Ferdowsi?s Sh?hn?ma ascribes the downfall of Jamshid to hubris, a moral failing that causes the loss of his royal Farr and ushers in the tyrannical reign of Zahh?k, himself duped by Eblis into the act of patricide, which moral depravity manifests itself upon his person in serpentine deformity. The Pishd?di?n kings therefore inhabit a morally charged universe, governed by a teleological or theodictic metanarrative that draws a correspondence (though never complete) between virtue and victory. Although this moral fabric is torn by unrighteous action, evil deeds are typically avenged in the subsequent generation and the moral order, with the Iranian king at the center, restored. Several major episodes of the Kayanid era, however ? such as those of Sohr?b, Si?vosh, Esfandi?r ? lack a coherent metanarrative that could offer consolation or give purposeful meaning to suffering and injustice. Instead, the impersonal and relentless workings of fate seem to amorally propel characters inexorably toward their peculiar destinies (often foretold by astrological prognostication). While hamartia is perceptible in the lead characters, moral judgment often seems muted. While the text upholds virtue, it is deontological; the actors, while not denied agency, seem unable to affect outcomes. Concerted moral action does not influence the ultimate outcome of history, and Time/Fate relentlessly grinds down both the virtuous and the villain. And yet, Ferdowsi?s narratorial interventions frequently assign moral culpability at various junctures, seeming to implicate one character, then another, in the unfolding events and their consequences. For example, Ferdowsi opens the tale of Rostam and Sohr?b asking whether Fate is just or unjust, suggesting that we cannot know the answer. But in the course of the tale, he points blame at Sohr?b, at Afr?si?b, at Rostam, at Hojir, at Sohrab & Rostam together, at Kay Kavus, and finally at Rostam. Is this then a postmodern text, deliberately denying us a metanarrative? Does Ferdowsi deliberately intend to spread the blame, or deny that human agency can influence the outcome of events? Do his sources contradict one another, encouraging his narratological voice to offer conflicting explanations? Or is Ferdowsi simply not in complete control of the material, or his emotions? This paper will consider how previous critics (Meskoub, Sirjani, Davis, Davidson, von Grunebaum, Omidsalar) have tried to resolve such questions, and propose a hermeneutic for reading the text.

The demonic landscape of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh is fantastic and varied. The epic begins with an account of the demon Ahriman’s attack against Gayumart, first king of the world. As it continues, we encounter numerous other stories about battles between humans and demons, from Kay Kavus’ ill-advised plan to attack the demon land of Mazandaran to Rustam’s combat with the Akvan Div. But the boundary between the human and the demonic in the Shahnameh is not clearly drawn. As Dick Davis has observed, Rustam has a “tangential relationship” with humanity, and his connection to the supernatural—which manifests itself in his use of trickery and magic—is inherited through demonic ancestry. This paper examines the intersections between human beings and the demonic in the Shahnameh, specifically the way in which serpentine imagery and the use of sorcery and guile blur the line between the two categories. My study begins by examining the import of Zahhak’s transformation from Arab prince to serpent-shouldered demon king. I demonstrate how disparate notions of the demonic converge in this pivotal character, whose encounter with Iblis marks the first time a human being is tempted by a demon in the Shahnameh. I also note the manner in which Zahhak functions as a liminal figure through whom demonic traits are passed to posterity, including Rustam. In tracing subsequent occurrences of serpentine imagery and examining trickery and magic as traits occupying a borderland between human beings and demons, I highlight the gendered nature of demonic representations in Ferdowsi’s epic. Informed by the work of Mahmoud Omidsalar on women’s roles in key junctures of the Shahnameh narrative as well as by Kinga Markus-Takeshita’s observations on women and folklore in the epic, I contrast the uniformly negative depictions of females who use magic with the varied portrayals of males who do the same. In addition, I note the relationship between the feminine and the serpentine in the cases of Rudabeh and Haftvad’s daughter. In so doing, I show the way in which the demonic adds layers of ambiguity to characters throughout the Shahnameh, ultimately serving to complicate the notion of evil itself.

