ABSTRACT
A GREAT deal of legend has gathered round Firdausi, as legends usually do round great men. Within a hundred years of his death, truth and fiction were so deftly woven together, that it was not easy to disentangle one from the other. Persian historians relate (though without judgment or discrimination) the legends that were in circulation, and make no effort whatever to fashion a consistent, reliable account of their Great Epic Poet. We have these legends in all their conflicting diversities, and in rich, picturesque, enticing, romantic settings. It was reserved for Nöldeke and Ethé to evolve, out of the accumulated mass of legends and fairy-tales, a historical account of the author of the Shahnamah. 1 The result of their researches may be thus summarised. Firdausi was a Dihquan, or Squire, of Tus, and as such was a man of position and affluence. He was born A.D. 920 or thereabouts; became deeply interested in antiquarian research and folklore—an interest which was considerably heightened, amply sustained, and fully satisfied by the Book of Kings, completed in A.D. 957–8, by Abu Mansur-al-Mamari, from ancient sources, for Abu Mansur b. Abdur Razzaq, the then Governor of Tus. The passion thus aroused and stimulated led Firdausi to compose the national Epic. After twenty-five years of unwearying labour the first edition was completed in A.D. 999 and was dedicated to Mohamed b. Abi Bakr of Khalaijan. But the poet did not rest on his laurels. In or about 1010 A.D. he completed a second edition of this National Epic, and dedicated it this time to Sultan Mahmud. Shortly after this a quarrel ensued, and Firdausi fled from Gazni. Does not this recall the celebrated Hegira of Voltaire from the Court of Frederick? Firdausi then sought and secured the protection of one of the princes of the House of Buway (Bahauddin, or his son Sultan u’d-Dawla, who succeeded him in A.D. 1012, as Nöldeke thinks: Maju’d-Dawla abu Talib Rustum, as Ethé seems to believe), and composed for him his other great poem the Yusuf and Zulaikha. An old man of ninety or more, he returned to his native town Tus, where he died, A.D. 1020 or 1025. Besides the Shahnamah and the Yusuf and Zulaikha, he wrote lyrical poems which have been collected, edited and translated by Dr. Ethé in his Firdausi als Lyriker. To what does the Shahnamah owe its unique position and universal fame? Apart from the facts of which it is the repository, it is invaluable from the point of view of mythology and folk-lore—for its legends of ancient Persia from the beginning of memory, until the Arab conquest in the VIIth century A.D. It has yet another, and to my mind the most powerful, characteristic which has conferred upon it the glory and lustre of undying renown. The Shahnamah is a gospel of Persian patriotism; the hymn of Persian pride. In its pages the pent-up wrath of the Persian against the Arab domination flames forth into a red-hot glow. In its pages the glory of the Persian race, suppressed, overwhelmed, almost crushed, shines forth once again in its wondrous radiance. It is a noble patriotism, which, so to speak, transfigures the style of the poet, and endows it with supernatural vigour and force. Ibn Hazm, the Royal historian, has told us that the Persians were mainly responsible for the religious schisms which sprang up in the bosom of Islam. They strove to destroy Islam from within when open opposition was hopeless, inexpedient, impracticable. For centuries they patiently bore subjection to Arab rule. True, ripples here and there pointed to the ferment underneath. As early as the reign of the Caliph Muawiya, says Goldziher, we hear accents of political complaint, the hushed whispers of simmering revolt. In my Essays: Indian and Islamic I have fully dealt with this subject, and I shall not repeat what I have said there.
