The Opening line of Shāhnāme as the Prime Mover of Persian Mathnavis

Ferdowsi is the first Persian poet who under the influence of The Holy Quran and Avista has started his mathnavi with the name of God, and has followed the same pattern in most of the stories narrated by the charismatic kings and heroes of Shāhnāme. The influence, both in structure and content, can be seen in the poems written after Shāhnāme. This article performs a triple task concerning this opening line: first it examines its linguistic aspects (verse-form, meter, rhyme, phonological and syllabic functions, ambiguity of words and concepts, identical-word deletion, specific function of the verb bargozashtan (to go beyond); second, it focuses on the relation between the opening line and the poet’s way of thinking, (the triangle Name-Soul-Wisdom, as well as some of his thinking origins); third, it describes the literary function of the line (rhetorical values, foregrounding, diathesis, antinomy of some references concerning one pronoun, snobbery). Finally the opening lines of seventeen mathnavis are presented in order to show that among all, Shāhnāme’s opening verse occupies the highest position.