Abolqasem Ferdowsi (Persian: ابوالقاسم فردوسی), the son of a wealthy land owner, was born in 935 in a small village named Paj near Tus in Khorasan which is situated in today's Razavi Khorasan province in Iran. He devoted more than 35 years to his great epic, the Shāhnāmeh. It was originally composed for presentation to the Samanid princes of Khorasan, who were the chief instigators of the revival of Iranian cultural traditions after the Arab conquest of the seventh century. Ferdowsi started his composition of the Shahnameh in the Samanid era in 977 A.D. During Ferdowsi's lifetime the Samanid dynasty was conquered by the Ghaznavid Empire. After 30 years of hard work, he finished the book and two or three years after that, Ferdowsi went to Ghazni, the Ghaznavid capital, to present it to the king, Sultan Mahmud.
Ferdowsi is said to have died around 1020 in poverty at the age of 85, embittered by royal neglect, though fully confident of his work's ultimate success and fame, as he says in the verse: " ... I suffered during these thirty years, but I have revived the Iranians (Ajam) with the Persian language; I shall not die since I am alive again, as I have spread the seeds of this language ..."
داستان سیاوش یکی از داستان های زیبا در شاهنامه است که هنوز به گونه های مختلف در شعر نو و ادبیات داستانی معاصر از آن اقتباس می شود. شخصیت سیاوش و سهراب در شاهنامه شخصیت فراوطنی هستند هرچقدر که رستم عزیز است و با افتخار اما نمی شود سیاوش را دوست نداشت یا سهراب را فراموش کرد. این داستان شاخصه های اصلی اساطیری ، پهلوانی ،غنایی، دادگری وجهان بینی اخلاق مدارانه شاهنامه را همزمان داراست.