ABSTRACT
The Iranian national epic, called the Shâhnâma, is the most important text in Persian high literature. This epic was versified from a prose original in the tenth century a.d. by a poet called Ferdowsi. To the extent that the Shâhnâma narrates the legendary history of the country from the rule of the first primordial king to the Muslim conquest in the seventh century a.d., it has justifiably been called the “ethnic history of Iran.” One authority proclaims it Persia's “cultural I.D.” (Mînuvî, p. 14; and cf. pp. 18, 63), and another considers Fer-dowsi's epic fundamental to “Iranian cultural identity” (Matini, pp. 119–122; and cf. Puhvel, pp. 117–118, 125).
