Zanān-i Shāhnāmah

If the Shāhnāmeh is considered merely as a literary-epic work—which it mostly has been—then the main subject of this book cannot be regarded as one of its important topics. However, if we consider the Shāhnāmeh as a source of knowledge about Iranian history and culture, the issue of the importance of the subject becomes irrelevant. Even if the subject of this book seems less important, any analysis of this grand literary work leads us to valuable and yet unforeseen insights, thereby contributing to our greater understanding of Iranian cultural topics.

On the other hand, examining the Shāhnāmeh without considering pre-Islamic and early Islamic sources rarely leads to correct results and can even hinder the achievement of research goals. Without comparing the mentioned sources, it is impossible to make a proper assessment of the cultural facts and history within the Shāhnāmeh.

It is well-known that Ferdowsī, the poet, always reviewed the available sources; however, this finding from comparing the Shāhnāmeh with other sources should not be considered self-evident in a new analysis but should be re-evaluated within the framework of each new topic if possible. This perspective forms the basis of the author's examination presented in this book.

The German text of this book is the doctoral dissertation of Professor Jalāl Khāleqī-Motlaq at the University of Cologne in 1970. This work was first published as number twelve in the series Islamkundliche Untersuchungen by Klaus Schwarz Verlag in Freiburg in 1971.

In this book, the author aimed to clarify the role of the female gender in Iranian mythology in the introduction to show whether this topic is reflected in the Shāhnāmeh and, if so, to what extent. The introduction ends with the story of the creation of man and woman, and the author connects it to the story of the first woman in the Shāhnāmeh.

In the first section, the author provides a concise summary of the stories of the most important women in the Shāhnāmeh and compares them with other pre-Islamic and Islamic sources as far as they were known and accessible to the author. The author has tried to briefly recount the personality traits of these women at the end of each paragraph. Since there are many female characters in the Shāhnāmeh, and addressing all of them would be tedious, the author has included all mythical women and the most important women in the historical section of the Shāhnāmeh, dividing them according to their social class, whether nobility or common women.

The second section examines the status of women in the Shāhnāmeh, always considering Islamic and pre-Islamic sources. The author briefly describes the role, importance, and fate of each female character in different stages of their lives, such as childhood, marriage, and motherhood within the family and society in general. Since the Shāhnāmeh is not a book about family law, the author has used other sources to fill the existing gaps. Therefore, the Shāhnāmeh is considered an auxiliary source in this research. However, this clarifies that pre-Islamic cultural topics are more or less fully addressed in the Shāhnāmeh.

Most of the sources used in this research, i.e., ancient Arabic and Iranian sources, are so well-known that they require little explanation. However, some lesser-known sources, mostly in Pārsīg (Southwestern Pahlavi dialect) from the late Sassanian period and after, are also included. In the bibliography section, these works and other pre-Islamic writings are listed under ancient sources, including Avestan texts, Old Persian texts, and Pahlavi texts. The second section of the bibliography (monographs and articles) pertains to modern research cited in the footnotes or text and quoted in this research.

References to the Shāhnāmeh itself follow the method of Wolff in the Shāhnāmeh Dictionary of Ferdowsī. The first number after "Shāhnāmeh" refers to the number of that reign, followed by the line number with a slash. If the subject and content of the chapter make it clear which story is being referred to, only the line numbers are mentioned.

The author used the Moscow edition volumes one to four (1960-1967) for the stories of the first nineteen reigns. References to the appendices at the end of each volume of the Moscow edition (except volume four) are marked with the word "appendices," and the relevant section number is given in ordinal numbers. Due to the incomplete nature of the Moscow edition volumes, the author used the Tehran 1966 edition for the stories of the remaining thirty-one reigns.