“Garshāhnāmeh”: The incorporation of Garshāsbnāmeh’s couplets into afew of the Shāhnāmeh’s MSS in accordance with the sequence of the tale

Because the Shāhnāmeh includes the accounts of the happenings in Greater Iran from the beginning of creation all through to the end of the Sāsānid reign, it can be regarded as Iran’s most comprehensive national-historical epic poem. If the Shāhnāmeh is to be the basis of our historiography, then the story of the Garshāsbnāmeh is related to a nearly one thousand-year-period beginning with Jamshid’s wanderings and Zahhāk’s accession to the throne and continuing to the end of his rule and Freydūn’s reign shortly after. Therefore, it includes almost five hundred verses taken from the Shāhnāmeh that cover the events of that period. The identical meter of both poems and the topical interrelatedness of the two have led to the assumption that they are one and the same work. As a result, certain accounts from the Garshāsbnāmeh have been interpolated and copied in the Shāhnāmeh in the correct order of the events. The present article addresses this issue.