Canon 5d, 1/500s, f7, iso100, Canon 16-35L f2.8 @ 19.

Ferdowsi's tomb in Toos, Khorasan province, Iran.

Ferdowsi was born in Khorasan in a village near Tous, in 935 AC. He devoted about 30 years of his life to create his great epic The Shahnameh (The Epic of Kings). This Persian national epic, is a poem of nearly 60,000 couplets about hero tales of ancient Persia. The Shahnameh is one of the definite classics of the world. The contents and the poet's style in describing the events takes the readers back to the ancient times and makes he/she sense and feel the events. For nearly a thousand years the Persians have continued to read and to listen to recitations from his masterwork in which the Persian national epic found its final and enduring form. It is the history of Iran's glorious past, preserved for all time in sonorous and majestic verse.

According to Nezami (another great Persian poet), Ferdowsi was a dehqan (landowner), deriving a comfortable income from his estates. He had only one child, a daughter, and it was to provide her with a dowry that he set his hand to the task that was to occupy him for more than 30 years. Ferdowsi is said to have died around 1020 CE in poverty and embittered by royal neglect, though confident of his and his poem's ultimate fame.

For more information, refer to this and this.

"What you are I once was and what I am you will be"...
- Inscription over a skeleton in Masaccio's Holy Trinity