Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Finally finished reading Shahnameh today, the Persian Book of Kings, translated by Dick Davis. Arranged like a royal chronicle, the book falls into two parts, the first legendary half, teeming with hero-kings and demons, and the second more "realistic" half, closer as the history is to Ferdowsi's own time. The turning point lies in the reign of Sekandar (Alexander the Great), who is depicted initially as a world conqueror, but later, more importantly, as a seeker of knowledge. I like the legends better. They have more colorful characters, and livelier adventures.The defeat of Zahhak the Demon King by Feraydun, the Simorgh (magical bird) that raised Sam and helped him in his distress, the riddles posed to Zal by Manuchehr's priests, the seven trials of Rostam, the duel between Rostam and his son Sohrab, which I first read as a poem by Matthew Arnold. The characters in the second half may be more complex, less easy to pin down, but the struggle between hero and king ...

Not feeling too well, but chugging along. Curled up in bed last night, like a kid, to read Dick Davis's translation of Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings . Part of my project to read the ancient classics of all civilizations. I have read so far Gilgamesh, Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita, Zhuang Zi, the Analects, Beowulf, Iliad, and Odyssey. I appreciate suggestions for reading. Shahnameh, the Persian national epic, was composed by the poet Abolqasem Ferdowsi in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries C.E. "Its subject matter is vast," writes Davis in the Introduction, "being nothing less than the history of the country and its people from the creation of the world up to the Arab conquest, which brought the then new religion of Islam to Iran, in the seventh century C.E." The scope is vast but the telling, in Davis's prose translation, interspersed with verse, is pleasingly simple. The battle is between just kings and nasty demons who make themselves tyrants...