Shahnameh: the Story of Rudabeh
My favorite Shahnameh story. It goes like this: girl and guy fall in love, but girl is stuck in a tower, so she lets down her super long hair and he climbs up to see her. Sound familiar?
(hint: it’s said to be one of the inspirations for the story of Rapunzel).
Moïnfar calculates that the Šāh-nāma contains 706 words of Arabic origin, occurring a total of 8,938 times. The 100 words occurring most frequently account for 60 percent of all occurrences.
The most recognizable lines from the Shahnameh:
بسى رنج بردم در اين سال سى
عجم زنده كردم بدين فارسى
(I struggled greatly during these thirty years, I gave life to the Ajam with this Persian)
Ajam is an Arabic word.
Q
messyarkitekt asked:
The reason why persian sounds so beautiful specially to someone like me who is an Iranian himself, is that Ferdowsi wrote his "shahname" without using a single word of Arabic! and without his influence my language would sound horrible and full of arabic words! If you study the history of Persia, the ancient persian language sounded very different to what it does now, a few similar words but different, it kind of sounded like greek! If you're not Persian don't get yourself mixed up in this...
A
I am so amused.
By claiming that Ferdowsi wrote the Shahnameh without using a single word of Arabic, you’ve quickly proven to me that 1) you’ve never read the Shahnameh, or 2) you are so used to some Arabic words that you don’t recognize their origin.
I literally wrote the simplest post ever yesterday stating that Ferdowsi used Arabic in the Shahnameh. There are about 700 different Arabic words in it. Somehow this myth got started that there’s no Arabic in the Shahnameh. That’s simply not true.
What’s cool about the Shahnameh, though, is that it’s written in the masnavi form, a Persian pattern of poetry.
Also, just to make this clear, I do study Iranian history. And I’ve studied some Middle Persian too.
These postcards were drawn by the political cartoonist Kem (Kimon Evan Marengo 1907-1988), who during the Second World War produced over 3,000 propaganda cartoons for the British Ministry of Information.
Kem prepared these between March and October 1942. The illustrations are based on five scenes from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. The battle between the Allies and the Axis powers was depicted here as the mythical battle between Fereydoon and Zahhak.
FYI: Fereydoon = good guy; Zahhak = bad guy with serpents growing out of his shoulders. In this series, Hitler is Zahhak. Click here for more.
![lacma:
This is on view right now. Edit: This goes on view June 2. I [still] felt it was important to let you know.
Siamak Filizadeh, Untitled from the Rostam 2 series, 2009, purchased with funds provided by the Karl Loring Trust and Art of the Middle East CONTEMPORARY, © Siamak Filizadeh
REASONS WHY LACMA IS MY FAVORITE MUSEUM.
PS Rostam is totally sporting a semi-Qajar semi-Irangeles look in this picture.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3rwghayFI1rq7887o1_400.png)
This is on view right now.Edit: This goes on view June 2. I [still] felt it was important to let you know.Siamak Filizadeh, Untitled from the Rostam 2 series, 2009, purchased with funds provided by the Karl Loring Trust and Art of the Middle East CONTEMPORARY, © Siamak Filizadeh
REASONS WHY LACMA IS MY FAVORITE MUSEUM.
PS Rostam is totally sporting a semi-Qajar semi-Irangeles look in this picture.
(via lacma)
