Pure Persian Writing in the Ilkhânid Court (Ahmad Tabrizi’s Shahanshâhnâme: The Only Rhymed Work in Pure Persian)

The epic-historical narrative poem, Shahanshâhnâme, by Ahmad Tabrizi, is one of the histories for Mongolians that is written in 738 (AH), in the Persian language in tone and style of Ferdowsi’s Shâhnâme. One of the most remarkable characteristics of this book is great effort of the poet to purify Persian, which distinguishes it from other prose and rhymed works in Persian placing it as the only rhymed work and the first full text written in pure Persian. In this article, we first assess the claim of Ahmad Tabrizi on writing a totally Pure Persian narrative poem. Then, we compare Persian language purification process in Tabrizi’s work and ferdowsi’s Shâhnâme, so that Tabrizi’s amount of fidelity to pure Persian writing becomes more clear. After that, the poets motivations for writing a totally Persian narrative poem are presented, which shows his passion and affection for Iranian identity and his effort to preserve Persian. After a concise investigation in pure Persian writing history, the unique position of Tabrizi’s Shahanshâhnâme is discussed.