What is the name of the Persian epic poem that recounts the history of Persia? The Shahnameh is the Persian epic poem that recounts Persia’s legendary and historical past.
Written by the poet Ferdowsi around 977–1010 CE, the Shahnameh, or “Book of Kings,” is the national epic of Greater Iran. It begins with creation myths and legendary kings, follows heroes such as Rostam, and eventually reaches the historical Sasanian monarchy and the Muslim conquest of Persia in the seventh century.
The poem contains roughly 50,000 couplets, making it one of the world’s longest epic works and the longest major epic attributed to a single author. Ferdowsi composed it in New Persian, helping preserve and elevate the language during a period when Arabic was dominant in scholarship and administration.
The Shahnameh is not a modern history book: myth, heroic legend, oral tradition, and historical memory are woven together. The Rubaiyat is a collection of quatrains associated with Omar Khayyam, while the Avesta is the sacred corpus of Zoroastrianism, not Persia’s national epic.