Abu'l-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi (also Firdawsi, Persian: ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی; 940 – 1019/1025) was a Persian poet and the author of the Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"), which is one of the world's longest epic poems created by a single poet, and the greatest epic of Persian-speaking countries. Ferdowsi is celebrated as one of the most influential figures of Persian literature and one of the greatest in the history of literature.

Abolqasem Ferdowsi was born in 935 in a small village named Paj near Tus in Khorasan, situated in today's Razavi Khorasan province in Iran. He devoted more than 35 years to his great epic, the Shāhnāmeh. It was originally composed for presentation to the Samanid princes of Khorasan, who were the chief instigators of the revival of Iranian cultural traditions after the Arab conquest of the seventh century. Ferdowsi started his composition of the Shahnameh in the Samanid era in 977 A.D. During Ferdowsi's lifetime, the Samanid dynasty was conquered by the Ghaznavid Empire.