Shahnameh, On the Creation of the World, Part 1

Leyla: salām Omid jān.

Omid: salām Leyla jān. 

Leyla: Thank you so much for joining me on another journey. 

Omid: It's my pleasure and honor, always. 

Leyla: And today, so we're going to be covering this story On the Creation of the World from the Shahnameh. But in case you haven't seen Omid on our program before, he's a frequent guest on this show. But if you have not seen him before, can you give a brief introduction on who you are and what you do? 

Omid: Sure, sure. My name is Omid Arabian, and mainly what I do is I conduct classes and workshops at our center, which is called YOUniversal Center, Y-O-U-niversal. And most of them are online. Some of them are in person. And we focus mainly on mysticism and particularly on Iranian mysticism, although we also read and discuss other works of other mystics and philosophers from the West as well. But mainly we focus on what we call the three pillars, which are Rumi, Hafez and Ferdowsi. We read their texts to try to understand their worldview, and the wisdom that they are trying to pass on to us and how we can use that, but in enriching our own lives. 

Leyla: So why is that the three pillars? So you don't include Attar, who we did last time in the three pillars? 

Omid: Of course, of course, of course. No, I was just talking about the ones that people know the most and the ones that we get into the most in our classes. 

Leyla: Oh, interesting. Okay. 

Omid: Yeah, certainly there are many, many others, Attar included, Sohrevardi, Khuud, and many other mystics. But these three are generally considered, culturally speaking, the three greats that most people know about, as far as their text. Of course, there's Saadi, but again, Saadi is not so much into the mystical world and so on and so forth. So I didn’t, by any means, exclude any of the other greats, for sure, for sure. 

Leyla: Wonderful. So then with YOUniversal, you focus more on the stories, what we can learn from it. In Chai and Conversation, we focus, we try to look into the language, and so it's a great collaboration. I love hearing from you and hearing your perspectives on these stories. So in this lesson today, we're going to be reading the Shahnameh, the original script. But Omid will be translating it. We were talking a little bit before the program about how you teach this in your program. So can you tell us a little bit when you do teach Shahnameh, do people in your classes generally speak Persian, or what are your students like? 

Omid: Right, sure. No, our students are from all over the place, and some of them do speak Persian to varying extents. Some of them are completely unfamiliar with the language. The way that we work in the class is I read the text, verse by verse, and we translate, I translate myself as we go, on the spot. I don't go by any pre-published translation only because I want to stay as close to the original text as possible, to Ferdowsi’s words. Also, sometimes, because things have double and triple meaning or they need explanation in terms of a contextual reference, I'm able to provide that on the spot so that the verse is understood as richly as it's hopefully meant to be understood. So we go through story by story and as we read, and understand each text separately, we also start connecting things together and trying to see what it is that Ferdowsi was trying to pass on to us, not just in terms of the plot of the story, not just in terms of the exciting events and actions of and exploits of the kings and the heroes and the lovers of the stories, but also really to try to see in the bigger picture, what is it that, as far as wisdom, as far as this ancient wisdom that he himself references in Shahnameh, what is it that he was trying to relate to us? How is it that he was trying to pass on some really, really, really ancient ideas that might be useful in our own lives? It's really not a literature class or a history class. It's really a class in wisdom and mystical ideas, and their application to modern-day life in our own journeys. 

Leyla: Wonderful, and we’ll, of course, link to YOUniversal so that if you want to go into these specific classes, you can see everything that Omid has to offer! For our purposes here, what we're going to do, you can be a complete beginner to the language. You can be an advanced speaker. I've asked Omid to keep this lesson the way he would in his own lessons, where he does translate on the spot, but it's a Choose Your Own Adventure. As always, on the learning resources of this lesson, we will have this story written out line by line with the English phonetic writing so that you can read it yourself. We will have it all translated word by word, phrase by phrase, so if you want to get really into the language, you can definitely do that. At the end, I will ask Omid to give us maybe a couplet from here that, if anyone does want to memorize something and just keep it with them, which would be the best couplet to memorize? I'll ask you that later, not on the spot.

Omid: For sure, I already have something in mind. 

