The Shahnameh or Shah-nama (Persian: ??????? ??hn?meh 'The Book of Kings') is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi (Firdausi) between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 60,000 verses, the Shahnameh tells the mythical and historical past of (Greater) Iran from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century. The work is of central importance in Persian culture, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of ethno-national cultural identity of Iran. It is also important to the contemporary adherents of Zoroastrianism, in that it traces the historical links between the beginnings of the religion with the death of the last Zoroastrian ruler of Persia during the Muslim conquest.