Is Shahnameh worth reading?
The Shahname is a book worth reading for everyone, and lucky is the one who can enjoy it in the original Classical Persian. Nevertheless, even without knowing it, you can find it translated into a number of languages.
What is the Shahnameh and why is it important?
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. Many such accounts already existed in prose, an example being the Abu-Mansuri Shahnameh.
Why is Shahnameh known for the literary masterpiece in Iran?
But it was Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh that re-told the story of the Persian kings in an unforgettable way, solidified the authority of the Persian language as a literary medium, and kept alive the knowledge of Iran’s ancient glory, political ethics and cultural identity.
What is the best translation of the Iliad?
There probably is no single “best” translation. Some people want a reading experience that flows as easily and quickly as prose as possible, while others seek a translation that hews closely to the original Greek. I personally feel that Fagles and Lombardo are easier to read than Lattimore, with some important reservations.
What kind of poem is the Shahnameh?
The Shahnameh is an epic poem of over 50,000 couplets written in Early New Persian. It is based mainly on a prose work of the same name compiled in Ferdowsi’s earlier life in his native Tus.
What does Shahnameh mean in Persian?
The Shahnameh or Shahnama ( Persian: شاهنامه, romanized : Šāhnāme, lit. ‘The Book of Kings’, pronounced [ʃɒːhnɒːˈme]) is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran.
What is the oldest copy of Shahnameh?
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. Using it as the chief text, Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh began the preparation of a new critical edition in 1990.