Editing Shahnameh (section)

=== Scholarly editions ===
Scholarly editions have been prepared of the ''Shahnameh''.
In 1808 Mathew Lumsden (1777–1835) undertook the work of an edition of the poem. The first of eight planned volumes was published in Kolkata in 1811. But Lumsden didn't finish any further volumes.
In 1829 Turner Macan published the first complete edition of the poem. It was based on a comparison of 17 manuscript copies.

Between 1838 and 1878, an edition appeared by French scholar [[Julius von Mohl]], which was based on a comparison of 30 manuscripts. After Mohl's death in 1876, the last of its seven volumes was completed by [[Charles Barbier de Meynard]], Mohl's successor to the chair of Persian of the College de France.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Djalali |first1=Kambiz |title=Le Livre des Rois de Ferdowsi et ses traductions dans la philologie et la littérature françaises et allemandes |journal=Revue germanique internationale |date=15 May 2008 |issue=7 |pages=125–137 |doi=10.4000/rgi.403 }}</ref>

Both editions lacked critical apparatuses and were based on secondary manuscripts dated after the 15th century, much later than the original work. Between 1877 and 1884, the German scholar Johann August Vullers prepared a synthesized text of the Macan and Mohl editions under the title ''Firdusii liber regum'', but only three of its expected nine volumes were published. The Vullers edition was later completed in Tehran by the Iranian scholars S. Nafisi, Iqbal, and M. Minowi for the millennial jubilee of Ferdowsi, held between 1934 and 1936.

The first modern critical edition of the ''Shahnameh'' was prepared by a Russian team led by [[Evgenii Eduardovich Bertels|E. E. Bertels]], using the oldest known manuscripts at the time, dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, with heavy reliance on the 1276 manuscript from the [[British Museum]] and the 1333 Leningrad manuscript, the latter of which has now been considered a secondary manuscript. In addition, two other manuscripts used in this edition have been so demoted. It was published in Moscow by the Institute of Oriental Studies of the [[Academy of Sciences of the USSR]] in nine volumes between 1960 and 1971.<ref>{{cite web|last=Osmanov|first=M. N. O.|title=Ferdowsi, Abul Qasim|url=http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Abul+Qasim+Ferdowsi|work=[[TheFreeDictionary.com]]|access-date=11 September 2010|archive-date=30 May 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230530114436/https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Abul+Qasim+Ferdowsi|url-status=live}}</ref>

For many years, the Moscow edition was the standard text. In 1977, an early 1217 manuscript was rediscovered in Florence. The 1217 Florence manuscript is one of the earliest known copies of the ''Shahnameh'', predating the Mongol invasion and the following destruction of important libraries and manuscript collections. Using it as the chief text, Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh began the preparation of a new critical edition in 1990. The number of manuscripts that were consulted during the preparation of the Khaleghi-Motlagh edition goes beyond anything attempted by the Moscow team. The critical apparatus is the extensive number of variants for many parts of the poem that were recorded. The last volume was published in 2008, bringing the eight-volume enterprise to completion. According to [[Dick Davis (translator)|Dick Davis]], professor of Persian at Ohio State University, it is "by far the best edition of the ''Shahnameh'' available, and it is surely likely to remain such for a very long time".<ref>{{cite journal|last=Davis|first=Dick|journal=International Journal of Middle East Studies|title=Review: The Shahnameh by Abul-Qasem Ferdowsi, Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh|date=Aug 1995|volume=27|issue=3|pages=393–395|publisher=Cambridge University Press|doi=10.1017/S0020743800062413|jstor=176284|s2cid=162740442 }}</ref>