[Sidenote: Story of Persia based on indigenous original work.]

[Sidenote: Occasional identity of Firdausi and Tabari.]

The story of Persia from the first mythical Kings to the last of the
Sasanides exhibits in Tabari, as in allied Arabic works, a certain
similarity of conception and presentation which leads to the assumption
of an indigenous original work at least respecting a very large portion.
Now the Shahnameh of the great poet Firdausi, a national epic of the
kind which no other people possess, while it on one hand, apart from the
poetic license indulged in by Firdausi, contains much that is either not
found at all or is essentially differently related in Arab writers; on
the other, considerably accords with those Arab annalists in the order,
in the whole structure, and in the details of the narrative. Indeed the
poet often reproduces almost the identical phraseology of the historian.
But now since according to both tradition and internal grounds
Firdausi's bases were not Arabic books, the coincidence must be
explained from a common ultimate source. The original work has been
reflected to us in Tabari and other Arabs as well as Firdausi through a
series of intermediate texts. To judge by the express statements and
suggestions as also by various features in style and phraseology and
further by all that we are aware of touching the circumstances of the
literature we can say with certainty that, that original work like all
other Persian narrative productions of the Sasanides and of the period
of Arab conquest was composed in the written, language of this period,
the Pahlavi. The most important connected presentment of Persian history
in Pahlavi to which our reports go back is no doubt the _Khoday Nameh,
i.e.,_ the "Book of Lords" a title which answers to the subsequent Shah
Nameh or "Book of Kings."