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The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Firdawsī (c. 940–1020)
Firdawsī or Firdausi or Firdusi (fēr-dou’sē). A celebrated Persian poet who lived from about 935 to about 1020. He is the greatest of Persian epic poets. In 1010, after thirty-five years of labor, was completed his first heroic epic, the ‘Shāh-Nāmah’ (Book of Kings) in about 60,000 distichs; it recounts the ancient Persian traditions of heroism. His other great poem, ‘Jussuf and Zulīkha,’ a religious-romantic epos, is founded on the Biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).