Leyla: Oh, perfect, perfect, because we do like to do that in the program! That is the best way to learn the language, it's the best way to just have a little bit with you so that you can keep that meaning, when you want to recall the feeling and the things that we learned in those lessons, it's a nice way to do it. 

Omid: Yeah, fantastic! 

Leyla: But before we get into the lesson, let's go back to the beginning. Why is the Shahnameh...why is it important? Why do people still study it, and who is Ferdowsi? Tell us all the things of the background! 

Omid: Sure, I would love to! Shahnameh literally, of course, is usually translated as the Book of Kings, Shahnameh, "nāmé" meaning...these days, we use it as ‘letter’, but it could also just be ‘a folio’ or ‘a book’. But really, I like to think of it more as the king of books. It has so much, so much in it that it can be mined for every use in so many different ways, both, of course, linguistically and historically, but for our purposes, in our classes, mythologically. Really, that's one of the greatest, I think, texts that we have, in terms of all of these different layers. That's why I also sometimes think maybe if it's really the king of books in many, many ways. It was written and compiled really by Ferdowsi, whose full name is Hakim Abu'l-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi, Tusi because he was from a town called Tus. It was prepared by him around a thousand years ago. He spent at least 30 years of his life, as he references in the text itself, in bringing this together. His inspiration, a lot of his inspiration was stories and myths that had been around and passed down for centuries or maybe even millennia before that. A lot of these stories were eventually gathered and written down in a book called Avesta that eventually became the theological text of the Zoroastrians. Ferdowsi draws a lot, especially in the first part of Shahnameh, which is called the mythological section, from those stories in the Avesta. He takes those characters, but he changes and alters their names and a little bit of their stories and their adventures in order to weave together his own story and his own version of all of these things that becomes this one beautiful, continuous episodic story that runs for about 50,000 verses, 50,000 rhyming verses. 

Leyla: Is Avesta something that we can read right now, or is that in a different language?

Omid: Avesta is in the Avestan language, but, of course, there are translations of the Avesta. It is not an easy text, necessarily, to read, but it is fun, and I recommend if people want to dive into it. 

Leyla: You've read it? 

Omid: I've read parts of it. I can't claim that I've read all of it, no. 

Leyla: The Shahnameh is the longest epic poem ever written. So can you say what is your experience of reading it? When did you read it, and how long did it take you? 

Omid: Yeah, for me, Shahnameh was really something that, when you grow up in Iran, I lived there till I was 11, something that you are exposed to, just culturally inevitably, right? The stories just show up, sometimes even in your textbooks in school, but also in stories that your parents and grandparents and others tell you just to entertain you. We also had these things called, I don’t know if you remember, shahré farang, which were these rolling or traveling entertainment centers where these beautiful scrolls, painted scrolls with different stories, scenes from different stories would pass by. You would look through these little holes as kids, and there was a guy who would move the scrolls and tell you, narrate the stories, and this was really an incredible way for us to not only be entertained, but be exposed to some of these stories. So sometimes, in the shahré farhang, you would see stories from Shahnameh as well. I've had that childhood experience, but then I came back to Shahnameh, in my 30s and really started to read it and understand it in a deeper way and almost as a mystical text as well, at least the first parts of it, the mythological and the heroic part. Eventually, Shahnameh dovetails with actual Iranian history. There's a lot of factual things, and even Ferdowsi still rearranges things a bit, but the first parts of Shahnameh for me have so much richness, and to discover that started for me in my thirties, and eventually I got so absorbed by it, so impressed by it, so in love with it, that I thought it would be so nice to try to do my part in also passing some of this on to others who might be interested and be able to draw from it and be enriched by it as well. 

Leyla: Wonderful, okay, going back to Ferdowsi. 

