Ferdowsi’s Shahnama: Millennial Perspectives celebrates the ongoing reception, over the last thousand years, of a masterpiece of classical Persian poetry. The epic of
theShahnama or Book of Kings glorifies the spectacular achievements of Iranian civilization from its mythologized beginnings all the way to the historical time of the Arab
Conquest, when the notionally unbroken sequence of Iranianshahs came to an end. The poet Hakim Abu’l-Qasim, who composed this epic, was renamed Ferdowsi or "the man of Paradise" in
recognition of his immortalizing artistic accomplishment. Even now, over a thousand years after his death in 1010 CE, the impact of Ferdowsi’s epic poetry reverberates in the intellectual and
artistic life of Persianate cultures all over the world.Ferdowsi’s Shahnama: Millennial Perspectives undertakes a new look at the reception of Ferdowsi’s poetry, especially in the
twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries CE. Such a reception, the contributors to this book argue, actively engages the visual as well as the verbal arts of Iranian
civilization. The paintings and other art objects illustrating theShahnama over the ages are as vitally relevant as the words of Ferdowsi’s poetry.
