The ' Shah Nameh' contains the history of the kings of Persia, from the reign of the first king, Kaitlmers, to the death of Yesdijird, the last monarch of the Sassanian race, who was deprived of his king deal am. 21 (A.D. 641) by the invasion of the Arabs during the kalifate of Omar. During this period, according to Firdusi, three dynasties sat upon the Persian throne. The first, called the l'ishdadian, lasted 2141 years. The second, the Kai:mien, commenced with Kaikobad, and lasted 732 years. Alexander the Great, called Sikaodcr by Firdusi, is included in this race, and is represented to be the eon of Danlb, king of Persia, by the daughter of Failakus (Philip of Mace don). After the death of Sikander, Persia was divided, during 200 years, into a number of petty monarchies called the confederacy of the kings.' The Sassanian race of princes succeeded these, and ruled over the whole of Persia for 501 years.
The poem of Firdusi is of little value as a history, though it certainly contains some of the ancient Persian traditions. The whole history of Kaikhoarau, as related by Firdusi, bears so great a simi larity to the account which Herodotus gives of the life of Cyrus, as to put it beyond doubt that both authors present us with a faithful and accurate representation of the same tradition. "It is utterly incredible," says Sir William Jones (' Works,' vol. iii, p. 166), "that two different princes of Persia should each have been born in a foreign and hostile territory ; should have been doomed to death in his infancy by his maternal grandfather; should each have been saved by the remorse of his destined murderer; should each, after a similar education among herdsmen as the son of a herdsman, have found means to revisit his paternal dominion, and, having delivered it after a long and triumphant war from a tyrant who had invaded it, should have restored it to the summit of power and magnificence." The leading circumstances in the life of Alexander the Great are also preserved in the Shah Nameh.' We read of his victory over Dar& (Dareius), of his marriage with Roshung (Hexane), of his expedition into India and defeat of Fafir (Portia), and of his journey through the desert to Mecca to consult two trees from which a voice proceeded, which is evidently only another version of his visit to the temple of Ammon in Libya. The Persian biographers all agree in asserting that 3lahmud placed in the hands of Firdusi the ancient chronicles of the kings of Persia, from which it is supposed that he derived the historical narrative extant in his great work. We have the testimony of the book of Esther (x. 2) to the existence of such records, as well as a strong presumption derived from the fragments of Ctesias and many parts of Herodotus. But it appears very unlikely that these
chronicles should have been preserved for so many ages, considering the various revolutions which Persia experienced. There is a romantic story told in the preface to the edition of the ' Shah Nameh,' pub lished by the command of Baysinghur Khan, which, though deserving of little credit, must not be omitted on account of its general currency in the East. It is related that Yesdijird, the last monarch of the Sassanian race, ordered all the chronicles of the kings of Persia to be collected and arranged, and that this book was known by the name of the &sten Nameh.' On the conquest of Persia by the Arabs it was found in the library of Yesdijird, and became in the division of the plunder the property of the Ethiopians, by whom it was conveyed to India ; it was afterwards taken back again to Persia, where it remained unknown till a fortunate circumstance brought it to light in the reign of Mahmud. Little reliance can be placed on the exist ence of written documents in the time of Firdusi; the only value of the Shah in an historical point of view, consists in the ancient Persian traditions it has preserved ; but it would require the learning and acumen of a critic like Niebuhr to arrive at the historical truth conveyed in the tradition, and to strip the real legend of the additions and embellishments of the poet. But it is not as a history that the Shah Nameh' derives its reputation. Its poetry is read and admired by all well-educated Persians even in the present day ; and its author may be considered as the greatest of oriental poets, with the exception of Valmtkl and Calidasa. It is written in purer Persian than any other work in the language, and contains a very small number of Arabic words ; it has thus become a model of Persian composition, and is as much distinguished in the East as the Homeric poems were in the West.
The copies of tho Shah Nameh now met with vary greatly in the number of verses. " It would be difficult to discover," says 3Ir. Macan in his Preface to the Shah Nameh, "two copies which agree in the order of the verses or in the phraseology for 20 couplets together. Whole episodes are omitted, verses rejected from every page, and it is not now uncommon to find manuscripts which contain only 40,000 couplets, though originally the poem is said to have consisted of 60,000." Mr. Macau adds, that he had never seen a manuscript with more than 56,685 couplets : the edition published by himself contains only 55,204. There have been three attempts made to collate manu scripts of the Shah Nameh,' with the view of obtaining an accurate text.