Omid: Yeah, so going back to Ferdowsi, yeah, it's really an epic work like you said, and it's in relatively simple Farsi. I say relatively because, yeah, if you just speak conversational Farsi, it may sound still complicated and somewhat Shakespearean as a comparison in English, but really, the words that he uses, a lot of them are not complicated words, are not big old $20 words, as we call them. Some of them have become a little bit archaic, and so we don’t use them much anymore, but Farsi, as a whole, has not changed that much in terms of just the full extent of the language as the time that Ferdowsi composed Shahnameh. A lot of people give Ferdowsi a lot of credit for helping preserve the language that way because he wrote at the time where of course Arabic had come in and started to really enter into the Farsi language. A lot of words had started to be used, not just replacing the original Farsi words with them, but just mingling with them and really becoming a melange of Farsi and Arabic. Shahnameh itself is very much credited with using very few words that are rooted in Arabic. There's a handful here and there. Some people say zero, but it's not zero. There’s a handful here and there, but really, it is very much also a testament and a holder. It has served as the holder of a lot of the language during that time. I also want to stress that again for me, Shahnameh is not just about Iran or Iranians, even though it takes place mostly in a mythical land called Iranzamin, which sometimes maps onto the actual geohistorical Iran. Really, Iranzamin is a land that is mythological. It's a land that Ferdowsi created himself, and it's a place where a lot of the universal ideas and universal values are guarded and allowed to expand and explore, be explored. The Iranzamin of Shahnameh is not a place that non-Iranians are forbidden into. It's not a place that you are not allowed to read about and understand because it really does espouse and present ideas and values and archetypes, especially, that are extremely, extremely universal, even though you’re going to want to acknowledge that there's other ways to read Shahnameh. If people read it just as literature, it's beautiful. People read it just as adventure stories, it’s beautiful. This doesn't negate any other readings of Shahnameh at all. I just want to make sure we say that there’s more than one way, as they say. 

Leyla: Yeah. Why do you think it's important for us to read these stories? 

Omid: I think again, for me, it's important to become familiar, first and foremost, with this wisdom. I think it's very, very important to understand that what Ferdowsi was trying to do, among other things, was just gather a lot of these, not just stories, but really ideas that were told, that had been told in the form of stories. If you go back to Joseph Campbell, who talks a lot about the idea of myth and the importance of mythology, he says, I just want to read you briefly, he says, “Myths are more than stories, and they serve a more profound purpose. Myths are sacred tales that explain the world and the human experience. Myths answer timeless questions and serve as a compass to each generation. The subjects of myths reflect the universal concerns of humankind throughout history like birth, death, the origin of humanity and the world, good and evil, and the nature of humanity itself. This section that we're going to read together in this lesson, is about the origin of things, and it brings everything over to the appearance of the first human being and Ferdowsi really tries to relay what it is that makes humans unique and important and why it is that we ought to really explore our own nature, our own origin, and who we are and what is our role in this world. For me, that's one of the biggest reasons to read Shahnameh, as well as all the other great and amazing reasons to read it. I know that you've been reading your own Dick Davis translation and you've been loving it. That's just the biggest reason and a testament to why it's a fantastic undertaking. It’s long. 

Leyla: Yeah, well, I'll say I don't feel like I really grew up with these stories, in my family at all, but reading it has been really interesting. Also, I presented this idea to the Chai and Conversation audience of “what if we read this book?” and I was overwhelmed by the response of people. I feel like there's something that's really drawing people, especially right now. I don't know what that is. I'm wondering right now in Iran, is this something that... Does the government try to suppress Shahnameh, or is it still taught in schools? Is it still as prominent? 

Omid: You know, I think that comes and goes. I'm not so familiar with the process throughout the last 40-something years. There have been times where it has been looked upon not very kindly by the official regime, and there were times where it has been, so it's really hard to say at any given point, like with anything else really. 

Leyla: Yeah, I wonder. 

