitement, wings and feet.
Taxation, root and branch, I know not, I
Loll on my quilt at ease. When seventy
And one years of my life had passed me by
The heavens bowed down before my poetry.
For five and thirty years I bore much pain
Here in this Wayside Inn in hope of gain,
But all the five and thirty years thus past
Naught helped; men gave my travail to the blast,
And my hopes too have gone for evermore
Now that mine age hath almost reached fourscore.
…
For ever lusty be Mahmúd the king,
His heart still glad, his head still flourishing.
Him both in public and in private I
Have praised so that my words will never die.
Of praises from the great I had my store,
The praises that I give to him are more.
For ever may he live, this prudent king,
And see his undertakings prospering.
I have bequeathed as his memorial
This book, six times ten thousand lines in all.*
There are other references by the poet to his work and his hopes concerning it, but it is believed that the most important passages have now been set forth. If then we had no other sources of information than these, what should we gather from them? That the poet in the prime of life succeeded to the work and materials of Dakíkí, and laboured at his task for many years under various patrons but not receiving such recognition as in his own opinion his deserts merited; that he thought he saw his opportunity in the accession of Mahmûd and did his best to avail himself of it; that he received some encouragement if not from the Sultán himself at least from Abú'l 'Abbás Fazl, the chief minister, and achieved his task early in A.D. 1010; that for some years before that date there had been opposition to him at Court, his work vilified and his character misrepresented; that these intrigues ultimately prevailed, and that he never received the reward for his labours that a perhaps somewhat too fervid temperament had led him to hope for or expect; that for years after the completion of the poem he still hoped on, was nearly eighty when he finally despaired, but to the last continued to praise Mahmúd.
Now if we seek to look further into the causes of Firdausí's disappointment we have at hand a plausible and even probable explanation, but one for which we have, at present at all events, no direct evidence. Just about the time when the Sháhnáma was completed Mahmúd's chief minister, Abú'l 'Abbás Fazl, fell into disgrace. He had once been in the service of the Sámánids, but when Mahmúd became governor of Khurásán in A.D. 994, his father, Subuktagín, applied to the Sámánid prince, Nuh bin Mansúr, for the services of Abú'l 'Abbás on behalf of his son. Accordingly he became the steward of Mahmúd's household at Níshápúr, and, after Mahmúd's accession, chief minister. He is said to have made use of his position to enrich himself, and his administration is stated to have been so oppressive that Khurásán was devastated and depopulated, but this of course need not be taken too literally. The Sultán, however, became concerned with regard to the diminution of the levies and the falling off in the revenue, and remonstrated with Abú'l 'Abbás, who threatened to resign. In A.D. 1011, after long negotiations, the Sultán, enraged at his conduct, imposed a fine of 100,000 dínárs upon him, and, as he still deferred payment, had him imprisoned and put to the torture. His enemies availed themselves of his disgrace, and of the Sultán's displeasure and absence on one of his numerous campaigns, to have the fallen minister done to death in A.D. 1013.*
The suggestion then is that the poet lost his chance owing to the troubles in which the minister became involved just about the time when the Sháhnáma would be ready for presentation to Mahmúd; and when we picture to ourselves the remorseless intrigues of an Oriental court—intrigues sticking at no atrocity and shrinking from no meanness—we can well imagine that if the unfortunate minister really had taken an interest in the poet's work, there would not be wanting those who would only be too willing out of mere spite to strike at the patron through the poet.
However this may be, the latter, indignant at the
treatment he had undergone, or smarting under the
sense of unmerited neglect, set about writing a Satire
on Sultán Mahmúd, of which, according to Nizámí-i-
“Yon prater hath grown old,” they flung at me,
“In love toward the Prophet and 'Alí.”
That love, if I shall speak of it, implies
Five score Mahmúds for me to patronise.
The slave-girl's brat is but a worthless thing
Although its father came to be a king.
Had e'er the Sháh a turn for goodness shown
He would have seated me upon the throne.
Because his kindred is of mean estate
He cannot bear to hear about the great.
In the extant version of the Satire that we follow,* which consists of 102 couplets, the above couplets appear not in this order but separately as the 11th, 27th, 83rd, 72nd, and 76th respectively, with some differences of reading. Here they read rather disconnectedly, but have an appropriate context in the extant version of the Satire. We learn from them that one of the charges brought against the poet was that he was a heretic of the sect of the Shí'ites, and this may have weighed with the orthodox Mahmúd. The poet for his part develops the old taunt of the slave who became a Sháh. If now we turn to the extant version of the Satire, and accept it as genuine in spite of what Nizámí says, we get additional and interesting information. The poet speaks of himself as Firdausí of Tús. Tús was formerly a city of much importance in Khurásán, and its ruins are still to be seen some seventeen miles N.N.W. of Mashad. He tells us that he spent thirty years over the Sháhnáma, that it was presented to Mahmúd, who had promised a worthy but gave him a very inadequate reward— little more than one-seventh of what he expected— and that he publicly gave away the whole of it to a street sherbet-seller in payment for a drink. He also informs us that Mahmúd threatened to have him trampled to death by elephants, and he ends by cursing the Sultán.
We now pass on to what Nizámí has to tell us more than a hundred years after the death of the poet.
Abú'l Kásim Firdausí was one of the landed proprietors of Tús. He was a native of a village called Bazh, which formed part of one of the quarters, districts, or suburbs of the city. He was a man of importance and of independent means, which were derived from the income of his land. He had one daughter, and the sole object of his labours on the Sháhnáma was to obtain the funds necessary to provide her with a dowry. When he had completed the work it was transcribed by 'Alí Dílam and recited by Abú Dulaf. He was much in favour with Ha'íy, son of Kutíba, the governor of the city, who treated him with all consideration in the matter of taxation.
