Firdausi Toosi’s Shahnameh of Ancient Iran Comes Alive in The Saga of the Shahanshahs by Adi F. Merchant. Published in 2017 by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Kulapati Munshi Marg, Bombay 400007; email: bhavan@bhavans.info; website: http://www.bhavans.info. Pp: xxxvi + 250. Price: Rs 675.
Disinterest is the biggest enemy of Parsi Zoroastrians. Quiz one of our brighter teenagers about Firdausi Toosi (born Abu Qasim Hasan) and you will get a blank look. Toosi’s legendary epic poem, the Shahnameh, comprising of some 60,000 couplets, penned a 1,000 years ago, narrates the saga of the three principal dynasties of ancient Iran. Many English translations of the......