Before and After Muhammad The First Millennium Refocused

204 | CHAPTER 7

Ferdowsi’s epic closes with the great defeat suffered by the Sasanians at
Arab hands at the Battle of Qādisīya c. 635–37. Before the fateful encounter,
the Iranian general Rostam reads the stars and laments:

I see what has to be, and choose the way

Of silence, since there is no more to say:

But for the Persians I will weep, and for

The House of Sasan ruined by this war:

Alas for their great crown and throne, for all

The royal splendour destined now to fall,

To be fragmented by the Arabs’ might;

The stars decree for us defeat and flight.

Four hundred years will pass in which our name

Will be forgotten and devoid of fame.^29

When, soon after this, Ferdowsi closes the poem with words about his own
fame, we sense he has taken upon himself sole responsibility for the historical
consciousness of his people. Just as yazdigird, the fateful last Sasanian ruler,
ascended the throne “in the month of Sepandormoz, on the day of Ard,”^30 so
Ferdowsi lays down his pen “in the month of Sepandormoz, on the day of
Ard” exactly 400 years later, which corresponds to 25 February in the year
1010 of the Christian calendar:

I’ve reached the end of this great history

And all the land will talk of me:

I shall not die, these seeds I’ve sown will save

My name and reputation from the grave,

And men of sense and wisdom will proclaim,

When I have gone, my praises and my fame.^31

Basra/Encyclopedism

I would like now to elaborate on the encyclopedic tendencies we have al-
ready encountered in the Aristotelian project, in Ulpian, the rabbis, and the
Denkard, as also in several sixth- and seventh- century writers evoked in chap-
ter 5: Boethius, Isidore of Seville, and Ananias of Shirak. This sixth- and
seventh- century encyclopedism—of primarily pragmatic rather than herme-
neutical knowledge—was a response in the spirit of Aristotle and Alexandria
to a sense that civilization was under threat, and that the new Christian

29 Abolqasem Ferdowsi (tr. D. Davis), Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (London 2007) 833.

30 Shahnameh [7:29] 832.

31 Shahnameh [7:29] 854.