'Alí Dílam transcribed the Sháhnáma in seven volumes, and Firdausí set off for Ghazní with Abú Dulaf. Ahmad Hasan Maimandí, Mahmúd's chief minister, befriended him, and the poem was duly presented to the Sultán, who accepted it. The minister, however, had enemies, who pointed out that Firdausí was a heretic, as some of the verses in his Prelude to the Sháhnáma showed,* and the result was that the poet got much less than he expected. He went to the bath in deep chagrin, and on coming out divided the sum that he had received between the bath-man and a sherbet-seller of whom he had bought a drink. Then fearing the wrath of Mahmúd he fled to Harát, where he lay hidden for six months. Mahmúd sent messengers after him to Tús, but not finding him they turned back, on which the poet ventured to go there himself, taking the Sháhnáma with him.* Thence he journeyed on to Tabaristán, whose ruler treated him kindly. There Firdausí wrote his Satire on Mahmúd, read it to the chief, and offered to dedicate the Sháhnáma to him instead of to the Sultán. The chief of Tabaristán, however, was himself one of Mahmúd's vassals, and he persuaded the poet to let the dedication stand, and bought the Satire of him for one hundred thousand drachms—a thousand for each couplet. He then destroyed it, and Firdausí himself destroyed his own rough copy, only five verses remaining extant—the five already given. We here append our version of the Satire. Assuming that it is in essentials the poet's handiwork the reader probably will agree with the prudent chief of Tabaristán in his opinion that the sooner it was suppressed the better.
Ho! Sháh Mahmúd who hast as victor trod
The climes! if man thou fearest not fear God,
For there were many Sháhs ere thou hadst birth
Who all were crownéd monarchs of the earth
And all of them pre-eminent o'er thee
In treasure, host, throne, crown, and dignity.
They did no act that was not good and right,
Went not about to swindle and to spite,
Dealt with their subjects justly and were naught
If not God's worshippers. They only sought
From time an honoured name and thus to gain
An honoured end; but all good folk disdain
Sháhs that are bound in filthy lucre's chain.
What though the kingship of the world is thine,
Dost ask what boot these whirling words of mine?
Thou hast not seen my heart in its fierce mood,
Thou reck'st not of my sword a-drip with blood
But term'st me faithless, heretic! I am
A lion, and thou callest me a ram!
“Yon ribald hath grown old,” men flung at me,
“In love toward the Prophet and 'Alí.”
But is there, tell me this, one viler yet
Than he whose heart against 'Alí is set?
These two I serve till Resurrection-morn
E'en if the Sháh should have my body torn
Asunder. I will love these two kings though
The Sháh's sword be above, my head below.
I serve the Prophet's slaves, the dust revere
Upon His mandatary's* foot. No fear
Have I for all thy threats:—“Thou shalt be brayed??
By elephants and have thy body made
A river Nile,” for mine enlightened mind
Place for the love of these two souls shall find
Within my heart. What said the inspired Lord
Of bidding and forbidding—Heaven's own word?
“I am the City of the Doctrine, he
That is the gateway to it is 'Alí.”
I witness that His heart is in that word
As though, as thou may'st say, His voice I heard.
If thou hast mind and wit and rede to hand
By Prophet and 'Alí take up thy stand.
If ill result to thee mine is the breach;
Thus is it, and I practise what I preach.
C. 64Thus have I done from birth, thus will I die;
The dust upon the Lion's* foot am I.
What others say can make no difference
To me; I never speak but in this sense,
And if the Sháh adopt another strain
His wisdom weigheth not one barley-grain.
When God shall set the Prophet and 'Alí
On royal thrones I, if my poetry
Came from my love to them, shall in the skies
Have five-score like Mahmúd to patronise.
While earth remaineth it will have its lords,
And all that wear the crown shall hear these words:—
“Firdausí—I of Tús—your friend, disclaim
Mahmúd as patron. I wrote in the name
Of the Prophet and 'Alí; for their sake I
Have pierced so many gems of fantasy.”
So long as there was no Firdausí here
The fortune of this world of ours was sere,
Yet on this tale of mine thou wouldst not look
Misled by one who vilified my book,
But may all those that vilified my strain
Expect revolving heaven's help in vain.
These stories of the sovereigns of old
Had I in mine own charming language told,
And when my years had almost reached fourscore
My hopes were scattered to the wind. I bore
Here in this Wayside Inn the toil so long
Because I hoped for treasure through my song
Of sixty thousand noble couplets spent
On warlike topics, and their argument
The lasso, scimitar, artillery,
The battle-axe, the falchion brandished high,
The casque, the mail, the charger's armature,
The wilderness, the ocean, stream and shore,
Wolf, dragon, elephant, and crocodile,
Pard, lion, and 'Afrít, the cunning wile
Of Ghúl, the sorcery of dívs whose cries
Reached heaven, the heroes famed for enterprise
Upon the day of battle (these I sing),
The heroes combating and glorying,
Men too of no mean rank or name obscure
But such as Salm Afrásiyáb and Túr,
Sháh Farídún and Kai Kubád and fell
Zahhák the tyrant and the infidel,
Garshásp and Sám whom Narímán the bold
Begot—world-paladins of mighty mould—
Húshang and Tahmúras the Dív that bound,
With Minúchihr, Jamshíd that Sháh renowned,
Káús and Kai Khusrau with crown upon
His head, and Rustam, and that famous one
Of brazen form,* Gúdarz and his delight—
His eighty sons, those Lions of the fight
And horsemen of the plain—great Sháh Luhrásp,
Zarír the captain of the host, Gushtásp,
Jámásp who shone among the host on high
More brightly than the sun doth in the sky,
Dárá son of Dáráb, Bahman, the great
Sikandar—chief of all that ruled the state—
C. 65Withal too Sháh Ardshír, Shápúr his son,
Bahrám and Núshírwán the virtuous one.
Such is the famous and exalted throng
That I have made the subject of my song,
All dead for ages but my poetry
Hath caused their names to live again, for I
Have raised these dead, as Jesus did, and made
Their names live, one and all, and I have laid
A servitude upon myself for thee,
O king! to keep thy name in memory.
The homes that are the dwellings of to-day
Will sink 'neath shower and sunshine to decay,
But storm and rain shall never mar what I
Have built—the palace of my poetry.
This story shall be read by every one
Possessed of wisdom while the ages run;
But that was not thy promised recompense,
Nor did I hope reward in such a sense.
A slanderer (my curse upon his head!)
Extracted evil out of what I said
For good, destroyed my credit with the king
And made my glowing coal a frigid thing.
If thou hadst been a judge of honest ways,
And hadst bestowed a thought upon my lays,
Thou wouldst have said that I have paid my dues—
The talent that was given me to use—
In full. My words have made the world to grow
Like Paradise. Before me none could sow
The seed of words. Unnumbered folk no doubt
Flung them in countless multitudes about,
But, though they were so many, up to now
No one hath ever mentioned them, I trow.
