Rashid al-Din and the Shahnameh

摘要

This paper explores some different, interrelated versions of the history of the Pishdadiyan, the earliest dynasty represented in the Shahnameh, especially the recently edited text of Rashid al-Din's Jami'al-tawarikh. This is compared with Bal'ami's Persian version of the History of al-Tabari and Qadi Baidawi's Nizam al-tawarikh, of which the latter is shown to provide much the closer basis for Rashid al-Din's work - especially when confronted with the manuscripts of the Jami'al-tawarikh contemporary with the life of Rashid al-Din. Comparison with both the early Arabic and Persian witnesses of the work suggests that the printed edition does not represent Rashid al-Din's original text, but later reworkings of his chronicle - such as that by the fifteenth-century historian, Hdfiz-i Abru -which draw more directly on the Shahnameh. In so far as there is discernible subtext to Rashid al-Din's coverage of these earliest periods of Iranian monarchical history, it is more to emphasise the didactic message of the Shahnameh and the justice and constructive achievements of the first kings, than to follow Firdausi's narrative. Despite the potency of idea of the Shahnameh as expressing Persian kingly traditions, it is suggested that perhaps it was only after the time of Rashid al-Din and the Islamisation of the Mongol rulers that historians appreciated and emulated the literary and narrative aspects of the text for their own sake.