Preamble in Shahnameh and Ferdowsi's Commission

The preamble of shahnameh is about God, eulogy of reason and the creation of man and universe. Alluding to the work of Daghighi and his own contemporary situation, Ferdowsi has also expressed how he had begun composing the work. The preamble of Shahnameh and the prologues of “Rustam and Sohrab”, “Rustam and Esfandyar”, or “Bijan and Manijeh” are types of Expressing suffering or showing the relationship between the poet and its time with the text. If Ferdowsi had included his thoughts at the end of the stories, it would have seemed that these had been conclusion to his stories; therefore he presented his thoughts in the every beginning of the stories in the form of preamble and prologues in order to show that the story that follows the prologue is more of a narration and criticism of his time. This criticism of the time would be hard for a despot like Mahmud to bear; therefore they tried to undermine Shahnameh but in vain. They accused its poet of loving money, but this accusation failed. When they found that Shahnameh had become popular, they decided to include some lines eulogizing Mahmud in order to disturb the mind of the reader in finding a relation between the preamble and text.