Kurds in Firdevsi's Shahnameh

Translated from Persian by: Erkan Çardakçı

There is no doubt that Firdevsi, one of the most unique poets and thinkers of Persian literature, has gained a place in the most respected corner of world epic literature since the day he created his work Shahnameh . What gives Firdevsi this universal value is, of course, the Shahnameh 's influence on world literature, especially the literature of the peoples of the Middle East, that exceeds its age. Perhaps the most important reason why Firdevsi deeply influenced the written and oral literature of the people living in the Middle East with his work Shahnameh is that he directly and sometimes indirectly provides cultural and, in today's sense, sociological data about the people in question. As this study shows, Kurds are also among these people.

The work you have in hand, which deals with the Kurds in the Shahname epic and the characteristic and imaginative similarities between the epic in question and the Kurdish epics, has a unique quality in terms of showing what kind of historical-cultural memory network the Kurds have woven with the Shahname epic over the centuries.