This celebrated poet, whose true name was Abul Kāsin,[235] was a native of Tus, a city of Khorasān, and many happy hours of his boyhood were spent on the banks of the beautiful river that swept along its course near his home. But the rebellious waters occasionally flooded their banks, leaving ruin in their path, and the dream of the young poet’s life was the hope that some day he might command the means to build a suitable bridge over this turbulent stream, and also to confine its rising waters within banks of solid masonry. When, therefore, he received the royal commission to write the long Persian epic, he felt that this great public improvement was within his reach, and he gladly undertook the task. After several samples of his poem had been presented to the Shāh, the prime minister was ordered to pay the poet a thousand drachms of gold for every thousand couplets which he produced until the work was completed. A magnificent residence was erected for Firdusī near the palace of the king, and the best painters of the age were employed to cover the walls with the portraits of kings and heroes, with paintings of battles and sieges, with the most imposing military scenes, and everything that could excite the martial valor and fire the imagination of the writer. The only member of the court with whom the poet was not upon friendly terms was the conceited prime minister, who expected, and generally received, almost as much adulation from the court poets as the king himself. Firdusī refused to render him this servile homage, and not only so, but finally ignored him to such an extent that he would not go to his house to receive the payment of gold coin which became due upon the completion of each thousand couplets. The only reason he gave for this was that he preferred to receive the whole amount at once, and thereby be enabled to carry out his favorite project and build a bridge in his native city. All of these little exhibitions of animosity on the part of the poet combined to make him offensive to the vizier, and gave opportunities to other envious courtiers to cultivate the favor of the prime minister by flatteries of himself, and curses upon the head of Firdusī. At the end of thirty years of hard work the Shāh Nāmah was completed, consisting of sixty thousand couplets. The vizier then revenged himself upon the poet by misrepresenting the condition of the treasury to the king, and, urging upon him the absurdity of paying such an enormous price for a poem, he finally induced him to send to the poet sixty thousand drachms of silver instead of the gold which he had promised. Firdusī was coming out of his bath when the bags of silver arrived from the treasury, and learning the value of their contents he contemptuously gave them away, giving recklessly, and without judgment, until the sum was exhausted.