Ferdowsi's monumental tenth-century epic, the Shahnameh (The Epic of the Kings), is a compendium of Iranian myths, legends, and events of the ancient past. It is set within a framework of Persian traditional history from the creation to the collapse of the Iranian empire in the seventh-century C.E. One of the three major heroic epics produced in Asia (the others being the Indian Mahabharata and Ramayana), the Shahnameh has been considered over the centuries the greatest work of Persian literature and the strongest pillar of Persian identity. In his lucid prose translation of the Shahnameh the late Professor Reuben Levy has preserved the descriptive beauty and the dramatic tension of the original work.
