Ferdosi’s
Life
Ferdosi
mentions the exact date for his sixty-third birthday in the
Shahnameh. After reconciling the calendar he used with
the ones still in use today, it’s been determined that he
was born on Friday January 3rd, 940 A.D. (329 A.H., lunar
calendar). His birthplace, Bazh, was a village in the
neighborhood of Tabaran, the main district of the old city of
Tus, in the province of Khorasan, Iran.
His
honorific title (konye) is unanimously recorded as
Abu’lQassem, which indicates that he had a son named Qassem.
His son’s death at a young age grieved the poet immensely.
According to Nezami-Aruzi, Ferdosi left behind only a daughter
– a high-spirited lady. But there seems to be no trace
of her in the poet’s work.
Ferdosi’s
first name and that of his father are given variously.
The most reliable version is Mansur son of Hasan, recorded by
al-Bondari of Isfahan. We know no other forebear of
Ferdosi, and he himself makes no direct mention of his family
history. A well-known fact, however, that he came from a
dehqan (a noble landowner) family, throws light on his
background, and on his monumental undertaking, the Shahnameh.
For
Centuries after the fall of the Sassanian (the last Iranian
dynasty overthrown in the Arab invasion of the seventh century
A.D.), the dehqans remained pillars of the Iranian community.
They endeavored to preserve the memories of the golden days of
the perished empire. They upheld the heroic traditions
and the cultural heritage of Iran. Consequently, they
became the paragons of the Iranian people. The very term
dehqan became synonymous with “Iranian”, and the
“learned narrator of history and sagas” of Iran.
Ferdosi
came from this class, the landed nobility. Although his
early years are obscure, being the son of a well-to-do squire,
he undoubtedly received a high education and a strenuous
physical training. The type of education and training
which the sons of Iranian nobility would traditionally
undergo. It is evident from his masterly creation, the
Shahnameh, that his educational concentration was on the
Persian literature, and the Iranian history & sagas.
He learned a great deal about ancient Iran and its heroes,
culture, and heritage.
In
360/970, Ferdosi, then thirty years old, was an accomplished
poet, married, with a two-year old son. He had a number
of celebrated friends; among whom Mansur, the son of Abu
Mansur Mohammad Abd-al-Razzaq, occupied a special position.
Ferdosi’s life was filled with efforts to learn incessantly
and attending the learned gatherings. He had a profound
appreciation for beauty, especially natural beauty. This
combined with his astonishing imagination made him an artist
whose descriptions of the scenes are as colorful, as lively,
and as absorbing as the great work of a master painter of the
Realism School.
Ferdosi
was a tall figure with a lively and optimistic nature.
He lived much in the same way, as did his Sassanian ancestors,
with prosperity and joy. He enjoyed such pastimes as
horseback riding, playing games, feasting and drinking wine,
and listening to music and songs. He loved life and all
it had to offer. He was courteous, kindhearted,
truthful, open-handed, warm, and faithful. He despised
prejudice, ignorance, and greed. Ferdosi’s personality
is well reflected in his work.
He
admired wisdom sincerely. For Ferdosi, “truth” and
“wisdom” were the keys to salvation. He emphasized
that in moments of defeat and decline, hope must be retained;
because old fallen trees can grow anew if their roots are
preserved. This is one reason why he wanted to preserve
the memories of Iran’s glorious past – which someday it
might rise again. It was as if his love for Iran was
part of his religion and governed his way of thinking.
He idolized Iranian heroes, glorified their ways of life, and
defended their traditions with zeal and conviction.
Ferdosi
spent his best years pouring his energy and heart into
charming, meaningful, and exciting poetry. The
Shahnameh is an impressive monument of poetry and
historiography; a poetical recast of what Ferdosi and his
predecessors regarded as the account of Iran’s history.
The singular message that the Shahnameh strives to convey is
the idea that the history of Iranshahr was a complete and
immutable whole. It started with Gayumarth, the first
man, and ended with his fiftieth scion and successor,
Yazdegerd III: six thousand years of history. The task
of Ferdosi was to prevent this history from losing its
connection with the future Iranian generations. Needless
to say, he succeeded in a way that no other historian has,
either before or after him.
