The epic is a very ancient literary type that has been the focus of many nations and societies since ancient times. The emergence of this literary type in the literature of some nations depends on the existence of special historical, social and cultural conditions, and it also has special literary and artistic characteristics. Undoubtedly, Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, as one of the most well-known epic texts in the world, is both the result of such special circumstances and contains the main elements of an epic text. On the other hand, Malhamah is famous as a kind of poetry-story in Arabic literature, and sometimes it is used in the meaning of epic, which is definitely not true, because epic is based on myth, while Malhamah does not have a mythological basis, and in addition, the conditions of emergence and the literary and content characteristics of an Malhami poem have very fundamental differences with an epic work. This article seeks to explain these differences by comparing the Shahnameh with some Malhami texts and measuring the characteristics of each of these two types of poetry-stories.
)