Notes · Book A4The First Kings: Jamshid and the Rise of Zahhak

A4.1The Greatness and Fall of Jamshid

Jamshid forges arms, weaves cloth, orders society into four classes, sets the Divs to building, and flies through the air on a jeweled throne on the first Nowruz. After three centuries without death, pride leads him to claim he is the World-Creator, and his farr departs.

And they named Nowruz for that newborn day: Ferdowsi’s story of the first New Year: Jamshid, raised into the sky on a throne carried by Divs, outshines the sun, and the day is named now rūz, ‘new day’. Nowruz is still the great festival of the Iranian world. The ruins of Persepolis are still called Takht-e Jamshid, ‘Jamshid’s Throne’.

The four great orders of the human race: The four orders (priests, warriors, farmers and craftsmen) match the classes of ancient Iranian society as described in the Avesta and in Sasanian texts. The strange names are corrupted forms of the old Avestan and Pahlavi terms: Ahtukhushi, for instance, preserves the Pahlavi hutukhsh, ‘artisan’.

For three full centuries their fortune shone; / Throughout the world, death’s shadow was unknown: In the Avesta, Yima (Jamshid) rules over a world without heat or cold, age or death, and enlarges the earth when it grows crowded. Ferdowsi keeps the golden age but tells it as history.

Then divine farr withdrew at Jamshid’s word: In the Avesta, the royal glory (khvarenah, Persian farr) leaves Yima after he utters a lie, flying from him in the form of a bird. Ferdowsi makes the sin pride: the claim to be the Creator. The farr’s departure is the hinge on which the poem’s kings turn.

Jamshid, the son of Tahmuras the wise: Readers who know the ‘cup of Jamshid’ (jām-e jam), the world-revealing cup of Persian poetry, will look for it here in vain. In the Shahnameh the magic cup belongs to Kay Khosrow (II, C2.13). Only later poets gave it to Jamshid, perhaps drawn by the pun on jām, ‘cup’, and Jam, the short form of his name.

A4.2Zahhak and His Father

Zahhak, reckless son of the good Arab king Mardas, is flattered by Iblis into an oath. Iblis digs a pit in the garden path, Mardas falls to his death, and Zahhak takes his father’s throne.

Zahhak, whose name the ancient stories tell: In the Avesta, Azhi Dahaka is not a man at all but a three-headed dragon. Ferdowsi’s sources turned him into a human tyrant, an Arab prince, and kept the three heads in disguise: a man’s head and the two serpents that will grow from his shoulders. Zahhak is still called ‘the Dragon’ throughout the poem.

Biwarasp was the name the ancients knew: Ferdowsi’s etymology is sound: Pahlavi bēwar means ‘ten thousand’ and asp means ‘horse’. It is a rare moment of the poet explaining a word to his readers.

If some dark secret lies behind the deed, / Ask of the mother where the truth may lead: A famously sly couplet. A son who kills his father, Ferdowsi hints, cannot really be his father’s son: ask his mother.

A4.3Zahhak Is Tempted by Iblis

Disguised as a cook, Iblis feeds Zahhak the first meat: egg yolks, then fowl, then lamb and veal. As his reward he kisses the king’s shoulders, and two black serpents grow there. Returning as a physician, he prescribes human brains as their food.

In those first days, men fed on what they grew: In Ferdowsi’s scheme, meat-eating is the Devil’s invention, introduced to make men fierce. The menu rises by stages, from eggs to fowl to lamb to veal, as each course binds the king more tightly.

Allow me both your shoulders to embrace: The kiss on the shoulders is one of the great uncanny moments of the poem, a gesture of servile devotion that becomes a curse. Artists illustrating the Shahnameh have painted Zahhak’s snakes ever since.

He sought to thin mankind beyond repair: The poet steps out of the story to ask what the Devil intended, and suggests an answer: to empty the world of people. The aside is typical of Ferdowsi, who likes to make his readers think.

A4.4Fortune Flies from Jamshid

Iran falls into disorder, and its chiefs go over to the Arab king Zahhak, who takes Jamshid’s throne. Jamshid hides for a century, is caught by the Sea of Chin, and is sawn in two. The poet reflects on the world’s treachery.

And sawed him end to end in halves that day: The terrible death has ancient roots. The Avesta names Spityura as ‘the one who sawed Yima (Jamshid) in two’. Ferdowsi gives the deed to Zahhak.

Drawn hard to amber by its hidden law: Amber, rubbed, attracts straw. The Persian word for amber, kahrobā, means literally ‘straw-snatcher’. Fortune picks up a king as easily as amber lifts a stalk.

For seven hundred years his reign held fast: The long reigns of the first kings (Jamshid’s seven hundred years, Zahhak’s thousand) belong to mythic, not historical, time. In the Zoroastrian scheme the history of the world is counted in millennia, and Zahhak’s thousand-year tyranny fills one of them.