Tomb of Ferdowsi

About 25 kilometres north of Mashhad, in the village of Tus where the poet was born and died, the modern mausoleum of Ferdowsi is one of Iran's most visited literary shrines. The marble tomb, built in the 1930s to commemorate the poet's millennium, is a deliberate evocation of Achaemenid Persepolis — a low, cuboid structure with a smaller pyramidal cap, surrounded by gardens.

Inside, the walls are inscribed with verses from the Shahnameh; downstairs, a small museum holds Ferdowsi memorabilia and a model of his original village house. Combine with the much older ruins of Tus itself, just a short drive away.

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A story
Ferdowsi spent over thirty years writing the Shahnameh — the Persian national epic, 60,000 couplets long — and is credited with almost single-handedly preserving the Persian language through a period when Arabic was supplanting it across the educated classes. He died in 1020 in his native village of Tus, refusing burial in a Muslim cemetery on the technicality that he had insulted the local imam.

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