Notes · Book B10Vengeance for Siavash and the Retrieval of Kay Khosrow

B10.1Ferdowsi Laments His Old Age

The poet, now fifty-eight, mourns the loss of youth and strength and asks God for time to finish his book, so that it may keep his name alive. He declares his devotion to the Prophet’s Household before returning to the tale.

At fifty-eight I lift that bitter cup: Ferdowsi again gives his age as fifty-eight, as in the prelude to the Story of Siavash (B9.1). These autobiographical prologues, scattered through the poem, are our best evidence for his life.

Before his Successor, I bow in dust: The ‘Successor’ (vasī) is Ali, a title with strong Shi’a coloring: the Prophet’s appointed heir. The line picks up the declaration of faith in A0.7 at the threshold of a new and darker book.

B10.2Kavus Hears of Siavash’s Fate

News reaches Kavus that Gurvi Zereh has cut off Siavash’s head over a golden basin at Afrasiab’s command. The king falls from his throne in grief, and the Iranian chiefs put on dark blue and black.

Gurvi Zereh set a basin made of gold: The golden basin was meant to catch the prince’s blood, so that none of it would touch the earth. It spilled all the same, and the story says a plant sprang from it, still called ‘Siavash’s blood’. The basin will return in the next chapters as the instrument of vengeance.

B10.3Rostam Comes before Kavus

In Zabul, Rostam mourns for seven days, then gathers his warriors and rides to court in torn robes. He swears never to take off his armor until Siavash is avenged, and he blames Kavus and his love for Sudabeh for the prince’s death.

He tore his Pahlevan robe clean through: Rostam’s grief is a foster-father’s. He had brought up Siavash in Zabulistan and taught him to ride, shoot and rule, and he has lost a second son after Sohrab. His rebuke of Kavus is the bluntest any subject gives a king in the poem, and Kavus has no answer.

My helmet is my crown, my sword my cup: The mourning vow of armor instead of feasting, dust instead of washing, is a formal oath of vengeance, and Rostam keeps it through years of war. A warrior who swears not to wash until blood is paid is an old figure in epic. Compare Achilles, who refuses food and bathing until Hector is dead.

B10.4Rostam Takes Vengeance

Rostam drags Sudabeh from her chamber and cuts her in two while Kavus sits silent. After seven more days of mourning he rallies the chiefs, vows a war of vengeance, and marches with a hundred thousand men.

His khanjar struck and cleft her at a stroke: Sudabeh’s end takes two lines, and Kavus does not lift a hand. The queen who drove Siavash to the ordeal of fire and then to exile disappears from the poem as abruptly as she entered it, and nobody mourns her.

The gavdam roared; the bronze ney gave its tone: The Shahnameh’s war music is precise. The kūs are huge kettledrums, often carried on elephants; the karnāy is a long trumpet; the gāv-dum, ‘ox-tail’, is a curved horn; the nāy a pipe. Versions of the karnāy and the kūs sounded at Persian courts and city gates for centuries after Ferdowsi.

B10.5Faramarz Slays Varazad

Rostam’s son Faramarz leads the vanguard to the Turanian border. Varazad, lord of Sipanjab, challenges him and demands his name. Faramarz unhorses him, beheads him in Siavash’s name, and burns his land.

B10.6Surkha Marches against Rostam

Afrasiab opens his treasuries and sends his son Surkha against Faramarz. Faramarz defeats and captures him. Tus pleads for the young prince’s life, but Rostam has him killed with basin and khanjar, as Siavash was killed.

Must join inborn strength with skill at its best: Rostam’s little lecture turns on a pair of words central to the poem: gohar, inborn nature or lineage, and honar, skill and virtue won by effort. A true warrior needs both, and wisdom and learning besides. The flint and steel image that follows makes the point: the fire is in the steel already, but only striking brings it out.

Bring basin, khanjar; bind the captive’s hands: The execution repeats Siavash’s death detail for detail: the bound hands, the sheep laid on the ground, the basin, the blade. Vengeance in the Shahnameh is measured like a debt. Ferdowsi lets the innocent Surkha protest that he wept for Siavash too, and the poet’s aside a few lines later leaves no doubt where his sympathy lies.

B10.7Afrasiab Marches to Avenge His Son

Afrasiab mourns Surkha and leads his whole army out for revenge. Rostam draws up the Iranians against him, with Faramarz in front, Gudarz and Hajir on the left and Tus and Giv on the right.

Afrasiab then bent his crowned head low: Afrasiab’s mourning echoes Kavus’s in B10.2 almost gesture for gesture: the bowed crown, the dust, the torn robes. Each side has now lost a son, and each swears vengeance. Ferdowsi builds the feud between Iran and Turan out of such mirrored griefs.

B10.8The Death of Pilsam

Piran’s young brother Pilsam asks leave to fight Rostam, and Afrasiab promises him a crown and his daughter. He holds off Giv and Faramarz together. Rostam rides out, lifts him from the saddle and hurls him dead before Afrasiab.

