The Shāh’s ambassadors offered the presents intended for Firdusī to his only daughter, but she possessed her father’s spirit, and haughtily dismissed the courtiers, rejecting their gifts with proud disdain.
The Shāh, wishing to make some offering to the memory of the departed poet, ordered the sum which had been intended for him to be expended in erecting a caravansera and bridge in Tus, in accordance with Firdusī’s life-long ambition. These monuments of the poet’s fame and of the king’s tardy justice existed for many years, until destroyed by an invading army of Ousbegs under Obeid Khan.
This great epic, which was written under royal favor, though its author afterward suffered from royal scorn, is a valuable Persian classic. In the Persian tongue it exists only in manuscript form, and its text was corrupted by ignorant transcribers to such an extent that it excited the indignation of the sultan (a grandson of Timur, who reigned in the fifteenth century), and he collected a vast number of copies of the work; from these he had a transcript made, which was, perhaps, tolerably correct.
But since that time copies have been so greatly multiplied and their contents differ so widely, that it is only by a careful collation and comparison of manuscripts that scholars can hope to arrive at a reasonable degree of correctness. These manuscripts are finely executed and highly ornamental, having the frontispiece and titles beautifully illuminated and sprinkled with gold; the volumes are often profusely illustrated by colored drawings of exquisite finish. They cost about one hundred guineas, or about five hundred and twenty-five dollars each. But although these manuscripts can only be multiplied at such great expense, the original work has lived through eight centuries, and is still the most popular epic in the Persian tongue.
The author of the Shāh Nāmah[237] has often been called the Homer of the East, Firdusī occupying the same position in relation to other Persian poets that Homer has so long held in the West. Like Homer, too, he describes a rude age, where muscular strength and animal courage were chiefly valued. The correspondence is very striking between the old heroic times which were described by Firdusī and Homer, and the pictures which are sometimes given us of the age of European chivalry. It is well known that the Moors carried into Spain the poetry and romance of Arabia and Persia, and some of our best fiction is supposed to be derived from that source.