Omid: What that point of view is but certainly, for even Iranians themselves and for even Iranians in diaspora, it is very much still regarded as something very important and magnificent. Even if some people understand that and still haven't read it, this becomes actually an opportunity to at least get a little bit familiar with it and see if it's something for you, something that draws you in. Than the importance of it, in another way, again, if you want to talk about current times, is that ultimately Shahnameh also presents this idea of the history of humanity and, really, the history of consciousness, I would even call it, but through the frame of this dualistic struggle between two forces right, and we can call them good and evil or whatever we want to call them, light and dark, etc. It starts to really get into the nature of these two forces and the types of encounters that they can have together. There are sections, for example, I think recently you were talking about the story of Zahhak the Serpent King and how his reign lasted for a thousand years, and how it came about and how it was eventually toppled. In a way, one can even read that and understand, and in a much deeper way and philosophical way, how it is that forces of darkness start to rise and start to rule and start to take hold, and how they can keep this stronghold on humanity for so long, but also beautifully and fortunately, Ferdowsi also gives us clues and hints as to how the bringing down of these forces can be brought about and how the ideas and the values that are more basic to Iranzamin, like love, like truth, like humanity, like compassion can be reinstated. There's a word in Shahnamaeh called kin-khāhi. kin-khāhi is often translated as vengeance-seeking. If we take it literally, sure, it's like in The Princess Bride, my name is Inigo Montoya! You killed my father. Prepare to die! It's like that, right? That's the literal understanding, but kin-khāhi can also be understood as really reinstating the core values, the core human/divine values back on the throne of this realm called Iranzamin even though we know that this is going to be an ongoing process where there will be... of the darkness coming again and trying to take over, and there's this constant battle. This is also something that is very much in the Avesta as well, so this is not a new idea, but the way that Ferdowsi has really shown us so many layers of it, so many examples of it, and the way that it evolves and becomes more and more complex over time as human society becomes more complex, is for me magnificent and unparalleled. 

Leyla: Okay, that was the question that I had: Do they ever learn, or what is the process of evolution? Then the process of evolution is not that there will be no dark and there will be no light. It's just there's more complexity in the darkness and lightness. 

Omid: Correct and learning how to each time. Yeah, it's good news, bad news! But it is about learning and drawing more and more lessons as to how to deal with the ever growing complexity of this ongoing keshmakesh, ongoing struggle, give and take, and deciding if you are going to be part of the forces of light, how it is that you can then apply that to the current complexity of the situation. The basic ideas are timeless, but the application of them can start to change and shift as the context and society changes. That's the beauty of it. It presents these timeless, universal ideas, but in more and more complex situations, so we can also then start to say, all right, now that I live in a very complex society, how can I take these things and apply them? Where is...in the story of Zahhak, what does Fereydoon mean? Who is going to be, or what is going to be, that force that comes and brings down the force of darkness? What does kāvé mean? Who is that great pahlevān or hero who is going to come and stand up and speak truth to that dark power and so on and so forth? And these become fascinating questions, especially as we apply them to modern life and the modern world. 

Leyla: Right. You mentioned this before. You said that Iranzamin is open to everyone, but the Shahnameh, it's not as well known as the Odyssey or all these other texts. Do you think that they're similar or is there a universality to Shahnameh that you think should be more apparent, or is it accessible to people who are not from Iran? 

Omid: Yeah, again, it really depends on many, many factors, and I wouldn't want to compare Shahnameh to any other texts, honestly, just because I don't want to do any disservice to those other texts like the Iliad and the Odyssey, which have their own beauty and their own complexity and their own historical value, but I certainly think that Shahnameh is open to everyone who is interested in, especially, not just understanding something about Iranian cultural history and Iranian mythological history, but more importantly, in universal ideas that just happen to be presented the Shahnameh through the lens of both the Persian language and what we culturally were receiving, but again, as Campbell says, you can go to any culture. If you dig deep enough, the bits and the stories are really telling the same ideas and the same wisdom that is being passed down, just through a different lens, and the context is not the same. I would certainly say it's not by any means closed to non-Iranians. In fact, in our classes, people who are not even anywhere close born or had anything to do with Iran, they show up, and after a while, I see their responses and the reactions, and they connect with it so deeply. They're like, “holy crap!” This is about something so much bigger than just being Iranian or having something to do with the ideas of Iran, so absolutely! 

Leyla: Ghormeh sabzi and kebab, they fall in love with all of it. 

Omid: Yeah, I mean, those are great, too, and my non-Iranian students love those things as well, for sure, so we don't want to bring that, you know, any disservice, either! But we're talking about something a little bit deeper than that as well. 

Leyla: All right, wonderful. Well then, we're going to start the story, so what we're going to do is the same as what Omid does in his classes, which is he, well, I'll let him say what he will do, but this will take place in a few different parts, and we're not exactly sure how many parts yet. We're just going to feel and see what it is. But what selection did you choose Omid, and why? 

