
Ferdowsi started writing the
Shahnameh in 977 AD and completed it on 8 March 1010.
The
Shahnameh is a monument of poetry and historiography, being mainly the poetical recast of what Ferdowsi, his contemporaries, and his predecessors regarded as the account of Iran's ancient history. Many such accounts already existed in prose, an example being the Abu-Mansuri Shahnameh. A small portion of Ferdowsi's work, in passages scattered throughout the
Shahnameh, is entirely of his own conception