Shahnameh

The Shahnameh, or Book of Kings, is a long epic poem by the Persian poet Ferdowsi, who began composing it in 977 and completed it in 1010, a labor of roughly thirty three years. Written in Classical Persian and made up of some 50,000 couplets across 62 stories and 990 chapters, it is one of the longest epic poems in the world and the longest composed by a single author. The poem recounts the mythical and, in its later sections, historical past of Iran from the creation of the world to the Muslim conquest in the seventh century, blending legend, epic combat and courtly history. It is regarded as the national epic of Greater Iran and a foundational text of the Persian language, shaping Persian literary and cultural identity for a thousand years.