Ferdowsi

Ferdowsi (c. 940 –1020) was a Persian author at the turn of the 1st millennium.

Quotes

 * توانا بود هر که دانا بود
 * tavânâ bûd har ke dânâ bûd
 * Mighty is he who has knowledge
 * Variant translation: One who has wisdom is powerful

Shahnameh

 * Now there was fought a battle such as men have not seen the like. And the earth was covered with steel, and arrows fell from the clouds like hail, and the ground was torn with hoofs, and blood flowed like water upon the plains. And the dead lay around in masses, and the feet of the horses could not stir because of them.
 * Translation of Helen Zimmern


 * O my son, thy lips still smell of milk, and thy heart should go out to pleasure. But the days are grave, and Iran looketh unto thee in its danger.
 * Translation of Helen Zimmern

Quotes about Ferdowsi

 * The Persians regard Ferdowsi as the greatest of their poets. For nearly a thousand years they have continued to read and to listen to recitations from his masterwork, the Shah-nameh, in which the Persian national epic found its final and enduring form. Though written about 1,000 years ago, this work is as intelligible to the average, modern Iranian as the King James version of the Bible is to a modern English-speaker. The language, based as the poem is on a Dari original, is pure Persian with only the slightest admixture of Arabic.


 * For nearly a thousand years they have continued to read and to listen to recitations from his [Ferdowsi] masterwork [Shahnameh], the Shāh-nāmeh, in which the Persian national epic found its final and enduring form. Though written about 1,000 years ago, this work is as intelligible to the average, modern Iranian as the King James version of the Bible is to a modern English-speaker.
 * J. E. Luebering, in Ferdowsi on Shahnameh 100 Most Influential Writers of All Time, The Rosen Publishing Group, 20 December 2009, p. 45.