Ancient Persian epic Shahnameh goes digital

An Indian woman's efforts to create a digitised version of Shahnameh, the Epic of Kings of ancient Persia, into an engrossing and exciting long story in seven CDs has thrilled not just the Parsis of India, who originally came from Iran, but also the people of Iran who have warmly praised her work.

The Shahnameh is a work of the bard of Iran, Firdowsi, whose stories in verse comprised of 60,000 couplets that took him 35 years to complete.

Whilst the Shahnameh is said to live in the hearts and souls of Zoroastrians and Iranians, there is little done on modern lines to inspire the young Parsi or Iranian to learn about the ancient history of Persia.

Benaifer Bhoot, an interior designer and multimedia and animation professional, has done just that by producing digitised ancient history in English to catch the interest of those hooked on computers.

All that one needs is the click of the mouse to navigate into a world of two and three dimensional animated movies, image galleries of Iranian cities like Persepolis, Fars, Kerman and Shiraz, miniature paintings and historical artefacts, Persian couplets with English translation, genealogy of Persian rulers, glossary, Iranian music and so on.

"As a 10-year-old child, I was deeply fascinated by the stories of Shahnameh narrated to me by my uncle. Unable to read the Persian or Gujarati scripts of the epic, I grew up promising myself that someday I would read the entire Shahnameh."

The life of the poet had been very touching. He was commissioned by Sultan Mahmood Gaznavi to write and promised a thousand pieces of gold for every thousand verses.

When Firdowsi completed the work after 36 years, at the age of 71, instead of gold, he received silver coins. When the king made amends, he sent the reward to the bard's village in Tus.

As the Sultan's messenger entered from one gate, Firdowsi's funeral procession was leaving by another...

The bard's poetry was translated into English by the late Dr Behram Surti. Seven CDs with 901 chapters from her multimedia company, Atash Holdings Pvt Ltd, which she runs along with Rustom Dastoor and her sister Lily Bhoot, came after three years of research, with archival help from the Iran Cultural House in Mumbai.

It was almost like producing a film, she says, with in-house funding of Rs10 million.

The Iranian government invited her to launch the production in that country and wanted to buy the rights of the production. Returning from Iran after a month-long trip, she is thrilled at the response she received from Iranians.

"Wherever the presentations were made – at Tehran University, Institute of Iraniology, Tehran, Fars Studies Foundation, Shiraz, Al Ameh Taba Tabaee University, the Culture and Islamic Relations Organisation, Mashhad, or the University of Firdowsi, Mashhad – the response was amazing.

So much so, we have been asked to do two history-related projects on Iranian poets Hafeez and Saadi and also on Cyrus the Great. A special request is that it should be done in Persian."