Articles+and+Books

=**Art History and Manuscript Studies**= toc Blair, Sheila S. "The Development of the Illustrated Book in Iran," //Muqarnas,// Vol. 10 (1993): 266-274.

Brend, Barbara, and Charles Melville. //Epic of the Persian Kings: The Art of Ferdowsi's// Shahnameh. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010. 256 pp., ISBN 978-1848853324.

Dickson, Martin B. and Welch, Stuart C, (Eds). //The Houghton Shahnameh.// Cambridge, Mass: University of Harvard Press, 1981. A two-volume work; the first volume contains an introduction to and background on the text, and the second volume is a facsimile edition of the Houghton //Shahnameh.// Amazing.

Hillenbrand, Robert. "The Arts of the Book in Ilkhanid Iran." In //The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353//, edited by Linda Komaroff and Stefano Carboni, 134-167. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002. For a treatment of book illumination and production in general, but specifically about the central role played by illustrated //Shahname// in Ilkhanid Iran. Also: possible political implications of the //Shahname// under the Ilkhanids (who incorporated images from the //Shahname// into nearly all forms of the visual arts), the exchange of illustrative elements between the //Shahname// and other images, and an interesting discussion about how illustrated texts might have been used (great amounts of resources and time were spent creating illustrated texts, but the audiences for such art was necessarily small).

Hillenbrand, Robert, ed. //Shahnama: The Visual Language of the Persian Book of Kings.// Aldershot, England and Burlington, VA: Ashgate Publishing, 2004. A collection of art-historical essays on //Shahmaneh// that illustrate how changes in the text and its illustrations reveal differing attitudes toward the epic in various contexts and periods.

Mukhtari, Daryush. //Typography-ye Shakhsiyatha-ye Shahname// (//The Typography of Ferdowsi's// Shahname//).// Tehran: Entesharat-e Mirdashti, 1387/2008-9. This is a beautiful and interesting book in which the characters in the //Shahnameh// are rendered typographically. It's

Sims, Eleanor. "The Illustrated Manuscripts of Firdausi's //Shahnama// Comissioned by Princes of the House of Timur," //Ars Orientalis,// Vol. 22, (1992): 43-68.

Welch, Stuart C. "78 Pictures from a World of Kings, Heroes, and Demons: The Houghton //Shahnameh//," //The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin,//Vol. 29, No. 8 (Apr., 1971): 341-357. (Describes the Met's acquisition of pieces of the Houghton //Shahnameh.// Includes info on the Houghton//Shahnameh// and reproductions of several dozen images, including a great full color image of Tahmuras defeating the divs.

=**Dictionaries of the Shahnameh**= Jahangiri, Ali. //Farhang-e Namha-ye// Shahname//.// Tehran: Entesharat-e Barg, 1369/1990-1. This is a short dictionary of people and place names in the //Shahnameh.// Each entry is accompanied by the couplets in which the name appears, and references for the couplets are provided.

Rastagar-Fasa'i, Mansur. //Farhang-e Namha-ye// Shahname//.// Tehran: Mu'asase-ye Mutal'aat va Tahqiqat-e Farhangi, 1369/1990-1. This is a two-volume dictionary of people and place names in the //Shahnameh,// with detailed notes and references.

Zanja ni, Mahmu d. //Farhang-e Ja m'a-e// Sha hna me//.// Tehran: Mu'asase-ye Entesha ra t-e 'Ata'i, 1372/1993-4. This is a general dictionary of the //Shahnameh// that defines a wide variety of words and phrases, including names and places. Each entry is accompanied by lines of the poem in which the word or phrase is found. References are not provided for the couplets or for the information found in the entries.

=**Historical Background**= Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. //The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran 994–1040//, 2nd edition. Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1973. (1st ed.: Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963). 335 pp., ASIN B0007B6TF2.

Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. "Sistan and its Local Histories," //Iranian Studies,// Vol. 33, No. 1/2 (Winter - Spring, 2000): pp. 31-43.

Diakonov, Mikhail Mikhailovich. //Ferdousi: zhizn’ i tvorchestvo//. Moskva, Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1940 [//Ferdowsi: Life and Work//. Moscow, Press of the Academy of Sciences, 1940]. This short book (intended for a non-specialist readership) offers a sketch of the historical background against which Ferdowsi composed the //Shahnameh//, touching on subjects ranging from the destabilization of Samanid rule to Daqiqi and the revival of courtly interest in Iran’s legendary past. All of Chapter Three is devoted to Ferdowsi’s troubled relationship with Mahmoud of Ghazni. The largest section of the book is a king-by-king exposition of the //Shahnameh’//s plot, and while there is little in the way of analysis, it includes lengthy translations from the Persian by Diakonov (particularly nice is his translation of the story of Bizhan and Manizheh into rhymed couplets, pp. 78-90.