For thirty years exceeding toil I bore
And made the Persians live in Persian lore.
Unless the worldlord had close-fisted grown
I should have had a seat upon the throne;
He would have placed me there, but common sense
Hath never been the monarch's excellence.
Had he himself been royal by descent
He would have heeded royal precedent,
For, had his sire been Sháh, he would ere now
Have set a crown of gold upon my brow,
Or had his mother been a lady I
Had stood in gold and silver coin knee-high;
But since his kindred are of mean estate
He cannot bear to hear about the great.
The bounty of this Sháh of high degree
Hath altered nine times nine to four times three!* The travail of this Book of Kings I bore
For thirty years that from his treasury's store
The Sháh might recompense me, set me free
From worldly needs and give me high degree
Among my peers. He oped his treasury's door
And gave a sherbet-seller's* fee, not more,
On whom I spent it in the public way—
A fit recipient of such royal pay!
C. 66A king devoid of honour, sense of right,
And faith as this is, is not worth a mite.
The slave-girl's brat is but a worthless thing
Although it may be fathered by a king.
To raise the vile that good from them may flow
Is but to lose our thread's end when we sew
Or put a viper in our pouch to grow.
If thou shalt plant a tree of nauseous fruit
In Paradise itself and drench the root,
When moisture is required, from Heaven's own rill
Of purest honey, the old nature still
Will show itself at last; thou wilt procure
Fruit no less nauseous than the fruit before.
If by perfumers' stalls thy steps are bent
Thy clothing will catch somewhat of the scent,
And if thou visitest a charcoal Jack
Thou wilt get naught from him that is not black.
That miscreants should do ill is no strange case;
Hope nothing then from one whose birth is base,
For none can furbish off the gloom of night,
And washing will not make an Ethiop white.
To look for good from an ill stock to rise
Is but to throw the dust in one's own eyes.
The worldlord, if an honoured name he bore,
Would have esteemed right dear this branch of lore
And listened to such various tales as these
Of ancient ways and royal usages,
Would not have met my wishes with disdain
Or let the labour of my life be vain.
I have a purpose in these lofty rhymes—
The Sháh perchance will be advised betimes,
Will recognise what words are, will pay heed
To this his hoary old adviser's rede,
Do to no other poets wrong henceforth
But hold his reputation something worth,
For men will quote till Resurrection-morn
The injured poet's recompense of scorn.
A suppliant at the Court of God most high
I shall throw dust upon my head and cry:—
“Lord, cause Thy faithful servant's heart to dwell
In light, and burn this miscreant's soul in Hell.”
Before resuming our summary of Nizámí's account we should mention that later on the indomitable poet wrote his second great poem, “Yúsuf and Zulíkha.” This work is still extant in MS., and a printed edition is understood to be in preparation. He tells us in his Introduction that he wrote it at the suggestion of a high official of the Dílamids with a view of dedicating it to the ruling Dílamid prince. The poet seems to have quitted Tabaristán, where a prolonged stay might have been not without risk both to himself and to his friendly entertainer, and to have journeyed further to the west, where beyond the reach of Mahmúd's wrath (if Mahmúd really concerned himself about the matter at all) he wrote the abovementioned work.* Ultimately he returned to his native city of Tús, and we may conclude this account of the calamity of an author by summarising the rest of what Nizámí has to tell us. He no doubt gives us, as he professes to do, the received tradition of the time. Sultán Mahmúd, induced by the representations of his chief minister (Hasan Maimandí?) ultimately repented of his treatment of the poet. He accordingly gave directions that sixty thousand dínárs' worth of indigo should be carried to Firdausí at Tús with a suitable apology. This was done and the indigo arrived safely, but as the caravan that bore it entered by one gate the poet's corpse was being borne out to burial by another, outside which was a garden belonging to him, and there he was interred, because in the orthodox view of a local preacher he was a heretic, and therefore must not be suffered to lie in the Musulmán Cemetery. He left a daughter —a high-spirited lady—who refused to accept the Sultán's gift, and the money was therefore spent in repairing the hostelry of Cháha, on the road between Marv and Níshápúr. The poet seems to have died A.D. 1020–1021, at the age of about eighty. Nizámí visited his tomb, A.D. 1116–1117.
It has not seemed necessary to the present writer
to enter more fully into the interesting subject of the
poet's biography. The reader will find ampler details
in Professor Nöldeke's invaluable “Iranische National-
The present writer, as far as he is concerned, would gladly terminate the history of the writing and reception of the Sháhnáma at the point where the poet himself left it in concluding that work; at all events pains has been taken to distinguish Firdausí's own account from that given by others. It only remains to add that late in life when writing “Yúsuf and Zulíkha” he affected to condemn his greatest achievement as a pack of idle tales. Old age, disappointment, and other circumstances may well have contributed to warp his judgment, but we cannot doubt that in his heart of hearts he was as conscious of what constituted his best title to fame as when he penned the concluding words of the Sháhnáma:—
I shall live on, the seed of words have I
Flung broad-cast, and henceforth I shall not die.
The Sháhnáma of Firdausí is one of the great epic poems of the world. The author has left on record that it originally consisted of sixty thousand couplets. All existing MSS., however, even when eked out by obvious interpolations, fall short of that number by several thousand. Part has therefore been lost or else the poet spoke in round numbers. At all events enough remains, and to all appearance pretty much as he wrote it. The authorship, so far as the present writer is aware, has never been disputed.
The poem is in rhymed couplets, and its metre— the typical heroic metre of the language in which it is written—may thus be indicated:—
Such a line as
The Pharaohs of Egypt, the Cæsars of Rome,
represents the metre of the original.
The poet wrote in almost pure Persian. The admixture of Arabic is slight, and in all probability would be slighter if we had the Sháhnáma precisely as Firdausí left it. Some Arabic the poet was bound to use—terms, for instance, in connection with his religion—but copyists, it seems probable, are responsible for most of the rest.
The poet's theme is the story of his fatherland and folk, from the Creation to the Muhammadan conquest, set forth in the form of a metrical chronicle. His subject-matter he derived from many sources, mythical, religious, historical, and popular—a classification which of course involves many cross-divisions.