As
a man of strong principles, Ferdosi kept the Shahnameh
undedicated for a long time. In all the years he was
composing the Shahnameh, he had saved it for a royal patron
who would recognize the value of such a treasure and would be
worthy of receiving it. Such patron would ensure
preservation of copies of the Shahnameh, and would help to
propagate them throughout Iran.
In
the eyes of many Iranians, including Ferdosi, Soltan Mahmud,
the Ghaznavid, had created a burning hope for an Iranian
renaissance. For the first time since the Arab
invasion, an Iranian dynast, speaking Persian and following
all Iranian traditions, had unified the whole of Iran and
appeared to be heading for the revival of the Sassanian
culture and empire. The Divan system was being kept in
Persian instead of Arabic; a nationalistic move that only
Mahmud’s sanction could have made possible. With his
mighty armies, lofty palaces, valuable treasures, hosts of
musicians, singers, and poets, his “eagle banner”, his
elephants and park games, his banquets with wine, and his
celebration of Noruz, Mehrgan, and Sadeh, for the first time
since the fall of the sassanians, their magnificence and
splendor had been revived in the court of Soltan Mahmud.
In order to emphasize his “Sassanian origin”, Mahmud had
gone so far as to publish a fictitious pedigree tracing his
descent to Yasdgerd III.
Ferdosi
regarded Mahmud as a new Freidun, a just, brilliant, worthy
and legitimate Iranian King. He finally presents his
Shahnameh to Soltan Mahmud, a sovereign whom he viewed as
deserving of such a treasure. This occurred in 395/1004,
when Ferdosi was sixty-five years old, and exactly twenty-five
years after he had begun to compose these stories in verse.
The
popular myths about Ferdosi agreeing to compose the Shahnameh
in return for sixty thousand gold coins (Dinars) from Soltan
Mahmud, as well as his visit to Mahmud’s court and defeating
the court poets in a poetic contest are all false.
By the time Mahmud came to power in Khorasan, Ferdosi had been
working on the Shahnameh for nineteen years.
Furthermore, he never met Mahmud.
As
it happened, Mahmud did not appreciate the Shahnameh, nor did
he realize the honor that its dedication had bestowed upon
him. Many reasons have been given for Mahmud’s cool
reception. First and foremost, Ferdosi never presented
the Shahnameh in person. As a result, the Shahnameh was
deprived of a traditional and highly effective “ceremony of
presentation to the royal patron” by the author
himself. Unattended, his work had little chance of fair
introduction and, therefore, little chance of fair attention.
Secondly,
unfamiliar with Mahmud and his pretentious and lordly nature,
Ferdosi employed a bold and advisory tone in his panegyrizing
passages. He called the king’s attention to the
achievements and nobility of Iranian heroes in the Shahnameh.
Undoubtedly, Mahmud took such remarks too personally and as an
affront to his own majesty; he therefore received Ferdosi’s
work with no enthusiasm. Furthermore, Ferdosi had
praised Mahmud’s grand vizier, Fazl ebn-e Ahmad-e Asfarayeni,
a bold counselor imposed upon him by his father, Sebuk-Tegin,
while Mahmud was the Sepahsalar of Khorasan.
Asfarayeni
frequently questioned Mahmud’s Judgments and threatened
him with resignation. By the time Ferdosi sent the
second edition of the Shahnameh to Mahmud’s court, in
395/1005, almost certainly through the grace of Asfarayeni,
the king had made up his mind to remove this powerful and
headstrong minister. Ferdosi’s warm and impressive
praises of Asfarayeni and his statesmanship most certainly
further alienated Mahmud.
Thirdly,
political developments had in the meantime shifted
Mahmud’s interests and had changed his personal
behavior. While rising to power, he posed as an
Iranian king wishing to revive the Sassanian state.
