Hakim Abul-Qasim Firdawsi was a great Persian poet. He is the author of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran and the Persian-speaking world. Ferdowsi was born into a family of Iranian landowners (Dehqans) in 940 C.E. in the village of Paj, near the city of Tus in the province of Khorasan, now in northeastern Iran.