Ferdowsi

Ecumenism and Globalism in the Reception of Ferdowsi and his Book of Kings: Evidence from the Bāysonghori Preface

2020.03.02 | By Olga M. Davidson The focus here is on two Persianate texts. The first is the monumental poem of a poet retrospectively named Ferdowsi, or ‘man of paradise’, who lived in the late 10th and early 11th century CE. The second text is in prose: it is a comparably monumental preface to a lavish new edition of the Shahnama that was commissioned in 1426 CE and published in… Read more

Life of Ferdowsi myths as evidence for the reception of Ferdowsi

2015.12.17 | By Olga Davidson In a previous study, I argued that the historicized narrative of the so-called Older Preface to the Shahnama of Ferdowsi is strikingly parallel to Ferdowsi’s own poeticized narrative concerning the genesis of the Book of Kings. In the present study, I make a parallel argument with regard to the Bâysonghori Preface. This text is the preface to the Bâysonghori Shahnama, a fifteenth century manuscript commissioned… Read more