This paper challenges the assumption that posthumanist concepts such as distributed agency, hybridity, non-human individuality, and assemblage are exclusively products of late 20th-century Western theory. Through close readings of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (11th century) and Attar's Conference of the Birds (12th century), I demonstrate that these theoretical frameworks find clear articulation in pre-modern Persian epic literature. Examining the Simorgh's relationship with Zal, Rostam's symbiotic bond with Rakhsh, and the transformative journey of Attar's thirty birds, I argue that Persian epic poetry offers an independent theoretical resource—what I term "posthumanism before humanism. Building on posthumanist scholars like Latour (2005), Haraway (1991, 2016), and Bennett (2010), I show how the Shahnameh functions as a heterogeneous assemblage of human and non-human actors, distributing agency across textual, oral, and material forms. This reading reveals how these ancient narratives serve as emotional infrastructures that shape Iranian affective responses to collective trauma. During the recent Iran-Israel war, figures like Rostam and the Simorgh were mobilized as sources of resilience and national cohesion, demonstrating the continued vitality of these pre-modern posthumanist frameworks. By reversing Western temporal and geographical hierarchies, this paper contributes to a postcolonial understanding of posthumanism's diverse genealogies. It argues that reading the Shahnameh as independent theory—rather than merely as raw data for Western frameworks—opens new possibilities for both Iranian cultural studies and posthumanist thought. The paper ultimately suggests that what is "new" about posthumanism is not its concepts but the modern forgetting of their pre-modern, non-Western articulations.