New NaqqaliTextual Transmission
Before the age of printing, every copy of the epic was created by hand. Variation occurs in wording. Some differences are minor, while others add or omit entire chapters. This reveals an important truth: the Shahnameh was a living poem. Readers and naqqals all participated in shaping how this enormous epic is organized and transmitted.
The Manuscripts
The manuscript traditions that matter most for modern editions and translations are these:
The Florence manuscriptDated 614 AH / 1217 CE · probably Iran; now in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence
The earliest dated manuscript and the most conservative textually, but it preserves only the first half of the epic, breaking off in the reign of Kay Khosrow. It reads the epic as a continuous royal chronicle, in large blocks by reign with few internal story headings. Unknown to scholarship until the late 1970s; Khaleghi-Motlagh used it for his edition.
The St. Petersburg manuscript (Dorn 333)Dated 733 AH / 1333 CE · probably Iran or Central Asia
One of the principal manuscripts behind the Moscow critical edition. It divides each reign into named dāstān sections which reflect how it was performed, and its segmentation is the basis of most modern chapter systems.
London and British Library manuscriptsFourteenth to sixteenth centuries · Iran and India
Mixed organization, with variable headings and interpolations; important for comparative study of regional variation and scribal adaptation.
Timurid court manuscriptsFifteenth century · Herat and other Timurid centers
Illustrated cycles in which narrative and painting were planned together; a major influence on the iconographic tradition.
Safavid royal manuscriptsSixteenth century · Tabriz and Isfahan
Courtly prestige volumes such as the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, with dramatically staged episodes and a curated selection of scenes; masterpieces of Persian manuscript art.
Indian and Mughal manuscriptsSixteenth to eighteenth centuries · Mughal India
Often episodic and illustrated; important for the epic’s spread beyond Iran, with mixed Iranian and Indian features.
Iranian lithographsNineteenth century · Tehran and other centers
Printed reproductions of manuscript texts, often based on the Macan edition with local variants; the bridge between manuscript and print.
Ferdowsi says the epic contains 60,000 couplets. Individual manuscripts range roughly from 48,000 to over 55,000, depending on omissions, additions, and duplication of passages. In general, earlier manuscripts tend to be shorter and less interpolated, while later, especially courtly copies, are often longer and add somewhat more fanciful additions. Our translation is 51,547 couplets.
Two Ways of Dividing the Story
Florence and St. Petersburg represent the two most influential models of the epic. Florence treats the poem as a royal chronicle, organized by reign, with few story headings and minimal sub-division. St. Petersburg treats it as a sequence of narratives, story cycles with frequent headings: some 120 to 150 major segments and hundreds of episodes. Most modern editions combine the two: a dynastic framing with divisions by episode.
Major modern scholarly editions rely heavily on St. Petersburg segmentation while incorporating readings from multiple manuscript families. This is especially true of the Moscow/Soviet critical edition.
Printed and Critical Editions
Following are the most important printed editions.
MacanTurner Macan, Calcutta, 1829 · late manuscripts
The first complete printed Shahnameh, and the ancestor of the nineteenth-century Iranian lithographs.
MohlJules Mohl, Paris, 1838–1878 · a broad but uncritical manuscript base
Farsi text with facing French prose. It agrees with the K/VI branch where Moscow does not, which makes it the natural companion to our source.
Vullers–LandauerJ. A. Vullers, Leiden, 1877–1884 · Macan and Mohl collated
An intermediate step, left incomplete before the Sasanian books.
Moscow (Bertels)E. E. Bertels and others, Moscow, 1960–1971 · St. Petersburg (Dorn 333) and related witnesses.
The first full critical edition. Its appendices carry the K/VI material that our own printed volume prints in the main text.
Khaleghi-Motlagh
Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh, 1987–2008, based heavily on the Florence manuscript and a far wider base. This is the current scholarly standard. It reads across many more witnesses than Moscow had, and can usually say which family a given reading belongs to. Exhaustive and compellingly complete. Serious students start with this one.
GanjoorOnline, ongoing; based on the Moscow edition.
The fastest way to find a passage. Not an independent witness, since its paper source is Moscow.
Translations into European Languages
The transition from edited Farsi text to European translation followed closely behind the printed editions described above. The first complete European prose translation of the nineteenth century was Jules Mohl’s French prose rendering, published alongside his Farsi edition. An additional translation into Italian verse by Italo Pizzi appeared soon after. English, German and other readers read the epic through partial translations and summaries.
Early translators had as their primary goal intelligibility rather than formal equivalence. Omissions were frequently justified on practical or aesthetic grounds since the need for clarity often takes precedence over poetic fidelity. It is more important to know who Rostam is than to speak beautifully about him.
The translation of the Shahnameh by the brothers Arthur George Warner and Edmond Warner was published in nine volumes between 1905 and 1925. It was the first truly complete and unabridged translation into English, rendered mostly in blank verse.
Other modern English translations are mostly selective rather than complete. Substantial portions of the epic are summarized in prose rather than rendered in verse, and significant sections are condensed or omitted altogether.