An Investigation of the Location of Rudabad in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh

No outstanding research has been done regarding the location of places in Shahnameh. Moreover, the records of some of these places in manuscripts and copies of Shahnameh are inaccurate. Scribes of Shahnameh have made no attempt to record these names in a perfect way and, at times, they have deliberately replaced them with the names and familiar words of their age. This study deals with clarifying of a place name and proposes two possibilities as to another place name in Shahnameh which accords geographically with the discussed name. Ferdowsi mentions the name Rudabad twice in Shahnameh which is unknown to researchers, and has led to some confusion. It is tried in this study to locate this region and to find whether it is possible to identify it with Zurabad, a city near Sarakhs. The results suggest that the Rudabad of Shahnameh is the same city as Zurabad or Zurabād of Torbat Jām, today called Salehabād.