Original content

English translation

Ferdowsi — may God the Almighty have mercy on him. He is from Tus, and his excellence and perfections are evident. For one who had a poem such as the Shahnameh, what need is there for the praise and commendation of others?

They say that he was occupied with the life of a landholder (dehqan), and an injustice was done to him. Intending to seek redress, he set out toward Ghazna, which was the throne-seat of Sultan Mahmud. When he arrived there and was passing by the gardens of that place, he saw three men sitting and fully engaged in convivial company, and he realized that they were among the Sultan's courtiers.

He said to himself: I will go up to them and learn from them the state of affairs. When he drew near them, they became wary of him and said: He will spoil our gathering; there is nothing better than that, when he comes, we say we are the king's poets and do not keep company with non-poets, and we recite three hemistiches that have no fourth; then we say that whoever recites the fourth hemistich, we will keep company with him, and if not, let him excuse us.

When he reached them, they told him what they had contrived among themselves. He said: Recite those hemistiches you have composed!

Unsuri said: 'No moon shines as bright as your cheek.' Farrokhi said: 'No flower in the rose-garden matches the color of your face.' Asjadi said: 'Your eyelashes pass right through the armor.'

When Ferdowsi heard these three hemistiches, he said extempore: 'Like the spear of Giv in the battle of Pashan.'

They were astonished at that and inquired about the story of Giv and Pashan, and he recounted it in detail. After that he came into the Sultan's assembly and found favor in his eyes, and the Sultan said to him: You have made our assembly a paradise (ferdows) — and for that reason he took the pen name Ferdowsi.

When some time had passed, he was commissioned to versify the Shahnameh. He composed a thousand verses and brought them before the Sultan; he received much praise, and the Sultan bestowed on him a thousand dinars of red gold. Then, over a span of thirty years, he completed the Shahnameh and brought it before the Sultan, and according to what had happened before, he expected one dinar of red gold in exchange for each verse.

The envious interfered and said: What worth has a poet that he should be exalted with so great a gift? And they fixed his reward at sixty thousand dirhams. Ferdowsi was aggrieved by this.

They say that at the time they brought those dirhams he was in the bathhouse, and when he came out of the bath he gave twenty thousand dirhams to the bath-keeper, twenty thousand dirhams to the beer-seller who had brought some beer, and twenty thousand to those who had brought them; and he satirized the Sultan in about forty verses, among which are these few:

If the king had had a king for a father, he would have placed a crown of gold upon my head. He could not bear to hear the names of the great, since in his lineage there was no greatness. A tree whose nature is bitter, even if you plant it in the garden of paradise, in the end will bring forth its own essence and yield that same bitter fruit.

After that he went into hiding; however much they sought him, they did not find him. After some time, Khwaja Hasan Maymandi, who held the rank of vizier, recited a few verses from the Shahnameh in a hunting ground on a fitting occasion.

The Sultan was greatly pleased and asked: Whose poem is this? He said: It is Ferdowsi's poem. The Sultan regretted what he had done and ordered that sixty thousand dinars of red gold, together with special robes of honor, be designated for Ferdowsi and taken to Tus. But fortune did not cooperate: as they brought that gift in through one gate of Tus, they carried Ferdowsi's coffin out through another gate. As his heir, a single daughter remained.

They offered it to her, but she showed high-mindedness and did not accept it, saying: I have enough wealth and provision to suffice for my livelihood; I have no need of it. The Sultan's agents spent it on building a caravanserai (ribat) in those regions.

How pleasing is the appreciation of worth; when the bent firmament at last made the arrows of misfortune into a bow, the pomp of Mahmud passed away, and nothing remained in the age except this tale — that he did not recognize the worth of Ferdowsi.