YDS READING PASSAGES / TEST 2 55. Soru

-19. FIRDAWSI (935?-1026?)

The greatest poet of Persia — now Iran — was Abu ol-Qasem Mansur, who wrote under the name Firdawsi. He wrote the country's national epic, 'Book of Kings', in its final form. Of the man himself, little is known. The most reliable source of information is an account by a 12th-century poet, Nezamiye 'Aruzi, who visited Firdawsi's native village of Tus and collected stories about him. Firdawsi was born about 935, the son of a wealthy landowner. It was to earn money for his daughter's dowry that he began the 35-year task of composing the 'Book of Kings', or 'Shah-nameh' as it is called in Persian. The work, nearly 60,000 couplets long, was based on a prose work of the same name, itself a translation of a history of the kings of Persia from the most ancient times down to the reign of Khosrow II in the 7th. When the poem was completed in 1010, Firdawsi presented it to Mahmud, the sultan of Ghanza, in the hope of being well paid for it. In this the poet was disappointed: He considered his reward so paltry that he gave it away. This angered Mahmud, and Firdawsi fled to Herat, then to Mazanderan. Some years later, Mahmud tried to make amends to the poet by sending him a valuable amount of indigo. Unfortunately the shipment arrived at Tus on the same day that Firdawsi's body was being taken to the cemetery for burial. His daughter refused the award. The 'Book of Kings' has remained one of the most popular works in the Persian language. Modern Iranians understand it easily because the language in which it was written bears a relationship to modern Persian — a relationship similar to that between Shakespearean English and contemporary English.

From the information given in the passage, Firdawsi's 'Book of Kings' could be described as .......... .