New Naqqaliشاهنامه
The New Naqqali crest
About

New Naqqali

An independent publisher devoted to one book: the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, completed around 1010, and the world of stories it holds.

The translators

Farzad and Rhonda Dibachi

Farzad and Rhonda Dibachi have translated the complete Shahnameh into modern English verse, more than fifty thousand couplets in three volumes, working from the Moscow critical edition.

The translation

How it is made

The poem is rendered in rhymed English couplets, so that the English can be read aloud as the Persian was. Names keep their Persian forms, and the words that have no English equal, such as farr, gorz and kamand, are kept and explained in the glossary.

Every book of the poem has a letter and number, every section a code, and every couplet a place within it. That one scheme ties together everything else:

NotesA summary and commentary for each of the 951 sections.
GlossariesPeople, places and terms, with Persian spelling and pronunciation.
GenealogiesPlates of the royal and heroic houses, cited to the chapter.
MapsAbout a hundred, many following a story stage by stage.
PanelsHundreds of illustrations, anchored to the couplets they show.
BannersThe standard of every Pahlevan, from Rostam’s dragon to Kavus’s sun.
The tradition

What a naqqal does

A naqqal tells the Shahnameh as performance: voice, gesture and timing, sometimes with a staff in hand and a painted curtain behind. The best could hold a coffeehouse for weeks with a single cycle of stories. The name of this press is a promise to tell those stories again, whole, for readers who meet them first in English.

Volume I · Book B5 · the Kayanian age

The Seven Labors of Rostam

Kay Kavus lies blind in a Div’s prison in Mazandaran. Rostam takes the short road, the perilous one, and meets a trial at every stage.