On Thursday, April 6, 2023, I sat in a folding, auditorium-style chair to listen to Diana Dinshaw’s telling of the epic Persian story Shahnameh (“Book of Kings”). It is a habit of mine to take a couple of Advil before having to sit for more than ten minutes on an uncomfortable seat. At the end of Diana’s telling, I realized I had been transported into a world I didn’t know existed, and I wanted to know why I had never heard of the Shahnameh. As I remarked to myself, my derriere didn’t hurt. And, I wanted to know more about the culture and the author of this remarkable epic poem that begins in the time of myth and tells the story of four generations of fathers and sons from the creation of the world to historical facts of the Muslim conquests of the seventh century. And I wanted to know about Ferdowsi, the only author of this stunning epic.
All of the history I learned during my elementary and secondary education was history of the Americas, from conquistadores to US Marines in Cuba, and the two wars, Revolutionary and Civil. At least in English class, I got to read War and Peace (Tolstoy), Don Quixote (Cervantes), and Tale of Two Cities (Dickens). I was rather smug to know how literate I was. And as I listened to Diana continue to tell us of the epic adventures of the fathers and sons of Persia, its kings and princes racing their horses through deserts, valleys and forests, I gathered up the smug child in me and realized how very, very, big and rich in history and literature the rest of the world is. Particularly that part of the world that our country has been bombing, invading and tracking jihadists for the past half century. Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and the greater region of historical Persian culture, Armenia, Dagestan, Georgia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, all celebrate the Shahnameh as their national epic.
Its sole author, Ferdowsi, created this epic in thirty years, writing over 50,000 lines of 22 syllables with two rhyming couplets in the same meter. It was first published in 1010 and published in English in 1832. There have been many attempts to translate the Shahnameh into English, and some of the translations have conveyed the tragedy and beauty of single stories of the original, but unable to duplicate the brilliance of the “Early New Persian” rhyming schema in its entirety.
As I walked back to my car after Diana’s epic telling, I became aware that I had been also riding through the desert, or with family during feasts, or in deep grief with a father who unknowingly mortally wounds his son in battle, only to have that son reveal who he is just before his last breath. My derriere and back felt surprisingly well. The story was an epic distraction! Thank you, Diana!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahnameh
The image at the top of the post can be found here.
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