Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/466

 280 RUINED TUS, THE HOME OF THE POET FIRDAUSI

saw the light of day in this city, about 935 A.D., and who died at an advanced age in his birthplace, about the year 1025 a.d. His was a life full of joy and of sorrow, of proud successes and of cruel wrongs ; but though he drained bitter dregs at the close of his long career, he left behind him a masterpiece of poetic com- position, for the Shah Ndmah^ or 'Book of Kings,' is accounted one of the few great epics of the world.

Blood of old Iranian stock flowed in the veins of this poet of the ' Garden,' or of ' Paradise,' as his name implies, for he was sprung from the landed gentry of Tus, the early capital of Khurasan. This province was the chief center that kept alive the national patriotism of Iran after the pall of the Arab sway had been flung over it, marking the death of the old Zoroastrian religion and shrouding the glorious past of the country in gloom for nearly three hundred years. Out of this brooding shadow soared the spirit of Firdausi to illumine, by his gift of heroic verse, the annals of bygone days, chronicling the deeds of valor that formerly had made his country great, and raising to life again, for all time, the dead heroes of ancient Iran.

Strongly tinctured with the feeling of racial pride, he con- ceived in early life the spirited idea of recalling to the memory of the Persians their greatness in the ages that were falling into oblivion. Dakiki, his predecessor in heroic song, had first undertaken the task, but had met death through the dagger of a treacherous Turkoman minion before he had sung a thousand verses, murdered, as some have said, because he had shown too great sympathy for the old fire-worshiping faith of Persia to suit the views of orthodox Islam. Be that as it may, the field was now clear for Firdausi to take up the epic theme ; and he himself tells how the shade of the dead Dakiki appeared to him in a vision and encouraged him to carry on the work. The thousand verses which had been composed on the subject

Caliphate, p. 339. The Mongol rav- and nothing but dust was left after ages began in 1220 A.D. with the irrup- Tamerlane's son, Miran Shah, had tion of the armies of Chingiz Khan, swept over it in 1389.

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