His method, as might be expected, differs widely from Homer's. The contrast is in fact striking. Homer effectually hides his own personality. He plunges into the middle of his subject, and makes the period of his action as brief as possible. Selecting one central motive he weaves round it only so much of the subject-matter at his disposal as he can employ with tolerable consistency. His web is closely woven, and the workmanship so exquisite that comparatively few indications are left to betray the nature of the raw material.
Firdausí, on the other hand, takes us into his confidence from the first. In direct violation of the Horatian precept he begins from Leda's egg and earlier, and the period of his action extends over thousands of years. He uses all the epic material, good, bad, and indifferent, on which he can lay hands. His web is open-work and its design unsymmetrical. He makes no secret of his method, but tells us what his materials are and how he obtained them. He shows us in fact his loom in action, and calls our attention to the bright, many-coloured threads of myth, romance, and history which are being woven therein.
It will be readily understood that the method of the Eastern poet leads to inconsistencies and difficulties, chronological and otherwise, for which the reader should be prepared. He will find, for instance, in the mythical portions of the poem at least, the chief heroes living on through successive ages; described as old and yet fighting with all the vigour of early manhood; dropping out of sight and apparently forgotten only to reappear in their pristine vigour later on. The explanation is twofold. In the first place several of the characters of the poem were originally divine or semi-divine beings, and though introduced to us as human have in some cases not wholly lost their superhuman attributes. And in the second place the popular mythology was not, and was not designed to be, consistent. It told legends of the same hero, assigning them to different reigns, ages, and localities. A Western poet would have taken them all and forced as much as suited him into the mould of a brief action; the Eastern poet takes them at full length, and inserts them where he finds them, wholly regardless of the fact that by so doing he extends life far beyond the span of mortals.
The poem is divided into reigns. Of these there are forty-nine, and they with one dynasty, which is reckoned as a single reign, make up the fifty heads under which the subject-matter of the poem is disposed. The reigns are those of the mythic or historic Sháhs or kings of Persia, who are divided into four dynasties: I. The Pishdádian, of ten Sháhs, and lasting 2441 years. II. The Kaiánian, of ten Sháhs, and lasting 732 years. III. The Ashkánian, which is reckoned as one reign, lasting 200 years. IV. The Sásánian, of twenty-nine Sháhs, and lasting 501 years. The space of time covered is therefore 3874 years.
The poem may also be divided into two periods— a mythic and a historic. This distinction is based not so much on the nature of the subject-matter as on the names of the chief characters. At a certain point in the poem the names cease to be mythic and become historic. The Mythic Period extends from the beginning of the narrative down to the reigns of the last two Sháhs of the Kaiánian dynasty. These and the remainder of the poem form the Historic Period. The Sháhs in question are Dárá, son of Dáráb, better known as Darius Codomanus, and Sikandar—Alexander the Great.
The chief characters of the poem are:—
I. The personified powers of good and evil. The
religion of the ancient Persians, from which they became
converted to Muhammadanism, was that known as Fire-
If the poet had confined himself to the use of the names Urmuzd and Áhriman this antagonism would have been much more marked. He was probably placed, however, in a very difficult position, not only as a Muhammadan himself but also as a poet eager for recognition at the hands of a fanatically Muhammadan Sultán. The result is a compromise. He seldom uses the word Urmuzd, but in its place such terms as Maker of the world, World-lord, the All-mighty, the righteous Judge or simply God, but hardly ever the Muhammadan Allah. On the other hand he employs the expression Áhriman with great frequency, often substituting for it, however, the word Dív, which may be rendered Fiend, and occasionally the name of the Muhammadan evil principle Iblís. Practically his conception of the good principle is Muhammadan in all but the name, while his evil principle is no longer the formidable Zoroastrian Áhriman, but approximates rather to the Muhammadan Iblís, or to the Devil of the Bible. This being premised, however, it is proposed to retain the expressions Urmuzd and Áhriman in the Introduction, as being on the whole the most suitable and convenient, and of course in the poem itself wherever they occur.
II. The Sháhs and other kings or heroes. These, so far as they are historical, may be left to speak for themselves, but those that are mythical need a word of explanation. The dualistic conception of the universe, while it tended to exalt Urmuzd and Áhriman, did so at the expense of the other deities of the ancient nature-worship who gradually became grouped in inferior capacities, according to the popular conceptions of them, round one or other of the two great principles, the beneficent round Urmuzd and the maleficent round Áhriman. In the course of time many of them came to be regarded as ancient earthly rulers and heroes, and as such they are represented in the poem, the good for the most part as Íránian and the evil as those of other races. All the chief mythical characters were once themselves gods or demigods, or were credited with such ancestors in tradition.
Direct supernatural agency is, however, infrequent in the Sháhnáma. On one side we have Urmuzd, who sometimes intervenes by his messenger and agent the angel Surúsh, and on the other Áhriman, who acts by means of his instruments the dívs, or his adherents the warlocks and witches. We have instances of white magic as well as of black. The fabulous Símurgh too— a bird somewhat resembling the roc of the “Arabian Nights,” but endowed with wisdom and articulate speech —plays an important part. Dreams, especially those in which the dead appear, are regarded as veridical, and the evil eye is much dreaded. Presentiments are held to be authentic, and use is made of amulets, elixirs, and divining-cups. The most potent agent throughout is destiny, which is represented as God's purpose with respect to man as revealed in the heavens by the aspects of the stars and planets. There is no more impressive picture in the poem than that which the poet gives us of the remorseless process of the sky, whose revolutions gradually grind down the strongest, and fill the vulgar with amaze at what they term the turns of fortune. To the sage and reader of the stars, however, the future is spread out like a book, and the astrologer, with his planispheres, astrolabes, calculations of nativities, and predictions generally, plays a considerable part in the poem. Destiny, as represented to us by the poet, is made up of two distinct elements which he does not attempt to reconcile—the Muhammadan and the Zoroastrian. The former may be summed up for the reader in two texts from the Bible:—“I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am the Lord, that doeth all these things;”* and “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?”*
The Zoroastrian conception is entirely different. Urmuzd and Áhriman are as distinct as light from darkness, and a hard and fast line is drawn between good and evil, whether physical or moral. Light, immortality, health, and all that is good in the worlds of mind and matter proceed from Urmuzd; darkness, death, disease, and all that is evil from Áhriman. Urmuzd created man and fashioned the twelve houses of the heavens that they might pour down their kindly influence upon him; Áhriman broke into the creation of Urmuzd and created the planets to run counter to the stars and cross their purposes. Destiny, therefore, from this point of view, being the resultant of two opposing forces, is an extremely logical deduction well borne out by the events of history and the incidents of life to an Eastern eye, but corresponds rather to what we should call fortune than to absolute fate. The Zoroastrian view, which is that of the poet's authorities, predominates over the Muhammadan, which is that of his religion. The practical result is that in the poem the sky is looked upon as the ultimate arbiter of human affairs, and often as acting wantonly and capriciously with the ruthlessness of a celestial Juggernaut. Yet the poet and his characters never fail to appeal to destiny proper on occasions when it suits them so to do, he to justify the ways of God to man, and they to make excuse for evil done or the doing of it. “It was so decreed,” pleads the evildoer; “And so was the penalty,” replies the avenger. At other times again the poet seems to hold that all is hopeless confusion, and that we cannot tell head from tail or top from bottom.
