Ferdowsi: “Shahnameh is not a fairytale, there are secrets that need to be solved.

• Documented history is full of horrific atrocities, beheadings, eye gauging, burnings, flaying alive, etc. but Ferdowsi’s historical version skims over them with his touch of poetic, mystical and magical inferences and creation of wicked characters like the “Divs”.
  Furthermore, he has ascribed high morals like fairness, earnestness,
  loyalty, patriotism and selflessness to Iranian leaders and heroes.
• Iranian historical records pre-Islam were burnt and destroyed by Alexander and Islamic Invaders, forcing Iranians to read about their history from their enemy’s perspective. Shahnameh is Farsi with an Iranian perspective, albeit incorporated in mythology and magical realism. It represents per-Islamic Iranian glory and is a source of national pride.
• A number of scholars credit the continuity in modern Farsi to Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. It is the main source for finding Iranian (non-religious) names for children.
• In Shahnameh, Ferdowsi depicts that the mortality of all creation insists that the world’s meaning can be derived only from man’s moral choices and thus personal, national and spiritual integrity are defended against a chaotic world trying to destroy it. His heroes are proud patriotic, courageous and moralistic Iranians and represent fairness, justice, goodness and light, especially the hero Rostam (who is similar to the western Hercules).