Title(s):
- Deeds of Ardsahir
- Kārnāmag ī Ardāšir ī Pābagān(Kārnāmag ī Ardāšir ī Pābagān, The book of the deeds of Ardāšir, son of Pābag)
- Karnamag
Period covered:
Ardashir I-Ormazd I (late 2nd c.-c. 273)
Language:
Middle Persian
State of Preservation:
Full
Genre:
- Secular history (epic history)
Remarks:
A pseudo-historical biography of Ardashir I and account of the foundation of the Sasanian empire, this text, existing in only one independent manuscript and a few much later copies, is a very late, quite possibly summary, version of what must have been an older tradition, itself possibly composite, whose antecedents are unclear. The story relates the birth and youth of Ardashir I (the extent to which his genealogy, physicality, and intellect mark him as the legitimate ruler), the circumstances of his revolt against and conquest of the Parthians, and his unification of the territories under factional rule. It also relates the circumstances of the birth of his son and grandson. The oldest trace of the story may be found in Agathias whose account of Ardashir's paternity in his Persian excursus seems to be a hostile inversion of the story presented here (Histories 2.27.2-3). Something very similar must have been the ultimate source for the section of Ferdowsi’s Šāhnāmeh dealing with Ardashir's early life (Motlagh & Omidsalar 2005: 239). A version is also used by Ṭabarī in the (here, self-contradictory) story of the birth of Ardashir’s son and successor Shapur I (r.239-270) (Ṭabarī: 1.823-825; Bosworth 1999: 23-27). De Jong suggests that the story originated in the reign of Ardashir’s grandson Ohrmazd I (r.270-271) (De Jong 2013: 38), while Tafazzoli believed it to have been even earlier, suggesting a date in the reign of Ardashir himself or his son Shapur I (Tafazoli 2010/2011: 263). Most estimates place the creation of this text in the sixth century. Its narrative has, in places very suggestive similarities to the boyhood narrative of Cyrus II as presented by Herodotus and to the youth and accession of the same king described by Ctesias. Boyce suggests that this text is a lone survivor of what was once a genre of romantic-historical prose works (Boyce 1968: 60).
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