Ferdowsi
c. 940 – 1020 · 80 years · Tus · Middle East
Author of the Shahnameh, the vast national epic of Iran that he spent some thirty years writing.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 10th century
Portrait: ca. 1476–86 artist · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Hugh Capet — founder of the Capetian dynasty, born the same year
- Æthelred the Unready — king who paid off the Vikings with Danegeld, 26 years younger
- Otto the Great — founder of the Holy Roman Empire who crushed the Magyars at the Lech, 28 years older
- Cnut the Great — Danish king who ruled a North Sea empire, 55 years younger
- Edward the Confessor — pious king who built Westminster Abbey, 63 years younger
- Robert II the Pious — pious king excommunicated for marrying a kinswoman, 32 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Vladimir the Great — Grand Prince of Kiev, 20 years younger
- Yaroslav the Wise — Grand Prince of Kiev, 38 years younger
- Olga of Kiev — grand princess of Kiev, 20 years older
- Sviatopolk the Accursed — prince of Kiev blamed by the chronicles for murdering Boris and Gleb, 40 years younger
- Sviatoslav I — Grand Prince of Kiev, warrior, 2 years younger
- Yaropolk I — prince of Kiev who fell in a civil war with his brother Vladimir, 15 years younger
Middle East
- Avicenna (Ibn Sina) — physician and philosopher, 40 years younger
Asia
- Murasaki Shikibu — novelist, author of The Tale of Genji, 33 years younger
- Sei Shōnagon — writer and court lady, 26 years younger
- Al-Biruni — polymath, 33 years younger
Americas
- Leif Erikson — Norse explorer, 30 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 946 Millennium Eruption of Mount Paektu — aged 6, Asia
- c. 950–1250 Medieval Warm Period — aged 10, Americas
- 960 Founding of the Song dynasty — aged 20, Asia
- 962 Coronation of Otto I — aged 22, Europe
- 966 Baptism of Poland — aged 26, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 969 Founding of Cairo — aged 29, Africa
- 972 Al-Azhar Mosque opens — aged 32, Africa
- 988 Christianization of Kievan Rus' — aged 48, Eastern Europe & Russia
- c. 1000 Extinction of the elephant birds — aged 60, Africa
- c. 1000 Stephen I, first king of Hungary — aged 60, Europe
- 1006 Supernova SN 1006 — aged 66, Africa
- c. 1010 The Tale of Genji — aged 70, Asia