Shahnameh

The poem dates itself

Ferdowsi dated the completion of the Shahnameh to the 25th day of Esfand, converted by the cited scholarship to 8 March 1010, and described himself as being in his seventy-first year.

The date comes from verses at the poem's end and from calendar conversion, not from an independent contemporary administrative record.

A revision, not a first draft

This was a final or revised recension rather than the first completed form. Encyclopaedia Iranica reports that Ferdowsi had completed a first version by 994 and continued revising it until 1010.

The poem versified an earlier New Persian prose Shahnameh, commissioned by Abu Mansur Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Razzaq and completed in 957. It also incorporates roughly a thousand verses by the earlier poet Daqiqi, on Goshtasp and the advent of Zoroastrianism.

Some scholars have proposed revisions after 1010, but Encyclopaedia Iranica rejects the principal argument for extending the final revision to 1018–19.

What the finished recension contained

The completed poem runs to about 50,000 double verses. Its Arabic-derived vocabulary has been counted at 706 distinct words occurring 8,938 times — 8.8 per cent of the distinct vocabulary, but only 2.4 per cent of running-word occurrences.

Ferdowsi added praise of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna to the work. The later stories about the poem's presentation and the failed reward are preserved in sources written after the event and contain legendary elements.

One such account says Ali Daylam prepared a seven-volume manuscript and that Ferdowsi travelled toward Ghazna with the reciter Abu Dolaf; Encyclopaedia Iranica treats the surrounding presentation story cautiously.