The Shahnameh, also transliterated Shahnama, is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 distichs or couplets, the Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems, and the longest epic poem created by a single author. It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the greater region influenced by Persian culture such as Armenia, Dagestan, Georgia, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan celebrate this national epic.
Plate with a hunting scene from the tale of Bahram Gur and Azadeh. The imagery on this plate represents the earliest known depiction of a well-known episode from the story of Bahram Gur, which seems to have been popular for centuries, but was only recorded in the Shahnameh, centuries after this plate was created. Iran, c. 5th century A.D. Metropolitan Museum of Art
'Rostam cycle', fragment of the Penjikent murals in the Hermitage Museum. 7-8th-century
Beaker (mina'i ware) illustrating the story of Bijan and Manijeh. Iran, late 12th century. Freer Gallery of Art
Page from the Florence Shahnameh, the oldest known Shahnameh manuscript. Anatolia, 1217. National Central Library of Florence
Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi or Parsi, is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, respectively Iranian Persian, Dari Persian, and Tajiki Persian. It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivative of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a derivative of the Cyrillic script.
An Old Persian inscription written in Old Persian cuneiform in Persepolis, Iran
Middle Persian text written in Inscriptional Pahlavi on the Paikuli inscription from between 293 and 297. Slemani Museum, Iraqi Kurdistan.
Ferdowsi's Shahnameh
Kalilah va Dimna, an influential work in Persian literature