The leading motive of the Sháhnáma, so far as it can be said to have one, is Áhriman's envy of man —the creation of Urmuzd. The first attempt of the evil principle to destroy mankind once for all, in the person of their great progenitor, having failed, his next is to seduce them from their allegiance to their Creator, and in this he is largely successful; race becomes opposed to race, the faithful followers of Urmuzd are persecuted by the perverts of Áhriman, and recurring acts of provocation or revenge form a series of subsidiary motives which serve to keep alive the ancient feud. These are most prominent in the earlier portion of the Mythic period, towards the end of which a new motive is introduced by the advent of the great prophet of Urmuzd—Zarduhsht or Zoroaster. Side by side with this outward visible struggle there is the inward invisible one going on in the mind of the individual. This is more insisted on in the Historic period where the moral aspects of the struggle are discoursed on at large, and the deadly sins are personified in accordance to Zoroastrian theology as dívs or fiends in the service of Áhriman, who strive to get the mastery over the soul of man.
The historical relations of the Íránians with other
Indo-European peoples, with the Semites and with
the Túránians, as sketched briefly in the previous chapter,
are indicated in the poem by the mythical legends of
Zahhák and of the three sons of Farídún and their
descendants. Zahhák represents the idolatrous element
in the poem, and therefore the Semites in particular,
who were the most idolatrous race with whom the
Íránians came into contact. The Assyrians were
notoriously idolatrous, and so were the Arabs up to
the days of Muhammad. In the poem all idol-
We have also to note that, according to Íránian tradition, Urmuzd did not leave himself altogether without witness even in the lands and peoples most given over to Áhriman. In the case of the Arabs we have the dynasty of Al Munzir, which is always represented as being friendly to the Íránians. This dynasty ruled at Hira. In the case of the Hindus we have the dynasty of Kaid, which is always kindly and helpful. In the case of the Túránians the tendency to goodwill is very marked in some of the characters. One of Afrásiyáb's own brothers becomes an arrant traitor in his zeal for the Íránian interest, and suffers for it at the hand of his justly indignant sovereign. The most striking instance, however, is that of the great and good Pírán, Afrásiyab's cousin, counsellor, and commander-in-chief. Though his loyalty to his own master is absolutely stainless and unimpeached, he always shows himself most friendly and generous to the Íránians, striving for peace and for a better understanding between the two races. He lives to see his honest endeavours foiled and his well-meant counsels turn out ill, but his honesty is so transparent and recognised that even the fierce tyrant whom he serves, and who suffers most for having followed his advice, has hardly a word to say against him, and he only gives up the leadership of the host with death. It is a well paid compliment by the poet to the Turkman race. It was no doubt his own contribution toward a good understanding, and happily he could not foresee the horrors which the eleventh and subsequent centuries held in store for Írán at the hands of the nations of the North.
For the preservation of the subject-matter of the
Sháhnáma we are chiefly indebted to two of the
classes into which Firdausí tells us ancient Íránian
society was divided—the priestly class and the agricultural
class — in other words the Magi and the
Dihkáns. The Magi were the priests of the true
Medes or Madá, among whom they formed a caste or
tribe. Originally fire-priests, as their own name for
themselves—Áthravans, literally “fire-men”—shows,*
they became closely associated with, even if they did
not originate, the Dualism and Zoroastrianism of
later times. Antiquity, which liberally credited them
with all the attributes of ancient priesthood, knew
them as the Magi—the great or mighty,*
and later
ages are indebted to them for the potent words
“magic” and “magician.” In their historical seat
in Atropatene, or in the modern form of the word
Ázarbíján (which has been variously explained to mean
the land of the seed, of the descent of, or that guards
the fire), and still more in their legendary home in
Karabagh, they dwelt in the neighbourhood of scenes
of natural marvel. Earthquakes are frequent there,
mud-volcanoes, hot springs, and naphtha wells abound.
Flames issuing from clefts in the rocks have been
ablaze from time immemorial, and in autumn the exhalations
from the soil form a phosphorescence that at
night wraps whole districts in sheets of harmless flame.
Even in parts of the Caspian the vapours bubble up,
may be ignited and will go on burning, over several
square yards of water till a gust of wind extinguishes
them. The scene from all accounts is at times sufficiently
impressive even to the modern eye, and we
can easily imagine what fire in its purest form and
highest expression—clear, smokeless, lambent flames,
burning on unfed apparently and self-sustaining
century after century—must have been to the un-
The doctrines of the Magi, which it is beyond
our scope to enter into except incidentally and by
way of illustration, appear in early times to have
been restricted, if not to the Magi themselves, at all
events to the Medes whose priests they were. It was
not until nearly the end of the sixth century before
the Christian era and after the suicide of Cambyses,
the son of Cyrus the Great, that the Magi first became
supreme in the vast empire which the latter had
founded, for now we have evidence that neither he
nor his son was the enthusiastic proselytiser of Zoroastrianism,
that they were both formerly supposed to
be, but at most tolerated it along with the other
faiths of their world-wide empire.*
After the death
of Cambyses, however, the Magi rose to power in the
person of the Magus Gaumata—the false Smerdis of
the Greeks—who seized the vacant throne and began,
as we learn from the inscriptions of Darius Hystaspis,
his slayer and successor, to overthrow the temples of
the gods in his iconoclast zeal.*
As Darius further
informs us that he restored these temples, and also
at the same time describes himself as a worshipper
of Urmuzd,*
we may assume that it was in the course
of his reign that Zoroastrianism became the state-
Rightly or wrongly Zoroastrian tradition couples
Alexander with Zahhák and Afrásiyáb as one of the
three arch enemies of the faith.*
With the introduction
of Greek ideas, Greek science and Greek
polytheism, there can be no doubt that the bulk of
the population relapsed into idolatry, if indeed it
had ever emerged. During the next five centuries
the Magi must have had much ado to keep alive the
doctrines, ritual, and sacred traditions of their faith.
