Tomb of Ferdowsi

Abolqasem Ferdowsi, the poet of the Shahnameh, the Book of Kings, is buried at Tus, his home town, a short drive from Mashhad. He spent some three decades composing his epic of Iran's kings and heroes, completing it around 1010, and died around 1020. For centuries his grave was marked only modestly.

The present mausoleum was first built in 1934, for celebrations marking a thousand years since the poet's birth, and was substantially rebuilt in the 1960s. Its form deliberately echoes the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae: a stepped stone platform topped by a square block of pale stone, carved with lines of the poem and the faravahar, the winged emblem of ancient Iran. The choice was an argument in stone, linking the poet who preserved Iran's legends with the oldest of its kings.

Beneath the platform is a hall lined with stone reliefs of scenes from the Shahnameh: among them, it is said, Rostam's tragic fight with his son Sohrab and his battle with the White Div. Around the mausoleum is a garden with pools, and a small museum on the site displays objects from Tus. Visitors often stand at the tomb and recite the lines Ferdowsi wrote about his own work, that he had raised a palace of verse that wind and rain could not harm.