Khwaday-Namag

Khwadāy-Nāmag (Middle Persian: 𐭧𐭥𐭲𐭠𐭩 𐭭𐭠𐭬𐭪; New Persian: خدای‌نامه; "Book of Lords") was a Middle Persian history text from the Sasanian era, now lost, imagined first by Theodor Nöldeke to be the common ancestor of all later Persian-language histories of the Sasanian Empire,[1] a view which has recently been disproven.[2] It was supposed to have been first translated into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa' (d. 757), who had access to Sasanian court documents. According to Nöldeke's theory, the book itself was composed first under the reign of Khosrow I Anushirvan (r. 531-579), and redacted in the reign of the last Sasanian monarch, Yazdegerd III (r. 632–651). Khwaday-Namag was the primary source of Persian epic Shahnameh ("Book of Kings") written by Ferdowsi. Khwaday-Namag was also translated to New Persian, and was expanded using other sources, by Samanid scholars under supervision of Abu Mansur Mamari in 957, but only the introduction of this work remains today.[3]