Omid: Sure, sure, so for this lesson, I propose to you, and I'm glad that you were on board with it, a section from the Preface of Shahnameh. Shahnameh begins with a long preface that has different sections, and then it starts properly with the story of the first king whose name is Kayumars. But before he gets to Kayumars, which is really the beginning of the narrative, Ferdowsi has different sections where he explains different things. He talks about how the Shahnameh came about, what are some of the sources of it, why it is that he was so interested in creating it, for example, and so on and so forth. This section is called "goftār andar āfareeneshé ālam," ‘a speech or a talk on the creation of the' "ālam," 'world': "āfareenesh," 'creation', and "goftār," 'the expression, a speech or a narrative'. I chose this because I think it's always good to go all the way back and see as Ferdowsi, even though he starts really the proper story with the first king, he comes back and he talks, in the preface first about just how the world came about. It's just fun and interesting to get a vision of how he explains that, how he sees the process of creation. More importantly than all of that, it kind of comes, it brings us from the beginning of everything to the appearance of the first human being. As we end this lesson in whatever section we get to, we will stop at that point because it's really where Ferdowsi wants to bring us to, to stress the idea, to underline the idea that human beings are very, very unique, in this process of creation, not to put down or to devalue all the other parts of the universe that are created, but for him, because his story is about, ultimately, human beings and our role in this keshmakesh, this give and take of these dual forces, he wants to make sure that we understand how important we are and not to take ourselves lightly and really to start to contemplate why we are here and what it is that we are here to do and to choose wisely our own purpose and mission and journey in this world. All of this begins from the start and ends, at least in what we're going to talk about, with the ideas of Ferdowsi around humans and humanity. That's why I chose it, because I think it's just a good overview of that part before one gets to the kings and the heroes and the lovers.

Leyla:  Let's start, let's begin! 

Omid: Let's start reading! All right, this section begins. As always, what we do in our class is I will read each line in the original Farsi. I'll translate as we go. If there are specific words that I feel we can just pause on a little bit and just take a moment with, I'll do that. If there are double and triple meanings, I'll mention them, and I'll just keep going. At any point, please, leylā jān, feel free to jump in and add to or correct whatever you feel you have to do! It starts like this: “az āghāz bāyad ké dānee dorost saré māyéyé goharān az nokhost.” He says, “az āghāz”, ‘from the beginning,’ you should know’, “bāyad ké dānee” “dānee” means ‘for you to know’ and “bāyad” means ‘you should’ or ‘must’. You should know, you must know. You must understand, “dorost”, ‘properly’. “saré māyéyé” “saré māyéyé” means ‘the origin of something’. “saré māyéyé goharān az nokhost” the origin of the gohars. “gohar” means ‘essence’ or ‘elements’, so, goharān, which is the plural of gohar. He's talking about the essences or the elements that make up the world, and he wants to tell us: ‘Where did those come from? Where did all these things that create, that make up this world of ours, where did those originate?’ “az nokhost”, ‘from the beginning’. That's really how this section starts, with this setup, and he tells us it's very important to know this. Now, why is it important to know this? That's one of the things that I think he's implicitly asking us to ask ourselves: Why would it be important for me to contemplate, ‘Where did everything come from, and what was it, what was there before everything came from it?’ It's really a metaphysical/mystical idea that he right away throws in our lap. Does that make sense? Then he gives us his own answer, but his own answer, again, is also not a scientific answer, necessarily, at least by the way that we consider science. He does use some of the scientific knowledge and the ideas about the process of the universe that exist at his time, but again, it’s not meant to be read as a work of science, obviously. Does that make sense? Then he starts to explain. He says: “ké yazdān zé nācheez cheez āfareed bedān tā tavānāyee ārad padeed.” He says, ‘What happened was, you should know that, “ké”, ‘that’, “yazdān”. “yazdān” is one of the names of the divine that Ferdowsi uses often in Shahnameh. It's a very old word. It comes, it appears in the Avesta as “yazat,” but then evolves into the idea or the word yazdān. The true meaning, the core meaning of “yazdān” means ‘something that is worthy of worship’, that which is truly worthy of worship.’ Even in English, the word worship actually used to be worthship, something that you recognize the ultimate value of, the ultimate reward. “yazdān” becomes that which is of the ultimate, grandest, highest value. It's used as one of the names of the divine or, some people call source or some people call God. It says you should know that “yazdān zé nācheez cheez āfareed.” “zé nācheez...” It's really incredible, this little duality that he started right away. “cheez” means ‘thing’ or ‘things’. “nācheez” means not ‘nothing’, but the way that I translate is ‘no thing’. Kind of an existence that doesn't have a thingness, and that's sometimes a little bit conceptually hard to understand or explain, but it's very, very important. “nācheez,” it's kind of like something that is immaterial, so it's not really even a thing because you can’t point to it and say there it is!’. From this immaterial “nācheez,” “yazdān,” or ‘the Divine’, creates “cheez,” creates ‘things’, not cheese as in “paneer” but cheez as in...!

