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Religion in the Shahnameh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Dick Davis
Dick Davis*
Affiliation:
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the Ohio State University
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Abstract

This article discusses the reasons why Ferdowsi does not begin the Shahnameh with the episode of Zoroaster, which he quotes from the version of Daqiqi, but rather with an account of the creation of the world that, in contrast to Islamic historians writing before Ferdowsi, does not attempt to accommodate a Qur'anic view of creation and human history, but neither does he give a cosmology dominated or well informed by Zoroastrian theology. Similarly, Ferdowsi tends to present pre-Islamic Iran as having a consistent religious history, and perhaps avoids beginning with Goshtāsp's conversion to the religion of Zoroaster, as he makes Daqiqi appear to do, in order to minimize the role of religious conflict in Iranian history, again diverging from historians of the Islamic period writing before him. The article also explores the role of God in the Shahnameh and the absence of theodicy.

Keywords

DaqiqiFerdowsiGodGoshtāspIranian IdentityIslamReligionTheodicyZoroaster
Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 3: The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi as World Literature , May 2015 , pp. 337 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2015

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