Iran’s Ten-Thousand-Year Statecraft in Shahnameh

Date: 19 July 2025 - 22:10

News ID: ۱۴۱۵۸۷

TEHRAN -- A recent presentation at Tehran’s House of Humanities Thinkers has brought renewed focus to Shahnameh, the Persian epic of Ferdowsi, as a source not only of literary heritage but also of historical-political insight.
At the 38th monthly session of Shahnameh Studies, hosted by the Bozorgmehr Hakim Cultural and Research Institute, scholar Muhammad Rasouli argued that the epic’s account of the Manuchehrian era points to the existence of a highly organized state apparatus in ancient Iran.
Drawing from select verses in the national epic, Rasouli contends that during the legendary reign of Manuchehr Shah, Iran possessed a unified political system, a coherent administrative structure, and—perhaps most symbolically—a national flag.
This conclusion emerges from a close reading of lines referencing the banner of Fereydun, a pre-Manuchehrian monarch who, in the Shahnameh’s mytho-historical framework, symbolizes justice and centralized authority.
“When we read lines such as ‘The bearer of Fereydun’s flag into war / The honored slayer, a warrior like a leopard,’” Rasouli noted, “it becomes evident that this was not merely poetic embellishment. Rather, it alludes to the presence of a recognized and sovereign national standard, upheld not only in the capital but throughout the realm.”
According to Rasouli—author of A New Perspective on the Shahnameh—such literary allusions provide critical archaeological clues to Iran’s early political identity.
He emphasized that, despite over a millennium of scholarship, many Iranian academics have focused narrowly on the Shahnameh’s literary or linguistic qualities, overlooking its contributions to political science, legal theory, and social anthropology.
“We need to treat the Shahnameh as a stratified cultural document,” he explained. “It is as much a record of evolving political consciousness as it is a work of poetry.”
Rasouli posits that the Manuchehrian era, as described in the Shahnameh, reflects a proto-national structure with characteristics recognizable in today’s definitions of statehood.
“We must recognize the concept of a nation—as understood in modern political science—existed, at least in form, in ancient Iran,” he stated.
“What Ferdowsi records is not merely fiction but a transmission of civilizational memory.”
If Rasouli’s interpretations gain broader acceptance, they may reshape contemporary understandings of Iranian antiquity. Traditionally, historians have dated centralized administration in Iran to the Achaemenid Empire (ca. 550 BCE), with cuneiform and archaeological evidence supporting those claims. However, Rasouli suggests that Iran’s national and political identity may extend well beyond written records, preserved instead in oral traditions and epic literature.
“Such a hypothesis, though requiring careful comparative analysis, aligns with the idea that mythic texts can encode real historical phenomena,” said an attending cultural historian who specializes in ancient Near Eastern governance.
Rasouli concluded by asserting that the Iranian nation—defined by shared symbols, centralized authority, and a unifying cultural ethos—may be one of the world’s oldest. “The verses of the Shahnameh, when treated as historiographic material, reveal a continuous identity stretching back at least ten thousand years.”
The Shahnameh Studies sessions continue to convene monthly, offering a forum where literature meets archaeology, and where myth may yet reveal the architecture of forgotten empires.