The Shahnameh: The Persian Epic as World Literature

Hamid Dabashi's The Shahnameh: The Persian Epic as World Literature (2019) is comprised of a foreword, an introduction, five chapters, a conclusion and an appendix. The chapters are entitled as follows: The Persian Epic, Ferdowsi, the Poet, The Book of the Kings, Epics and Empires, and Empires Fall and Nations Rise. The book is a study in the field of "World Literature". It is strongly contextualized in post-colonial debates. The author has two major goals in mind: a) to introduce The Shahnameh, to the Western readers, notably students (those who know English) and b) to challenge the concept of “World Literature” in the Western academia. To Dabashi, in our re-conceptualizing the Shahnameh as world literature, first and foremost, the Eurocentric world needs to be reassessed. The “World” in “World Literature,” as we use the term today, is an imaginary (“Western”) world— an imperial, colonial world. The Present book is the product of the author’s many years of teaching at Colombia University. The first chapter is about the genealogy of the Shahnameh, the introduction of the genre of epic writing and its pre-Islamic origin. In chapter two, the biography of Ferdowsi and the historical context of the Shahnameh are described. Chapter three deals with three main components of the Shahnameh (the mythical, heroic, and historical) and its famous and powerful stories. Next chapter traces the history of the Shahnameh in different periods. Finally, the last chapter discusses the later history of the Shahnameh and its political uses and abuses.