Abstract
Based on the example of the instrumentalization of the Shāhnāme, this article sets out to highlight the poem's twofold intellectual dependence: on the political schemes imposed since independence (nationalism, ethnocentrism) and on the ideas inherited from the Soviet (or even imperial) period. We show through which theories this poem found itself linked to the construction of the nation-state in Tajikistan, and trace the slow and long maturation of politicized ideas about mythical Iran and Tourān in the Russian-speaking space of Central Asia, highlighting the fluidity of these concepts easily adaptable to all political contexts.
