A surprising fact, worth thinking about when considering what a nation and nationalism are, is that after more than forty years of Islamic rule, it is still not unusual for an educated Iranian to be familiar with the Shahnameh, the Book of Kings, written around 1000 CE by Abolqasem Ferdowsi. The continuing allure of the epic poem is surprising, because the Shahnameh presents an image of Iran that glorifies its pre-Islamic traditions including the Zoroastrian religion, even though it was composed more than three hundred and fifty years after the Muslim conquest of Iran.