The Ferdowsi Millennium: Culture Pruned and an Identity Adorned

Abstract

With a focus on the Firdawsi Millennium Celebration, this article studies the monumentalization of Firdawsi on the occasion of his millennial anniversary of birth in 1934 and how it came to pave the way for the enforcement of the government’s political and cultural agenda. The celebration resulted in the reformulation of Iran’s official national identity through a call to return to the pre-Islamic past.