Abu'l-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi (also Firdawsi,[2] Persian: ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی; 940 – 1019/1025)[3] was a Persian[4][5] poet and the author of Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"), which is one of the world's longest epic poems created by a single poet, and the greatest epic of Persian-speaking countries.

Bundari calls the poet al-Amir al-Hakim Abu'l-Qasem Mansur ibn al-Hasan al-Ferdowsi al-Tusi.

[3] Based on this, his full name is given in Persian sources as حکیم ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی / Hakīm Abol-Qâsem Ferdowsī Tusī.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam uses the spelling Firdawsī, based on the standardised transliteration method of the German Oriental Society.

[2] The Encyclopædia Iranica, which uses a modified version of the same method (with a stronger emphasis on modern Persian intonations), gives the spelling Ferdowsī.

Samanid rulers were patrons of such important Persian poets as Rudaki and Daqiqi, and Ferdowsi followed in the footsteps of these writers.

Khaleghi-Motlagh and others have suggested that a certain fatalism in Ferdowsi's work contradicts his "absolute faith in the unicity and might of God," and that this may have been the legacy of the Zurvanism of the Sasanian period.

[9] The later sections of the Shahnameh have passages which reveal Ferdowsi's fluctuating moods: in some he complains about old age, poverty, illness and the death of his son; in others, he appears happier.

[3] Ferdowsi was buried in his own garden, burial in the cemetery of Tus having been forbidden by a local cleric who considered him a heretic.

[15] According to legend, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni offered Ferdowsi a gold piece for every couplet of the Shahnameh he wrote.

However, the courtier whom Mahmud had entrusted with the money despised Ferdowsi, regarding him as a heretic, and he replaced the gold coins with silver.

Finding it was silver and not gold, he gave the money away to the bath-keeper, a refreshment seller, and the slave who had carried the coins.

A narrative poem, Yūsof o Zolaykā (Joseph and Zuleika), was once attributed to him, but scholarly consensus now rejects the idea it is his.

[3] There has also been speculation about the satire Ferdowsi allegedly wrote about Mahmud of Ghazni after the sultan failed to reward him sufficiently.

After Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, a number of other works similar in nature surfaced over the centuries within the cultural sphere of the Persian language.