Wisdom of Ferdowsi

Abu’l-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi (called Ferdowsi and Firdawsi) was born in 940 in the Khorasan region of Iran. He was the author of Shahnameh (Book of Kings), one of the world’s longest epic poems. Ferdowsi is one of the most greatest poets of Persian literature in Iran and other Persian-speaking countries. He has a unique place in reviving the Persian and cultural traditions in a vast region in Asia where he is mostly famous as the father of this beautiful language. For more details of the Ferdowsi’s life and works in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, click here. In this section, some distiches from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh will be presented in the area of wisdom, morality and ethics in life.

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(translated by Arthur George Warner and Edmond Warner)

Speak, sage! the praise of wisdom and rejoice
The hearts of those that hearken to thy voice,
As God’s best gift to thee extol the worth
Of wisdom, which will comfort thee and guide,
And lead thee by the hand in heaven and earth.
Both joy and grief, and gain and loss, betide
Therefrom, and when it is eclipsed the sane
Know not of happiness one moment more.
Thus saith the wise and virtuous man of lore
Lest sages search his words for fruit in vain:
“What man soever spurneth wisdom’s rede
Will by so doing make his own heart bleed;
The prudent speak of him as one possessed,
And’ he is not of us’ his kin protest.”
In both worlds wisdom recommendeth thee
When gyves are on the ankles of the mad;
It is the mind’s eye; if thou dost not see
Therewith thy journey through this world is sad.
It was the first created thing, and still
Presideth o’er the mind and faculty
Of praise praise offered by tongue, ear, and eye,
All causes it may be of good or ill.
To praise both mind and wisdom who would dare?
And if I venture, who would hear me through?
Since then, O man of wisdom ! thou canst do
No good by words hereon, proceed, declare
Creation’s process. God created thee
To know appearance and reality.
Let wisdom be thy minister to fend
Thy mind from all that self-respect should shun,
Learn by the words of sages how to wend
Thy way, roam earth, converse with every one;
And when thou hearest any man of lore
Discourse, sleep not, increase thy wisdom’s store;
But mark, while gazing at the boughs of speech,
How much the roots thereof are out of reach.