Leyla: It's funny, though; “cheez” is such a common word in Persian today, and it's such a casual word, but it's used to say something so big here.

Omid: Exactly, exactly, and especially when it's paired with “nācheez,” it really captures that moment of creation! In a way, to get out of direct comparison, but in a way, it's a little bit like the Big Bang. We don't know what there was really before the Big Bang, and then suddenly, all the material that composes the universe appeared. Many, many, many hundreds of years before that theory appeared, Ferdowsi is telling us something of that thing, that from no thing, became things, came things. This was done by an entity called “yazdān,” that being or that entity that is of the highest worth, of the highest, deserving of the highest worship. Yeah. Now, again, we can call it whatever we wish. Then he says, ‘Why is that?’ “bedān tā”, “bedān” here that doesn't mean “bedān” as in ‘so that you know’ but “bedān” like ‘so that.’ “bedān tā,” ‘so that’, “tavānāyee ārad padeed.” That “padeed” means ‘to materialize’, ‘to bring it to existence’. “ārad” is a short form of “āvarad”, which is ‘to bring’, and “tavānāyee” is really beautiful word, which means, really, ‘power’ or ‘potential’. I like to read it here as ‘potential.’ If you put it all together, what is he saying? That from no thing became things at the hands of, by the will of this entity called "yazdān." Why did this happen? So that what was originally potential could start to “padeed,” could start to materialize, could start to be seen, something that was unseen, like potential can start to be seen. It's a process of materialization in a way. One could call it manifestation as well. It's a really beautiful way to explain why, the why of existence. Some people say, ‘Why did God create the world?’ or ‘Why did the universe come into being?’ if we want to put it less theologically. Ferdowsi proposes here that it is so that that which was just potential and was yet unseen, as it just existed only in the state of potentiality can now start to materialize. How many ways can it materialize? Obviously infinitely. That's the very, very beginning of his origin story. Does that make sense? 

Leyla: Okay! Yeah, it does, and is that...? I think that might be a good, since we did an introduction, that might be a good introduction part to stop at for this lesson. Does that sound good? 

Omid: Great, sounds great to me, absolutely! 

Leyla: Just a little something to get you started! 

Omid: Yeah, for sure! 

Leyla: And then in the next lessons, we'll dive into what happens next. 

Omid: Yeah, from there, exactly, cliffhanger! 

Leyla: Yes! Well, wonderful! Anything else for the students to think about this week before we go on with the story? 

Omid: Certainly, if they wish, I think just this last line that we read has so much to really think about, that if we consider the question of why did everything exist, why did everything come into existence, and the idea, the possible answer, that it's so that potential could start to materialize, one could get deeply into that and keep asking, ‘Well, why? What is the purpose of having potential come into physical, material manifestation? What does that mean? Where does that take us? How does that...?” start, be thinking about the whys of the existence of everything, and the meaning as well. 

Leyla: Wonderful. On that note. 

Omid: Deep stuff. 

Leyla: Well, yeah, thank you so much, Omid jān, and we'll be back next week for the next part of this story on the Creation of the World In the Shahnameh. 

Omid: Looking forward. 

Leyla: Until next week. 

Omid: Thank you, Leyla jān, see you guys soon.