Nöldeke, Theodor. //The Iranian National Epic//. Trans. Leonid Th. Bogdanov. Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1930. First published in German as //Das iranische nationalepos.// This work represents an early comprehensive study of the the work, attempting to comment on the life of Ferdowsi, his sources, the literary culture of the Ghaznavid court, themes in the work, historical figures as characters in the //Shahnameh//, and other aspects of its contents.

Olson, Glending. //Literature as recreation in the later Middle Ages// (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982). 245pp.

Omidsalar, Mahmoud. "Storytellers in Classical Persian Texts," //Journal of American Folklore//, Vol. 97, No. 384 (April-June 1984): 204-212.

Omidsalar, Mahmoud. "To Emend or Not to Emend? Notes on Restoring the Text of the Shahnamah," //Iranian Studies,// Vol. 35, No. 1/3 (Winter - Summer, 2002): 177-190.

Osmanov, Magomed-Nuri Osmanovich. //Firdousi, zhizn’ I tvorchestvo.// Moskva, Izdatel’stvo vostochnoy literatury, 1959 [//Ferdowsi: Life and Work//. Moscow, Press of Eastern Literatures, 1959]. Like Diakonov, Osmanov situates the //Shahnameh// within the greater context of political turmoil in tenth-century Khorasan and gives a laundry list of characters and events in the epic. He also offers a more penetrating analysis of recurring themes and ideas (see p. 66, “Idejnaja osnova ‘Shakh-Name’”) and classes of characters (kings – p. 89, warriors – p. 103, and women – p. 139).

Shahbazi, A. Shapur. //Ferdowsi: A Critical Biography//. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1991 (paperback 2010, ISBN 978-1568592794; xiv, 149 pp.)

=Intertextuality= //The Kârnâmag î Ardashîr î Babagân// Translated by Darab Dastur Peshotan Sanjana, 1896. Online: []

Davis, Dick. “In the Enemy's Camp: Homer's Helen and Ferdowsi's Hojir.” Iranian Studies 25.3-4 (1992): 17-26. In this article, Dick Davis argues that there is a strong possibility that Ferdowsi was familiar enough with Homer’s text (or scenes, characters and events existing in the text) to borrow from it and alter it for his own use. For Davis, one scene in particular (from the story of Rostam and Sohrab in the Shâhnâmeh) bares too close a resemblance to its “antecedent” in the Iliad to be coincidental or be simply explained away by the genre that the two poets are working in or even the “underlying mythical material and sources utilized by the poets” (17). Relying on structural and linguistic evidence Davis tries to draw parallels between the scene where Helen describes the Grecian camp to Priam and a similar scene in the Shâhnâmeh where the character of Hojir, a hostage in the war between the Turks and Iranians, describes the Iranian camp to Sohrab who is searching for his father, Rostam. Although Davis tries hard to show the connections between the two episodes, and the two stories, even going so far as to claim that Hojir’s name and Helen’s name might be cognates, the argument is, ultimately, not very persuasive. But then, Davis never really provides a clear rationale for what he hopes to “gain” from such a tenuous comparative endeavor in the first place.

Márkus-Takeshita, Kinga Ilona. "From Iranian Myth to Folk Narrative: The Legend of the Dragon-Slayer and the Spinning Maiden in the Persian Book of the Kings," //Asian Folklore Studies,// Vol. 60, No. 2 (2001): 203-214. An exploration of the story of Haftvad, his daughter, and the worm and its connections to the prominent folklore motifs of the Dragon-Slayer and the Magic Spinner.

Meisami, Julie Scott. //Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century.// Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. For discussion of role of Firdowsi's //Shahnameh// in the broader context of the Persian historiographic tradition, see especially pp.37-45.

Omidsalar, Mahmoud. "Rostam's Seven Trials and the Logic of Epic Narrative in the Shahnama," //Asian Folklore Studies,// Vol. 60, No. 2 (2001): 259-293. Omidsalar examines Rostam's trials, which culminate in the hero's slaying of the White Div. Disagreeing with Noldeke, who argues that the White Demon is rooted in ancient traditions of a white deity, Omidsalar posits the White Div as a representation of Rostam's albino father, Zal. Therefore the conflict between the two takes on Oedipal dimensions.

