ABSTRACT
The first draft of the Shahnama (‘Book of Kings’) was completed in the year 999, and the final version, dedicated to Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna, just over ten years later. The author was Abu’l-Qasim Hasan, generally known by his professional name, Firdawsi. The work occupied him for some thirty years and the poem covers the whole traditional history of Persia from its remote and fabulous origins down to the fall of the Sasanian dynasty before the invasion of the Muslim Arabs in the middle of the seventh century. It comprises some 60,000 rhyming couplets in the metre called mutaqarib (∪- - / ∪- - / ∪- - / ∪ -).
