The Name a Storyteller Took

One episode, then nothing · Centuries of recitation · A borrowed name

The poem let her go after one episode. Someone came back for her.

The Shahnameh never mentions her again. Sohrab searches the emptied fortress for her and the poem simply moves on, which one translator took as evidence that Ferdowsi was working from older material he did not invent. Her second life is in performance. The Persian art of reciting the epic aloud was a men's profession for centuries, and in the late twentieth century a woman trained under a master of it and is widely described as the first to have practised it professionally. The name she took to perform under was Gordafarid. Her own account of why is that this is a figure whose reasoning always wins out over her feelings.

One episode

A loose end

A borrowed name

On the sources

Gordafarid's disappearance from the Shahnameh after this episode is complete, and Warner's 1905 translation notes it and reads the loose end as a sign of inherited source material. The performer who took her name trained in the naqqali tradition of epic recitation in the late twentieth century and is widely described as Iran's first professional female naqqal — a description this entry reports rather than certifies, since priority claims of that kind are hard to establish and an earlier woman is known to have told the stories without being admitted to the profession. The characterisation quoted here is the performer's own published description of the figure. This chapter reports a modern reception rather than an episode of the poem.

The Shahnameh, and the modern naqqali tradition

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The Name a Storyteller Took

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