Sayed-Gohrab, A. A. "Magic in Classical Persian Amatory Literature," //Iranian Studies,// Vol. 32, No. 1 (Winter 1999): 71-97. Deals with the "magical" nature of the beloved, mainly in later Persian literature, but pages 74-76 contain a good discussion of the //zan jaadu// and the //pari// in the Shahnameh.

Wickens, G.M. "The Imperial Epic of Iran: A Literary Approach," In //Iranian Civilization and Culture//, ed. Charles J. Adams (Montreal: McGill University, 1972), pp. 133-44.

=Literary Themes=

Clark, Fraser. “From Epic to Romance, via Filicide? Rustam’s Character Formation.” Iranian Studies 43.1 (2010): 53-70. This article tries to determine how “realistic” of a character Rostam is or isn’t by examining his attempted suicide, after his act of filicide, in relation to his personality in other episodes. Through this approach, Clark comes up with the following thesis, “Rostam’s continuing concern for his reputation for heroic supremacy has perhaps blinded him to the possibility of his opponent being his son” (66). This is all well and good and there is in fact much in the Rostam and Sohrab episode alone to corroborate such a reading. But then to conclude from this that Rostam is responsible for the tragedy turns the tragedy into a morality tale by condemning Rostam for being Rostam, or a hero who wouldn’t be who he is if he didn’t seek fame or honor at all cost.

Clinton, Jerome. "The Uses of Guile in the Shahnama," //Iranian Studies,// Vol. 32, No. 2 (1999): 223-230.

Kasimov, Olimdzhon Khabibovich. //Derivatsiya v “Shakhname” Abulkasima Ferdavsi//. Tajikistan, Academy of Sciences; Dushanbe, 2006. This highly technical monograph gives a systematic analysis of suffixation in the //Shahnameh//, singling out 37 different suffix-morphemes and their role in word formation in the context of the greater lexicon of Ferdowsi’s epic. The monograph concludes with an overview of how these morphemes relate to Tajik linguistics (e.g., for various uses of the Persian suffix //-var//, see pp. 98-111).

Mulla-Ahmad, Mirza. //Jang va Sulh dar// Shahname (War and Peace in the //Shahname)//.Tehran: Nashr-e Ruzegar, 1383/2004-5. This is a short book by a Tajik scholar detailing the wars of the epic, with some commentary on the different types of war and how warfare is depicted by the poet. The author also notes some of the ways warfare is depicted negatively in the epic.

von Grunebaum, Gustave E. "Firdausi's Concept of History,” //Fuad Köprülü Armağanı//, ed. Osman Turan, (Istanbul, 1953), pp. 177-93; and in //Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition,// ed. Robert Redfield and Milton Singer. The American Anthropologist, Comparative Studies of Cultures and Civilizations, No. 4 (Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association, 1955), 168-184.

=Women and Liminal Figures= Choksy, Jamshid. //Evil, Good, and Gender: Facets of the Feminine in Zoroastrian Religious History.// New York: Peter Lang, 2002.

Christensen, Arthur. //Essai sur la demonologie iranienne.// Copenhagen: Einar Munksgaard, 1941. An overview of Zoroastrian demonology. Particularly interesting in terms of //Shahnameh// studies are the final two chapters: "Divs, paris et dragons dans l'epopee neo-persane" and "Demons arabes et demons iraniens."

Doniger, Wendy. //Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts.// Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Khaleghi Motlagh, Djalal. //Die Frauen im Schahname: ihre Geschichte und Stellung unter gleichzeitiger Berücksichtigung vor- und nachislamischer Quellen.// Freiburg i. Br.: Schwarz, 1971. (translation forthcoming in Spring 2011, ed. Nahid Pirnazar, trans. Brigitte Neuenschwander, published by Mazda, under the title of //Women in the Shahnameh//).

Omidsalar, Mahmoud. "Div," //Encyclopedia Iranica,// 1995. Article found at []. A very useful catalog of various types/notions of divs as well as the different kinds that appear in the //Shahnameh.//

Omidsalar, Mahmoud. "Notes on Some Women of the Shahnama," //Name-ye Iran-e Bastan//, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2001): 81-104.