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The Kushnameh: The Persian Epic of Kush the Tusked
The first English translation of a strange and unusual Persian epic, this action-packed tale of an evil, monstrous king explores questions of nature and nurture and brings the global middle ages to life.
The great Persian epic known as the Kushnameh follows the entangled lives of Kush the Tusked––a monstrous antihero with tusks and ears like an elephant, descended from the evil emperor Zahhak––and Abtin, the exiled grandson of the last true Persian emperor. Abandoned at birth in the forests of China and raised by Abtin, Kush grows into a powerful and devious warrior. Kush and his foes scheme and wage war across a global stage reaching from Spain and Africa to China and Korea. Between epic battles and magnificent feasts are disturbing, sometimes realistic portrayals of abuse and oppression and philosophical speculation about nature and nurture and the origins of civilization.
A fantastical adventure story stretching across the known world and a literary classic of unparalleled richness, this important work of medieval Persian literature is a valuable source for understanding the history of racism and constructions of race and the flows of lore and legend from the Central Asian Silk Road and the Sahara to the sea routes of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. The Kushnameh is a treasure trove of Islamic and pre-Islamic Persian cultural history and a striking contemporary document of the “global middle ages,” now available to English-speaking readers for the first time.
The great Persian epic known as the Kushnameh follows the entangled lives of Kush the Tusked––a monstrous antihero with tusks and ears like an elephant, descended from the evil emperor Zahhak––and Abtin, the exiled grandson of the last true Persian emperor. Abandoned at birth in the forests of China and raised by Abtin, Kush grows into a powerful and devious warrior. Kush and his foes scheme and wage war across a global stage reaching from Spain and Africa to China and Korea. Between epic battles and magnificent feasts are disturbing, sometimes realistic portrayals of abuse and oppression and philosophical speculation about nature and nurture and the origins of civilization.
A fantastical adventure story stretching across the known world and a literary classic of unparalleled richness, this important work of medieval Persian literature is a valuable source for understanding the history of racism and constructions of race and the flows of lore and legend from the Central Asian Silk Road and the Sahara to the sea routes of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. The Kushnameh is a treasure trove of Islamic and pre-Islamic Persian cultural history and a striking contemporary document of the “global middle ages,” now available to English-speaking readers for the first time.
- GenresLiteratureClassics
432 pages, Paperback
Published July 19, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 13, 2025
The Kushnameh means the epic of Kush. Kush is a monstrous king with tusks and ears like an elephant. There are many battles in the book and quite a lot of soldiers on the opposition forces take one look at Kush and decide they'd rather be somewhere else.
The scale of the story is indeed epic ranging across most of the known world of the early twelfth century from Korea and China to Morocco and The Pyrenees. Most places are provided with fictional names but are based on real places, so the book does give insight into the world of around 1110AD.
The Kushnameh was written by Iranshah around a century after the more famous Shahnameh by Ferdowsi though Kush does not appear in this earlier book.
Anyway, the story has Kush waging war against his foes across the area described above. He is evil and monstrous though he develops a certain devious cunning towards his opponents. He doesn't win all his battles and is taken prisoner during the story.
The scale of the story is indeed epic ranging across most of the known world of the early twelfth century from Korea and China to Morocco and The Pyrenees. Most places are provided with fictional names but are based on real places, so the book does give insight into the world of around 1110AD.
The Kushnameh was written by Iranshah around a century after the more famous Shahnameh by Ferdowsi though Kush does not appear in this earlier book.
Anyway, the story has Kush waging war against his foes across the area described above. He is evil and monstrous though he develops a certain devious cunning towards his opponents. He doesn't win all his battles and is taken prisoner during the story.
May 20, 2026
Not nearly as good as the Shahnameh and indeed there are quite a few mistakes (likely due to either the author not having any checks and balances in writing the text, problems because it is perhaps a combination of many surviving texts or because of editorial or translation mistakes). Either way, I am quite shocked by how low of a review score it has, it’s inner content is not the most fascinating on it’s own but the historicism of this text is extremely fascinating in it’s relation to the Shahnameh and older Iranian legends found in the Avesta and it exists in the same shared universe as these myths. However, the Kushnameh flips many of these mythological themes on their heads. It is an almost alternative epic and Kushnameh is neither evil nor good, he is a kind of anti-hero which is rare for texts of this make. He was an incredibly interesting character to read about when understood through the lens of the historical and literary context in which the author had conceived him. It is not on the same level as the Shahnameh or even the Avesta but it makes an interesting third companion to both these works.
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November 17, 2023What a peculiar book. Interesting, from such an old source. Parts of it are repetitious, as though the author had forgotten what he had written earlier; or perhaps it was a compilation of copies. Also needed slightly better (modern) editing. I enjoyed Kismet more.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews