Ferdowsi

Mighty is he who has knowledge

Ferdowsi (c. 940 –1020) was a Persian author at the turn of the 1st millennium.

Quotes

• In the name of God, who gives life and mind to humans. Human thoughts cannot go higher than Him or fully understand Him.
  • Shahnameh – Beginning of the Book (Section 1)
• Wisdom is the best gift God gave to humans. The best thing to do is to praise wisdom — this is right and fair.
  • Shahnameh – Beginning of the Book (Section 2)
• Wisdom shows us the right path and brings peace to the heart. Wisdom helps a person in this world and in the next world (the afterlife).
  • Shahnameh – Beginning of the Book (Section 2)
• توانا بود هر که دانا بود
  • tavânâ buvad har ke dânâ buvad
    • Mighty is he who has knowledge.^{[citation needed]}
      • Variant translation: One who has wisdom is powerful.

Shahnameh

• Now there was fought a battle such as men have not seen the like. And the earth was covered with steel, and arrows fell from the clouds like hail, and the ground was torn with hoofs, and blood flowed like water upon the plains. And the dead lay around in masses, and the feet of the horses could not stir because of them.
  • Translation of Helen Zimmern

• I turn to right and left, in all the earth
  I see no signs of justice, sense or worth:
  A man does evil deeds, and all his days
  Are filled with luck and universal praise;
  Another's good in all he does—he dies
  A wretched, broken man whom all despise.
  • Dick Davis translation

• O my son, thy lips still smell of milk, and thy heart should go out to pleasure. But the days are grave, and Iran looketh unto thee in its danger.
  • Translation of Helen Zimmern

• The toil of thirty years is now complete,
  Record sublime of many a warlike feat,
  Written midst toil and trouble, but the strain
  Awakens every heart, and will remain
  A lasting stimulus to glorious deeds;
  For even the bashful maid, who kindling reads,
  Becomes a warrior. Thirty years of care,
  Urged on by royal promise, did I bear,
  And now, deceived and scorned, the aged bard
  Is basely cheated of his pledged reward!
  • Translation of James Atkinson

Quotes about Ferdowsi

• The Shāhnāmeh is the greatest epic in history. It is a treasure trove of ideas, wisdom, advice, help, guidance, and rites. With this immense work, Ferdowsi revived the spirit of serenity, magnanimity, and pride in the Iranian nation, which had lost itself under the weight of the Arab conquest of Iran. It empowered divided Iranian peoples to unite.
  • Simin Behbahani, interview (2011), translated from Persian by Nilou Mobasser. Included in Iranian Writers Uncensored by Shiva Rahbaran

• The Persians regard Ferdowsi as the greatest of their poets. For nearly a thousand years they have continued to read and to listen to recitations from his masterwork, the Shah-nameh, in which the Persian national epic found its final and enduring form. Though written about 1,000 years ago, this work is as intelligible to the average, modern Iranian as the King James version of the Bible is to a modern English-speaker. The language, based as the poem is on a Dari original, is pure Persian with only the slightest admixture of Arabic.
  • Ferdowsi. Encyclopædia Britannica Online (2007). Retrieved on 4 June 2007.

• For nearly a thousand years they have continued to read and to listen to recitations from his [Ferdowsi] masterwork [Shahnameh], the Shāh-nāmeh, in which the Persian national epic found its final and enduring form. Though written about 1,000 years ago, this work is as intelligible to the average, modern Iranian as the King James version of the Bible is to a modern English-speaker.
  • J. E. Luebering, in Ferdowsi on Shahnameh 100 Most Influential Writers of All Time, The Rosen Publishing Group, 20 December 2009, p. 45.