Poetry Firdausi: The Shahnameh. V2. 15 Jan 2012

[DiapDealer]

The Sháh Námeh of the Persian Poet Firdausi
Translated and Abridged in Prose and Verse by James Atkinson 1886

The Shahnameh or Shah-nama (Persian: شاهنامه šāhnāmeh "The Book of Kings") is an enormous poetic opus written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi (Firdausi) around 1000 AD and is the national epic of the cultural sphere of Greater Persia. Consisting of some 60,000 verses, the Shahnameh tells the mythical and historical past of (Greater) Iran from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century.

The work is of central importance in Persian culture, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of ethno-national cultural identity of Iran. It is also important to the contemporary adherents of Zoroastrianism, in that it traces the historical links between the beginnings of the religion with the death of the last Zoroastrian ruler of Persia during the Muslim conquest.

Poetry mixed in with standard text can present a problem with ebooks and this was no exception. I've tried to stay as true as possible to the original Atkinson abridgment, so this is never going to look good on a tiny cell-phone screen (small fonts, small margins is the key to success here). Atkinson's footnotes are included (as linked endnotes). And his entire translation of the Story of Sohráb is included at the end of the book (complete with footnotes converted to linked endnotes) as well.

Makes use of Amazon's new KF8 features—but will still work for devices that support plain old mobi—it just won't look as pretty.

Hopefully someone besides myself enjoys this sort of thing!

Source material included:

The edition from the University of Toronto
Wikisource
Google books

EDIT: Jan 2012: Uploaded version 2. KF8 enhanced!

Previous download count: 136

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[DiapDealer]

Uploaded version 2. KF8 enhanced! Users of devices that don't yet support Amazon's KF8 format won't really notice a difference. But those who have newer devices (and hopefully the apps will follow very soon) will be able to see the newer version that makes use of some of the new KF8 features.

I've only tested the KF8 features with the new KindlePreviewer app, but it looks fine there. So those with Kindle Fires will have to let me know if there are any issues.

** if you use calibre or other tools to convert/modify this file, you will lose/destroy the KF8 features of the ebook. I'm sure calibre will eventually support the KF8 format, but until then... if you want to modify/tweak this book to your own liking, I suggest starting with the ePub version (found here in the MR library, as well)—from which this file was built, using kindlegen 2.3. **

[JSWolf]

Looking at that in Mobipocket Reader and it does work except there is a lot of places where the text is just too small and to increase the font size so it is not too small, the other text would then become too large. I suggest working on the Mobi part to fix this issue.

[DiapDealer]

The relative font sizes are indeed a compromise. But I'm mostly happy with the compromise I chose. I was more concerned with keeping the lines of poetry consistent and unbroken. Any larger, and the the lines of poetry start getting broken in weird places on 6" screens—which is what I'm focused on.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The relative font sizes are indeed a compromise. But I'm mostly happy with the compromise I chose. I was more concerned with keeping the lines of poetry consistent and unbroken. Any larger, and the the lines of poetry start getting broken in weird places on 6" screens—which is what I'm focused on.

The font is too small such that the size will have to be turned up and lines will still wrap. So your compromise won't work when this happens.

I suggest then a second version that has the lines wrapping how you want them to wrap as best as you can do it.

[DiapDealer]

I suggest then a second version that has the lines wrapping how you want them to wrap as best as you can do it.

That, my friend, is exactly what this version represents. But I appreciate your interest.