The seductions of Greek civilisation were followed by
the brutalities of Parthian barbarism, and any modification
of these was, during the first centuries at all
events of Parthian rule, in the direction of Greek
culture. The Parthian monarchs describe themselves
as philhellenic on their coins. The Magi, however,
were well equipped for the struggle. They had a
great reputation. They held a faith in many respects
much in advance of their times, and one too that
found its justification in the strange natural phenomena
and sharp contrasts of physical good and evil
that characterise Írán. They had kept alive too, at
a time when ancient Persian was passing into rapid
phonetic decay, the ancient language of their race—
the Median—with its inflections and archaisms, as
will appear later on. Lastly, they were a priesthood
practising the peculiar custom of Khvaitúk-das, or
next of kin marriage, which, though most repugnant
to the sentiments of mankind at large, must certainly
have tended to preserve their faith from the dangerous
external and foreign influences which an indiscriminate
practice of marriage would have entailed. That
the Magi practised Khvaitúk-das in the days of the
Parthian monarchy we may learn from Catullus.*
The three principal seats of the Magi seem to have
been at Shíz, Rai, and Balkh. Shíz, the Persian Gazn,
is to be looked for at Takht-i-Sulaiman near the
southern frontier of Ázarbíján. It contained the
famous fire-temple of Ázarakhsh, which appears to be
a contraction of Ázar-i-Zarduhsht, or the fire of
Zarduhsht, who is supposed to have instituted it. To
this temple it was the custom of the Sháhs of Persia
in pre - Muhammadan times to make pilgrimages
afoot.*
Rai, which was near Tihrán, seems to have
been the centre of a priestly principality of great
antiquity, whose priest - prince was known as the
Zarduhsht. It was finally destroyed by the Muham-
Of the early literature of the Magi we can only assume that the theogonies or sacred hymns which they chanted in the days of Herodotus* were such as we find in their extant scriptures, just as we find the peculiar rites and ceremonies, which he describes as being practised by them,* still in operation at a much later date. The ??tradition with regard to the literature is as follows: The original scriptures were revealed to Zoroaster by Urmuzd. Zoroaster preached them to Sháh Gushtásp, whose capital was at Balkh. Gushtásp ordered the original to be deposited in the treasury of Shapígán and copies to be made and disseminated, one of which was laid up in the fortress of documents. When “the evil destined villain Alexander” invaded Írán the copy in the fortress of documents was burnt; that in the treasury of Shapígán fell into Alexander's hands and was translated by his command into Greek.* King Valkash ordered a collection to be made of the scriptures, which in his days existed in Írán in a scattered state owing to the disruption caused by the Macedonian conquest.* Ardshír, the son of Pápak, who overthrew the Parthians and restored the Íránian monarchy, also made a collection of the scriptures. He employed for that purpose the high-priest Tausar, who reproduced a similitude of the original as it had existed in the treasury of Shapígán.* Shápúr, the son of Ardshír, made a collection of writings of a non-religious character dealing with medicine, astronomy, and other scientific subjects that had been scattered among the Hindus and Rúmans, and ordered them to be incorporated with what had already been brought together, which was done.* Shápúr, the son of Hurmuzd, instituted a tribunal for the determination of all points of disputed doctrine. These points were settled by ordeal, and thenceforth the Sháh proclaimed and insisted on uniformity.*
With regard to this account legend places the birthplace and home of Zoroaster in Írán-vej.* Here on the Mountain of the Holy Questions he met Urmuzd face to face, and received from him in a series of dialogues the tenets of the faith. Here too the prophet was assailed by the demon Búiti sent by Áhriman, and subsequently tempted by the latter in person. Both were, however, worsted, and Zoroaster began his missionary career.* His great success seems to have been at Balkh, one of the chief centres of Aryan civilisation. This we may interpret as meaning that Zoroastrianism spread from West to East along the line of the great trade-route. The extant portions of the Zoroastrian scriptures have many allusions to Balkh and Eastern Irán generally, and in the later part of the Mythic period of the poem the scene is shifted thither. With regard to Alexander the Great the legend is that he burnt these scriptures, which were written on twelve thousand ox-hides, at Persepolis.* During the domination of the Parthians Írán was broken up into a number of small tributary principalities under native chiefs, some of whom seem to have maintained a Magian priesthood and sacred fires of their own.*
It is possible that it may have been the rise of local Zoroastrian cults with divergent doctrines and ritual that led King Valkash, in his capacity of overlord, to make a collection of the scriptures with a view to the establishment of a canon and uniformity. Valkash himself has been well identified with the Parthian king Vologeses I. (A.D. 50–78), whose brother Tiridates is known to have been a Magus.* A letter written by Tausar to explain and justify his proceedings in regard to the reform of the faith is still in existence.* Ardshír, the son of Pápak, who employed him, was the first Sháh (A.D. 226–240) of the Sásánian dynasty and was himself a Magus.* The legendary destruction of the original scriptures was of course the excuse for adding to the canon in the reign of Shápur I. (A.D. 240–271) by restoring to their proper place the translations made under Alexander. With Shápúr II. (A.D. 309–379) about A.D. 330 the canon was traditionally closed,* but as a matter of fact there was some amount of addition and revision as late as Chosroes I. (A.D. 531–579), after the disturbance to the faith caused by Mazdak.*
The language of the scriptures is commonly but
incorrectly known as Zend. It seems almost certain
that really it should be known as Median.*
Zend,
