FIRDAWSI (9357-1026?)
The greatest poet of Persia - now Iran - was Abu al-Qasem Mansur, who wrote
under the name Firdawsi. He wrote the country's national epic,
Book of Kings, in its
final form. Of the man himself, little is known. The most reliable source of information
is an account by a 12th-century poet, Nezami-ye 'Aruzi, who visited Firdawsi's native
village of Tus and collected stories about him. Firdawsi was born about 935, the son
of a wealthy landowner. It was to earn money for his daughter's dowry that he began
the 35-year task of composing the
Book of Kings, or
Shah-nameh as it is called in
Persian. The work, nearly 60,000 couplets long, was based on a prose work of the
same name, itself a translation of a history of the kings of Persia from the most
ancient times down to the reign of Khosrow II in the 7th century. When the poem
was completed in 1010, Firdawsi presented it to Mahmud, the sultan of Ghanza, in
the hope of being well paid for it. In this the poet was disappointed: he considered
his reward so paltry that he gave it away. This angered Mahmud, and Firdawsi fled
to Herat, then to Mazanderan. Some years later, Mahmud tried to make amends to
the poet by sending him a valuable amount of indigo. Unfortunately the shipment
arrived at Tus on the same day that Firdawsi's body was being taken to the
cemetery for burial. His daughter refused the award. The
Book of Kings has
remained one of the most popular works in the Persian language. Modern Iranians
understand it easily because the language in which it was written bears a
relationship to modern Persian - a relationship similar to that between
Shakespearean English and contemporary English.
Dostları ilə paylaş: