The ancient legends of the Persian Book of Kings (Shahnameh) 1 were versified by Abolqasem Ferdowsi (940-1020 CE), who was born to a family of small landowners near the city of Tus, in northeastern Iran. An Iranian sociologist and translator, Ahmad Sadri is a professor of Islamic world studies, sociology, and anthropology at Lake Forest College, and lives in Illinois. Hamid Rahmanian is a John Guggenheim Fellow and multidisciplinary artist based in New York.