Asadi Tusi

He was born at the beginning of the 11th century in Tus, Iran, in the province of Khorasan, and died in the late 1080s in Tabriz.

Most of the Khorasan province was under violent attack by Turkish groups; many intellectuals fled, and those who remained generally lived in seclusion.

Five of Asadi's Monāẓarāt (Persian: مناظرات) (Debates in the form of poetry between two people or objects or concepts) also still exist.

The poem begins with Yama (or Jamshid), the father of Garshāsp, who was overthrown by Zahhak and flees to Ghurang, king of Zabulistan (near modern Quetta).

He woos a princess of Rum, restores her father (Eṯreṭ) to his throne in Zābol after his defeat by the King of Kābol and builds the city of Sistān.

Garshāsp and his nephew then go to Turan and defeat the Faghfūr of Chin (an Iranian title for the ruler of Central Asia and China, probably of Sogdian origin), bringing him as a captive to Ferēdūn.

Garshāsp fights a final battle with the king of Tanger, slaying another dragon before he returns to Sistān in Zābolestān and dies.

The dictionary was written to familiarize the people of Arran and Iranian Azerbaijan with unfamiliar phrases in Eastern Persian (Darī) poetry.

It is the oldest existing Persian dictionary based on examples from poetry, and contains fragments of lost literary works such as Kalila and Dimna by Rudaki and Vamiq and 'Adhra by Unsuri.

[1] A variety of manuscripts exist in Iran and elsewhere; the oldest (1322) may be at the Malek Library in Tehran, although the one written in Safina-yi Tabriz is also from the same period.