“Our lives pass from us like the wind, and why
Should wise men grieve to know that they must die?
The Judas blossom fades, the lovely face
Of light is dimmed, and darkness takes its place.”

Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh

Hakim Abu ʾl-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi, highly revered Persian poet and the author of the epic of Shahnameh - the Persian "Book of Kings" - which is the world's longest epic poetry created by a single poet, and the national epic of Iran and the Persian speaking world. Having drafted the Shahnameh under patronage of the Samanid and the Ghaznavid courts, Ferdowsi  is celebrated as one of the most influential Persian poets of all time, and an influential figure in Persian literature. Ferdowsi was born into a family of Iranian landowners in 940 C.E. in the village of Paj, near the city of Tus, in Khorasan region currently in northeastern Iran in Razavi Khorasan Province. Little is known about Ferdowsi's early life. The poet had a wife, who was probably literate and came from the same dehqan class. He had a son, who died aged 37, and was mourned by the poet in an elegy which he inserted into the Shahnameh. Ferdowsī was a Shi'ite Muslim, which is apparent from the Shahnama itself and confirmed by early accounts. In recent times, however, some have cast doubt on his religion and his Shi'ism, and have suggested that he was a deist. Ferdowsi  was buried in his own garden, burial in the cemetery of Tus having been forbidden by a local cleric. A Ghaznavid   governor of Khorasan constructed a mausoleum over the grave and it became a revered site. The tomb, which had fallen into decay, was rebuilt between 1928 and 1934 by Society for the National Heritage of Iran on the orders of Reza Shah and has now become the equivalent of a national shrine.