Iran / Persia: Qaran unhorses Barman during a cavalry battle. Miniature folio by Mir Sayyid Ali (1510-1572), c. 1535. The Shahnameh or Shah-nama ('The Book of Kings') is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Iran and related Perso-Iranian cultures. Consisting of some 60,000 verses, the Shahnameh tells the mythical and to some extent the historical past of Greater Iran from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century.