Having achieved his aim in becoming the most powerful
sovereign of his time, he no longer deemed it necessary to
rely on ethnic or national loyalties. Instead, Mahmud
decided to play the role of an Islamic hero crusading for
the spread of the faith. This way, he could rely on
mass support throughout the Islamic Asia, and especially
from Baghdad. He was being hailed as the restorer of
the traditional Islamic beliefs. Obviously, Iranian
nationalistic tendencies ran contrary to his new pro-Arab
policies. As the symbol of Iranian heroes and
veneration of Iranian traditions, Ferdosi had gone so far as
to condemn the Arab conquest of Iran. To champion such
a book as the Shahnameh meant weakening his Islamic support,
and this, Mahmud was not prepared to do.
Two
other factors contributed to the cool reception of the
second edition in 396/1005. One was the envy of
Mahmud’s court poets, who depicted their king as greater,
wiser, braver, and more splendid than the most illustrious
Shahnameh heroes, while condemning Iranian sagas as
“baseless tales”. The flatterers attended the king
constantly, and had ample opportunity to belittle the value
of the Shahnameh. The second factor was Mahmud’s
constant occupation with state affairs, preparing and
carrying out military expeditions and time consuming feasts,
and ceremonial occasions, which all combined to leave him
little time or enthusiasm to read or listen to long stories
of ancient Iranian kings and heroes.
How
much of this was known to Ferdosi, it is not clear. He
often wondered over the lack of response from the royal
court. Yet he continued to perfect his work and
supplement his stories. Occasionally, he inserted a
few lines panegyrizing, at the same time criticizing, the
king and hinting at his own condition. Finally, in
400/1009-10, the third and principal version of the
Shahnameh was completed. As a grand and continuous
history of the Iranian nation, it was sent to Ghazne with
definite dedication to Soltan Mahmud. It contained
nearly sixty thousand distiches of imposing epic and lyrical
nature and was the result of thirty long years of hard work
by the greatest Iranian poet. Seventy-one years of
age, weak, lonely and distressed, Ferdosi expected a
handsome reward from a king whom he once viewed as a second
Freidun, a reward that never came.
The
popular sentiments toward Ferdosi exacted a terrible
“revenge” from Soltan Mahmud by fabricating a biting
satire on him. As it stands, the Satire is a truly
fascinating literary creation. It contains a fair number
of genuine verses taken from Ferdosi’s statements on
occasions with no relevance to himself or to his relation with
Mahmud. They are skillfully joined together to
supposedly convey Ferdosi’s judgment on a pact-breaking
king. No reader could remain unimpressed. It succeeds in
presenting Soltan Mahmud as a ruler of lowly origin who was
envious of the glorious descent and deeds of the ancient
heroes and kings. It depicted him as vengeful, greedy,
and incapable of appreciating poetry and fine skills.
Above all, the Satire explains Mahmud’s lack of appreciation
of the Shahnameh as due to his fanatical anti-Shiism.
However
impressive, the Satire is a forgery. Ferdosi did indeed
show his disapproval of Mahmud’s excesses and
fanaticism. He, however, did so very politely and
indirectly, in the form of advice and warnings often inserted
in the passages panegyrizing the king. Although one can
see clear traces of Ferdosi’s complete disappointments,
there is nothing in his work to suggest that he actually
denounced Soltan Mahmud.
As
reported by Nezami-Aruzi and echoed in the Shahnameh, Ferdosi
was a wealthy landowner with a considerable estate when he
began composing the Shahnameh. He lived comfortably for
sixty years. At that point, his occupation with the
Shahnameh and, as a result, lack of attention to his land
forced him to sell most of his property. All that
remained was an orchard wherein he was later buried.
When
nearing sixty, he laments over the time when he was a
rosy-cheeked young man with thick black hair, proud of his
horsemanship and other outdoor sports, enjoying a comfortable
life and a skill for composing poetry. By the age of
sixty-five, in 395/1005, he is completely white haired.
He has become deaf, shortsighted, empty-handed, and exhausted.
To top things off, a disaster strikes. His only son dies
at age thirty-seven. Ferdosi’s mourning over his son
is one of the most personal and moving pieces of the Shahnameh.
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