i.e. Median, as preserved in its scriptures, and ancient
Persian, as preserved in the inscriptions of the
Achaemenids, are two sister-languages collaterally related
to Sanscrit. How and when Zend became extinct,
whether it still survives in a modified form in
some modern dialect such as the Kúrd, does not seem to
have been yet determined; but the existence of the
Zandavasta indicates that it remained known to and
used by the Magi in its inflectional form long after
its sister-language the Persian had lost most of its
inflections and had become greatly simplified. Zend
may thus be regarded as being during the five centuries
and a half which elapsed between the death
of Darius Codomanus and the accession of Ardshír
Pápakán the sacred language of the Magi—one known
only to themselves and holding with them very much
the same position as Sanscrit did among the Brahmans
of India. During this period ancient Persian was
itself being converted into middle Persian or Pahlaví.*
Pahlaví, it should be explained, is the same word as
Parthian, and in this connection means not the language
spoken by the Parthians themselves, but that
used under their rule by their Persian or Íránian
subjects.*
To the people at large in Sásánian times
the language in which the inscriptions of Darius
Hystaspis and his successors had been written,
and that of the Zoroastrian scriptures compiled by
Tausar and others, were alike unintelligible. It accordingly
became the custom in making copies to
append a Pahlaví version, paraphrase, or comment on
the original text. The scriptures themselves were
known as the Avasta, and all comments thereon,
whether in the original language or in Pahlaví, were
known as the Zend or Zand. The chief Zand was
of course the Pahlaví version of the Avasta, and the
two combined became known as the Avasta and Zand,
or more commonly as the Zandavasta.*
Like the
Bible it preserved in a literary form all that survived
in the traditions of a race, and these were grouped
round and told in connection with a line or lines of
demigods or heroes, whose names show that they
were originally those of the beneficent and maleficent
impersonations of the ancient nature-worship of the
Aryan people, before it broke up into its Indian and
Íránian divisions. The names referred to are common
in a somewhat altered form both to the Zandavasta
and to the ancient Sanscrit hymns of India—the
Vedas.*
We may regard the traditions of the Zan-
The triumph of Zoroastrianism, the translation of
the Zandavasta into Pahlaví, i.e. into the vernacular,
and the consequent diffusion of the traditions of the
Magi throughout Írán occurred at an epoch when five
and a half centuries of alien rule (B.C. 331–A.D. 226)
had obliterated all but the vaguest reminiscences of
the first Persian empire and the house of Achaemenes.
The consequence was that the mythical demigods of
the Zandavasta came to be regarded in Sásánian times
as the historic Sháhs of the Íránian race. These and
what was recorded of them in the Zandavasta formed
a convenient epic framework whereon to hang legends
of Assyrian oppression, Arab raids, Túránian invasions,
wars with the West, the deeds of national or local
heroes, and all the miscellaneous products of popular
tradition and imagination. The development of the
legends of the Zandavasta accordingly went on apace,
and the chief agents in the process were the Dihkáns.
This was the name given to the rural landowners of
Írán. Firdausí himself seems to have been the son
of a Dihkán. All the world over the rural populations
are the depositories of national tradition. A
notable instance occurred only so long ago as the last
century when Dr. Elias Lönnrot, after years of wandering
among the remotest districts of Finland, dwelling
with the peasantry and taking down from their lips
all that they knew of their popular songs, ultimately
succeeded in collecting nearly twenty-three thousand
verses which, arranged by him and divided into fifty
runes, now form the national Finnish epic known as
the Kalewala.*
Much the same process went on in
Írán at an earlier date. Traditions based on the Zanda-
As Baisinghar Khán's preface dates from the first quarter of the fifteenth century, and contains much that is obviously romantic, it is needful to receive the above account with all caution. Even when we have rejected the story of King Jasha and the Abyssinians we are still confronted by a chronological impossibility. Ya'kúb, the son of Lais the coppersmith, died in A.D. 878. Abú Mansúr, who had the work of the Dihkán Dánishwar translated, was a brother of Muhammad, son of Abdu'r-Razzák, and this Muhammad was prince of Tús in the middle of the tenth century,* in the days when Firdausí was growing up. Ya'kúb and Abú Mansúr were therefore not contemporaries. Ya'kúb had worked in his father's shop as a youth, he then became a robber-chief, and finally fought his way to what was practically the lordship of Írán. As a native of Sístán, the home of a race whose warlike proclivities were symbolised in the legendary exploits and character of the national hero of Írán, Rustam, or as the founder of a new dynasty, for political reasons he may have taken an interest in the old traditions; but he could not have commissioned Abú Mansúr to do the work for him, and it will be safer to dismiss the notion that he interested himself in the compilation of the Dihkán Dánishwar as highly problematical. On the other hand, the statement in Baisinghar Khán's preface that Abú Mansúr did have a Sháhnáma compiled is confirmed by the learned Abú Raihán Muhammad bin 'Ahmad Albírúní (A.D. 973–1048) in his “Chronology of Ancient Nations.”* Again we may be somewhat sceptical as to whether a Dihkán named Dánishwar ever existed, but we may concede that the ancient traditions were collected and edited by some learned (dánishwar) Dihkán and indeed by many such.
The names of the five men employed by Abú
Mansúr are all Persian, and the men themselves were
in all probability Magi, for none but they would be
likely to know Pahlaví in the tenth century. One of
the five, Shádán son of Barzín, is mentioned by Fir-
“Of all of this world's good and ill
Four things Dakíkí chooseth still—
Girl's ruby lips, the sound of lyre,
The blood-red wine, the Faith of Fire.”
