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Updated: May 15, 2025
But the best comprehensive statement of the story of the Sasanides on the basis of this tradition is furnished us by Tabari, all his shortcomings notwithstanding and despite the pre-eminence which Firdausi's poem possesses as such. But in his narrative of this period Tabari had laid under contribution reports which were not of Persian origin.
Moreover, Firdausi's poem occasionally betrays that his sources had not flowed to him through Arabic. Of those men one only is met with again, Shahzan son of Barzin. He is mentioned by Firdausi at the head of his account of the genesis of KALILA WA DIMNA: "Listen to what Shahzan, son of Barzin has said when he revealed the secret."
The only legends which we know to be primitive are those above related, which are found in portions of the Zendavesta, whereto the best critics ascribe a high antiquity. The negative argument is not, however, conclusive; and it is quite possible that a very large proportion of Firdausi's tale may consist of ancient legends dressed up in a garb comparatively modern.
How much of the substance of Firdausi's poems belongs to really primitive myth is uncertain.
Indeed the poet often reproduces almost the identical phraseology of the historian. But now since according to both tradition and internal grounds Firdausi's bases were not Arabic books, the coincidence must be explained from a common ultimate source. The original work has been reflected to us in Tabari and other Arabs as well as Firdausi through a series of intermediate texts.
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