The times in which Firdusi lived were marked by strange revolutions. The
Arabs, filled with the daring which Mohammed had breathed into them, had
indeed conquered Persia. In A.D. 657, when Merv fell, and the last
Sassanian king, Yezdegird III, met his end, these Arabs became nominally
supreme. Persia had been conquered--but not the Persian spirit. Even
though Turkish speech reigned supreme at court and the Arabic script
became universal, the temper of the old Arsacides and Sassanians still
lived on. It is true that Ormuzd was replaced by Allah, and Ahriman by
Satan. But the Persian had a glorious past of his own; and in this the
conquered was far above the conqueror. This past was kept alive in the
myth-loving mind of this Aryan people; in the songs of its poets and in
the lays of its minstrels. In this way there was, in a measure, a
continuous opposition of Persian to Arab, despite the mingling of the
two in Islam; and the opposition of Persian Shiites to the Sunnites of
the rest of the Mohammedan world at this very day is a curious survival
of racial antipathy. The fall of the only real Arab Mohammedan
dynasty--that of the Umayyid caliphs at Damascus--the rise of the
separate and often opposing dynasties in Spain, Sicily, Egypt, and
Tunis, served to strengthen the Persians in their desire to keep alive
their historical individuality and their ancient traditions.

Firdusi was not the first, as he was not the only one, to collect the
old epic materials of Persia. In the Avesta itself, with its ancient
traditions, much can be found. More than this was handed down and
bandied about from mouth to mouth. Some of it had even found its way
into the Kalam of the Scribe; to-wit, the "Zarer, or Memorials of the
Warriors" (A.D. 500), the "History of King Ardeshir" (A.D. 600), the
Chronicles of the Persian Kings. If we are to trust Baisonghur's preface
to the "Sháh Námeh," there were various efforts made from time to time