Firdausí tells us in his Prelude, § 10, that when on
Dakíkí's murder he determined to carry on the work
himself he had great difficulty in obtaining the needful
materials for the purpose, and was for a while nonplussed
by want of them. His statement seems to
require some explanation, for, in addition to the considerable
Pahlaví literature then extant, the collections
made by learned Dihkáns had been translated into
Arabic, and were obtainable in numerous histories in
that language. Albírúní tells us that the poet Abú-
The cosmogony of the poem assumes the earth to be flat and to be supported on the horns of a bull which stood on the back of a fish which swam in the great ocean.* The earth was environed by the gigantic Alburz Mountains which reached to heaven.* The range was pierced by 180 apertures in the East, and 180 in the West. Through these the sun made its daily entrance and exit, travelling round the outside during the night from the West back to the East.* The apertures were intended to account for the changes of place in the rising and the setting of the sun throughout the year. The earth was divided into Seven Climes, the central being Írán, which was surrounded by the other six and was as large as all the rest put together. It was divided from them by vast mountain ranges.* The Central Clime was also surrounded by the Eastern equivalent of the Homeric Oceanus or Ocean-stream, for the Indus, Oxus, Aras, Euxine, Bosphorus, Sea of Marmora, Dardanelles, Nile, and Indian Ocean were regarded as a chain of rivers, lakes, gulfs, and seas all in connection with each other.* This confusion, especially as regards the Oxus and the Aras, frequently seems to have misled the poet himself. He was a native of Eastern Írán, and naturally supposed that the river so constantly referred to in the poem as the boundary between Írán and Túrán was the Oxus. He shaped matters accordingly, but it can hardly be doubted that the river of his authorities was the Aras.* The substitution of Aras for Oxus throws a flood of light upon the wars, campaigns, and political relations recorded in the Sháhnáma, especially during the first and longest portion of the Mythic Period.
The position of the Medes on the Aras explains how the incursions into Ázarbíján of the Assyrians in early, and of the Arabs in later, times came to be embodied in the story, how we come to have the wars with the Túránians brought so prominently before us, why the arch-enemy Afrásiyáb is recorded to have been taken prisoner in lake Urumiah, and why the writer of the Armenian history who passes under the name of Moses of Chorene couples the two great enemies of the Medes in his account of Persian fable:—“Quid autem tibi sunt voluptati viles ac vanae de Byraspe Astyage fabulae?”* Byrasp or Bíwarasp is the Pahlaví term for Zahhák. Astyages was the great Túránian king of Ekbatana and sometime overlord of Cyrus. The vast spaces and regions of the Oxus have always been a difficulty to the student of the Sháhnáma, but substitute the comparatively narrow area between the Caspian and the Euxine and much is explained.*
Thus far Firdausí follows the old Íránian cosmogony. In the case of the heavens he rejects it; and its four heavens of the Stars, of the Moon, of the Sun, and of the Endless Lights, become nine in the poem—those of the seven planets, of the angels, and of the throne of God. These heavens were supposed to be crystalline spheres with independent motions and fitting one inside another like Chinese boxes. The seven planets are the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn.
Firdausí took his imagery chiefly from the ancient cosmogony, or from the natural features of his native land. A Sháh's dominion extends from the Moon to the Fish, or all the Seven Climes obey him. Armies stretch from mountain to mountain, or from sea to sea. The warriors' heads touch the Sun or Saturn. The warriors themselves are, or are like, mountains, lions, elephants, leopards, and crocodiles, they level the hills with their battle-cries, and pierce with their spears the hearts of flints. Their palaces and castles bar the eagle's flight, rise above the clouds or hold converse with the stars. Troops throng like locusts and ants, and even gnats can find no room to pass them. In battle the field or even the whole world is a sea or stream of gore. A tiger bestrides an elephant and brandishes a crocodile, which being interpreted means that a cavalier waves his sword. Swords too are, or are like, diamonds; while spears turn the earth to a reed-bed. One horse is so keen of sight that it can see an ant's foot on black cloth at night two leagues away. Rapid motion is compared to fire or to its spirit Ázargashasp, who is often an equivalent for the lightning, to wind, smoke, or dust, the last being the commonest figure in the poem. The reader, like the poet, will find it ubiquitous, and will not fail to notice in the accounts of marches, battlefields, and single combats, &c., that the sky, sun, moon, &c., are said to grow like indigo or ebony, or to become veiled or to turn dark at noonday, &c. The allusion is to the dust. To say that the air darkened is often merely another way of saying that the dust rose; and both, and kindred expressions, are in constant use to indicate that hosts or individuals have set forth on some expedition, are approaching or engaging in battle, &c. Opposed to the dust—the enemy, is water—the friend. “Where land and water are my treasure is,” says one of the Sháhs in the poem, and the poet compares the joy of having one's work approved by the wise to that of seeing plenty of water in one's own canal. Consequently it is not the blue but the cloudy sky that delights the Persian eye, and spring, with its clouds and thunder-showers, flowers, and verdure, is the favourite season. “The hand of Mahmúd,” says the poet, “is like a cloud in spring.” Perpetual spring is the Persian's notion of a perfect climate. A king adorns his rose-garden like spring, i.e. he summons all his great men about him and holds a court. The Persian year began with the spring, and the beginning of the New Year was a season of rejoicing. The cheek in joy or health is like the rose, tulip, pomegranate, or Judas-tree blossoms, in fear or passion like those of jasmine or fenugreek, or as colourless as sandarach, the transparent gum of the Callitris Quadrivalvis, of which pounce is made. In passion, too, or fear, the body shakes like a willow-tree, the heart and liver become full of blood, the veins throb and the blood itself boils. The narcissus bedews the rose when beauty weeps. Stature is like the cypress, which is also the tree of the burial-ground, the tree of posthumous fame, or like the teak. In old age the straight-stemmed cypress stoops. A youth of promise is a sapling bearing its first fruits. To take any important step is to plant a tree it may be of revenge or of some prudent act of policy, and the fruit of the tree will according to circumstances turn out to be either gems or colocynth. The poet is fond of moralising on life, its transient nature and vicissitudes. His favourite figure for the former is the wayside caravanserai or inn where as pilgrims or travellers we sojourn for a brief space, and then departing yield our room to others; for the latter he appeals to the configuration of his native land—the apparently endless alternation of ascent and descent with which all who have sojourned in those parts are well acquainted—or by a bolder flight describes how a man is raised to Saturn or the Pleiades only to be flung into the ditch or to the Fish—the mythological one referred to above.
Like other poets Firdausí suffered from the constraint
of rhyme. When for instance we find “Balkh”
at the end of one hemistich of a couplet, “talkh” is
pretty certain to be at the end of the other, and as
“talkh” means “bitter” the sense of such passages is
apt to be strained. Similarly the changes are rung with
great frequency on the words “níl” (indigo or the Nile),
“míl” (a mile), and “píl” (an elephant) as verse-
“For rhyme the rudder is of verses,
With which, like ships, they steer their courses.”
In other words, the poet uses “níl” for the sound more often than for the sense, and translator and reader alike must take the consequence; but they are at all events exonerated from seeking in such passages for some recondite meaning which Firdausí himself never intended to convey.