Most readers of the Sh?hn?ma have likely heard the anecdote about Ferdows?’s presentation of his work to Sol??n Ma?m?d of Ghazna. As the story goes, Ferdows? had been promised gold coins for every line in his poem, but other poets at the court in Ghazna spoke ill of him, and Ma?m?d gave him silver coins instead. Furious at having been shortchanged, Ferdows? took up his pen one last time and wrote a satire (hajw) of the monarch, so that all future generations would remember his injustice and aesthetic tone-deafness. The first recorded mention of Ferdows?’s encounter with Ma?m?d, however, dates to the mid-12th century CE, more than a hundred years after Ferdows? completed the final recension of his Sh?hn?ma. Most, if not all, extant manuscripts of the epic contain some version of the putative hajw, which varies in length from 32 lines to more than 100, and with numerous textual variants, including many lines taken from the Sh?hn?ma itself. Such textual issues, along with the lack of historical evidence that Ferdows? traveled to Ghazna, led to a consensus among Persian literature scholars, beginning early in the 20th century, that the satire is inauthentic. Perhaps as a result of this consensus, little research has been done on the hajw in recent decades. Mahmud Khan Shirani’s study of the text of the satire, published in Persian in 1977, remains the only substantial work to have been written on the topic. A number of modern Sh?hn?ma scholars, including Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh and Mohammad-Amin Riyahi, have recently expressed ambivalent opinions of the satire’s authenticity. In this paper, I discuss the possible origins of the satire and the implications of accepting or rejecting various accounts of what, if anything, took place between Ferdows? and Sol??n Ma?m?d. The paper also examines the differences among extant Sh?hn?ma manuscripts, in an effort to establish the original core of the hajw common to many versions. Finally, I ask: If we hold that Ferdows? did not write a satire, or that the story of his travel to Ghazna is apocryphal, then who might later have invented the tale, and for what reasons?

The story of “Sohrab and Rostam” in Firdawsi’s Shahnameh and “The Knight’s Tale” of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales both culminate in crimes against nature, filicide in the former and fratricide in the latter. As shame and grief overwhelm the people, the kings Kavus and Theseus admonish their subjects to accept these evil events as the inexorable decree of Fate, even going so far as to tell Rostam and Palamon to abandon their mourning for more productive activities. It is a move most evocative of Boethius, who shows how the feelings of anger, despair, and bewilderment that arise in the face of senseless tragedy may be neutralized by the arms of faith and reason, restoring inner peace. At the hands of Chaucer and Firdawsi, however, the efficacy of this strategy is cast in the gravest of doubts. As David Aers and Jean di Paolo demonstrate, Theseus’s invocation of the “Consolatio” only succeeds in further emphasizing the tragedy of death, while the positive theodicean component of the message falls flat. In the Shahnameh, Time/Fate (zamaneh or ruzegar) is the usual nemesis, yet Firdawsi undercuts this premise in the tale of Sohrab by constantly shifting the issue of causation from one character to another, inculpating Sohrab, Hojir, Kavus, and Rostam in the process. With such ambivalent and disorienting messages, both poets destabilize the implicit role of the monarch as arbiter of justice and the promise of tranquility through acquiescence to God’s will that their stories are meant to exemplify. Scholars like Davis, Gaylord, and S?m?n? have argued that the Shahnameh and the Knight’s Tale are “not about gods but of men”—that is, their fatalistic overtones belie a narrative that is brought to fruition by the choices and deeds of people. Davis, in particular, identifies a latent tension within the personal idiosyncrasies that sabotage the ‘official ethics’ of the poem as they are articulated by Kavus. From this premise, this paper seeks to consider how Firdawsi explores the problem of necessary justice in society, a central component of political and theological systems alike within the intellectual milieux of both poets, through both close reading and the work of literary critics. While it is acknowledged that there are many differences in theme, style, and genre between these two works, the subversive undertow found within them provide some interesting parallels and hint at potential insights to be gained from a comparative approach to the Shahnameh.