Rashīd al-Dīn and the Shāhnāmeh

Abstract

AbstractThis paper explores some different, interrelated versions of the history of the Pīshdādiyān, the earliest dynasty represented in theShāhnāmeh, especially the recently edited text of Rashīd al-Dīn'sJāmi‘al-tawārīkh. This is compared with Bal‘amī’s Persian version of the History of al-Ṭabari and Qāḍī Baiḍāwī’sNiẓām al-tawārīkh, of which the latter is shown to provide much the closer basis for Rashīd al-Dīn's work — especially when confronted with the manuscripts of theJāmi‘al-tawārīkhcontemporary with the life of Rashīd al-Dīn. Comparison with both the early Arabic and Persian witnesses of the work suggests that the printed edition does not represent Rashīd al-Dīn's original text, but later reworkings of his chronicle — such as that by the fifteenth-century historian, Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū — which draw more directly on theShāhnāmeh. In so far as there is discernible subtext to Rashīd al-Dīn's coverage of these earliest periods of Iranian monarchical history, it is more to emphasise the didactic message of theShāhnāmehand the justice and constructive achievements of the first kings, than to follow Firdausī’s narrative. Despite the potency of idea of theShāhnāmehas expressing Persian kingly traditions, it is suggested that perhaps it was only after the time of Rashīd al-Dīn and the Islamisation of the Mongol rulers that historians appreciated and emulated the literary and narrative aspects of the text for their own sake.