History Literature / TheShahnameh

** optimized in Rostam, a towering muscular man with a long beard, who wears tiger skin under his armour plates, and the skull of a demon he killed as his helmet, while riding a huge horse and carrying a mace shaped like a bulls head!!!

* ForegoneConclusion: At Least for Persians. One of Ferdowsi's main sources for his material was oral traditions. The stories were passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years (hence the hyperbole), so when people read the Shahnameh for the first time, they already had a pretty good idea how the stories were going to end. Ferdowsi was aware of this has no qualms about spoilers.

* RatedMForManly: this a book full of tough warriors battling each other, wild beasts and mythical creatures.

** Goodarz kills his long time rival and counterpart Piran, then sheds tears for him out of respect.

** Rostam is cautious and patriotic to fault when it comes to fighting the Turanian champion who unknown to him is his son. Considering Sohrab's immense strength and fighting prowess and considering his own age, Rostam denies his true identity even when Sohrab repeatedly asks him if he is indeed Rostam, because Rostam fears that he might lose and the Turanians would be unstoppable if they no longer feared the threat of Persia’s greatest warrior. Lying mortally wounded in Rostam's arms Sohrab tell his father, "I gave you every hint there was, your love did not budge an inch!"

“Whether you become a fish in the sea,
Or fade into the darkness of night,
Or If you become a twinkle in the starry sky,
And forsake the earth all together,
My father will come seeking vengeance,
When he learns, my bed is in the ground!
Of all these warriors present,
One will bring the news to Rostam,
That ‘your son Sohrab is stricken down’
Then he will come looking for you!!!”
The irony is of course, he is saying all this to his father Rostam.

* BadassBoast: Before their battle Kamous asks Rostam, "What is your name? Who shall weep for your headless body?!!" to which Rostam replies, "My mother named me Your Death! Fate made me the hammer that smashes your helmet(/head)!!!"

** Goodarz kills his long time rival and counterpart Piran, then sheds tears for him.

* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Rostam will not rest until EVERYONE responsible for Siavash's execution is dead, even the king's wife!

* BiggerBad: Ahriman

* BadassBoast: Before their battle Kamous asks Rostam, "What is your name? Who shall weep for your headless body?!!" to which Rostam replies, "My mother named me Your Death! Fate made the hammer that smashes your helmet(/head)!!!"

* BadassBoast: Before their battle Kamous asks Rostam, "What is your name? Who shall weep for your headless body?!!" to which Rostam replies, "My mother names me Your Death! Fate made the hammer that smashes your helmet(/head)!!!"

* BadAss: It's an epic, so they're all over the place, but Rostam stands head & shoulders above the rest.

* SavingTheWorldWithArt: Talhand and Gav, two half-brothers, vie for the throne of Hind, but Talhand dies in battle against a mutual enemy without a wound. Their mother suspects that Gav killed him and threatens to start civil war. But then the sages of the court invent the game of Chess and use the piece movements to reenact the battle, ending with the King capturing several pieces and then ultimately being checkmated, thus representing how the half-brother died of battle fatigue. In the end, the mother was appeased and the game of Chess averted civil war.

Ferdowsi made a point of writing his poem in Persian when most literature at the time was in Arabic. He also refused to adapt the pre-Islamic legends to [[HijackedByJesus accommodate Muslim beliefs]]. The popularity of the ''The Shahnameh'' pretty much revived the Persian language, and it continues to be revered as a classic of Persian literature.

* ActionGirl: Gordafarid, who manages stalemate Sohrab.

* BadAss: It's an epic, so they're all over the place, but Rostam stands head & shoulders above the rest.

* {{Curse}}: Whoever kills Esfandiyār is cursed to die and suffer in this life and the next. [[spoiler: Fortunately for Rostem it can take into account {{Uriah Gambit}}s]]

* ObviouslyEvil: The wicked king Zahhak. He has a [[ReptilesAreAbhorrent snake]] growing from each shoulder! Oh, and he feeds them human brains. See {{Squick}} under YMMV.

** Then there's the other main villain, Afrasiyab the Turanian/Turk. The Turks had by this point overrun large parts of Persia, and had been enemies of the Persians since before Islam. Afrasiyab gets subjected to a near-endless HumiliationCongaLine all through the story of Rustam. This lead to trouble for Ferdowsi when he was taken prisoner by the [[BloodKnight ferocious warlord Mahmud of Ghazna]], who was Turkish.

''The Shahnameh'' is OlderThanPrint, having been written a few centuries before the printing press. However, since most of the legends come from an ancient {{oral tradition}}, many portions of the work are probably OlderThanFeudalism, and some might even be OlderThanDirt.