Editing Shahnameh (section)

== Influence on Persian language ==
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[[File:Firdawsi - Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings) - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|The bier of [[Alexander the Great in the Shahnameh|Iskandar]], folio from the [[Great Mongol Shahnameh]]. Tabriz, c. 1330. [[Freer Gallery of Art]]]]

After the ''Shahnameh'', a number of other works similar in nature surfaced over the centuries within the cultural sphere of the Persian language. Without exception, all such works were based in style and method on the ''Shahnameh'', but none of them could quite achieve the same degree of fame and popularity.

Some experts{{who|date=May 2012}} believe the main reason the [[Persian language|Modern Persian language]] today is more or less the same language as that of Ferdowsi's time over 1000 years ago is due to the very existence of works like the ''Shahnameh'', which have had lasting and profound cultural and linguistic influence. In other words, the ''Shahnameh'' itself has become one of the main pillars of the modern Persian language. Studying Ferdowsi's masterpiece also became a requirement for achieving mastery of the Persian language by subsequent Persian poets, as evidenced by numerous references to the ''Shahnameh'' in their works.

Although 19th-century British Iranologist E. G. Browne has claimed that Ferdowsi purposefully avoided Arabic vocabulary, this claim has been challenged by modern scholarship, specifically Mohammed Moinfar, who has noted that there are numerous examples of Arabic words in the ''Shahnameh'' which are effectively synonyms for Persian words previously used in the text. This calls into question the idea of Ferdowsi's deliberate eschewing of Arabic words.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|last=Perry|first=John|title=Šāh-nāma v. Arabic Words|url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/sah-nama-v-arabic-words|encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Iranica]]|access-date=28 May 2012|date=23 June 2010|archive-date=17 May 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230517162636/https://iranicaonline.org/articles/sah-nama-v-arabic-words|url-status=live}}</ref>

The ''Shahnameh'' has 62 stories, 990 chapters, and some 50,000 rhyming couplets, making it more than three times the length of [[Homer|Homer's]] ''[[Iliad]]'' and more than twelve times the length of the German ''[[Nibelungenlied]]''. According to Ferdowsi himself, the final edition of the ''Shahnameh'' contained some sixty thousand distichs. But this is a round figure; most of the relatively reliable manuscripts have preserved a little over fifty thousand distichs. [[Nizami Aruzi]] reports that the final edition of the ''Shahnameh'' sent to the court of Sultan [[Mahmud of Ghazni]] was prepared in seven volumes.