If fortune spares him and good teachers guide: Rostam remembers a prophecy that Pilsam, if he lived, would be unmatched, and he rides out to kill him while he is young. The young challenger of great promise, the old champion who laments him even as he strikes, is the pattern of Sohrab’s story, here told in a few lines.

In yellow diba bright against the clay: Dībā is silk brocade. The Persian word passed into Arabic as dībāj, and Persian silks were prized goods across the medieval world. Rostam’s taunt is grimly courteous: dress your champion in fine silk for his burial.

B10.9Afrasiab Flees before Rostam

Afrasiab breaks the Iranian right. Rostam charges him, kills his horse and nearly seizes him, but Houman strikes Rostam with a gorz and Afrasiab escapes. The Turanians are routed, and Tus teases Rostam about the blow.

Today take leopard-counsel for the fray: Palang counsel: fight as the leopard does, from cover and from every side at once, rather than meeting an enemy head on. It is a compliment in Persian, not a slur (see B6.4), and here it is Afrasiab admitting that he can no longer face Rostam in the open field.

B10.10Afrasiab Sends Kay Khosrow to Khutan

In retreat, Afrasiab wants the boy Kay Khosrow drowned so that Rostam cannot make him king. Piran persuades him to hide the prince instead. Khosrow and Farangis are brought to Piran, and Khosrow is then sent secretly beyond the Sea of Chin.

They will make this Div-born boy, king instead: Afrasiab’s fear is prophetic. In the Avesta, Kavi Haosravah (Kay Khosrow) is the hero who at last binds and kills Frangrasyan (Afrasiab), avenging Syavarshan (Siavash). Everything the Turanian king does to prevent that end brings it closer.

B10.11Rostam Rules Turan for Seven Years

Rostam seizes Afrasiab’s throne and treasures and shares out Turan among his chiefs: Chakh to Tus, Sipanjab to Gudarz, gold to Fariborz with a charge of vengeance. The rulers of Chin and Machin submit, and Rostam rules and hunts in peace.

This world is a lodging, not a lasting throne: The world as an inn or caravanserai where no one stays is one of the commonest images in Persian verse, from Ferdowsi to Omar Khayyam and Sa’di. It is striking to hear it from Rostam at the height of his power.

B10.12Zavareh Goes to Siavash’s Hunting-Ground

Out hunting, Zavareh learns from a Turkish guide that he stands in Siavash’s favorite hunting-ground. He faints with grief, vows endless vengeance, and reproaches Rostam for letting Turan live in peace.

This is the ground Prince Siavash once sought: A chance remark reopens the war. Ferdowsi often moves his plot this way, through a place, an object or a horse that brings back the dead: Siavash’s hunting-ground here, his horse and his armor a few chapters later.

B10.13Rostam’s Harrowing of Turan

Rostam’s army ravages Turan, killing young and old, until the Turanian nobles beg for mercy. His captains warn that Iran lies open with an old, weak king, and urge a return home and enjoyment of life.

Wear what you have, give freely, drink and eat: The captains’ advice (enjoy what you have, give it away, for you cannot take it with you) is the voice of Persian wisdom literature. It sounds like Omar Khayyam, who wrote a century later. The Shahnameh sets this counsel beside the call to vengeance and does not choose between them.

B10.14Rostam Returns to Iran

Rostam goes home to Zabulistan laden with spoil. Afrasiab returns to find Turan in ruins and raids Iran in revenge. Seven years of drought and famine follow while Rostam stays away in Zabul.

With musk and marten, squirrel, ermine stored: Furs from the northern forests, sable, marten, ermine and squirrel, came south through Khwarazm and the Volga trade in Ferdowsi’s day and were among the luxuries of Samanid and Ghaznavid courts. The list of plunder reads like a merchant’s manifest.

For seven years no rain refreshed the plain: The drought is more than weather. In Zoroastrian tradition Afrasiab is linked with the withholding of water from Iran, and a land’s fertility follows the justice and farr of its king. Iran under a failing Kavus and a raiding Afrasiab withers until the true king returns.

B10.15Gudarz’s Dream of Kay Khosrow

Soroush appears to Gudarz in a dream and reveals that Kay Khosrow lives in Turan and that only Giv can find him. Gudarz sends Giv on the quest. Giv’s wife, Rostam’s daughter Banu-gashasp, asks leave to visit her father.

Upon that flying cloud Soroush drew near: Soroush, God’s messenger (see A1.1), comes at the turning points of the poem, and this is one of the great ones. A dream sent from heaven sets in motion the finding of the king, just as dreams warned Zahhak (A5.2) of his end.

News reached Banu Gashasp without delay: Rostam’s daughter, who married Giv (see B10.23). Later storytellers made her a warrior heroine in her own right, the subject of a separate epic, the Banu Goshasp-nameh.

B10.16Giv Seeks Kay Khosrow in Turan

Giv sets out alone, leaving his young son Bijan in Gudarz’s care. The poet reflects on death and God’s power. In Turan, Giv questions everyone he meets and kills those who cannot tell him where Kay Khosrow is.

Keep little Bijan sheltered in your care: The first glimpse of Bijan, here a small boy. He will grow into one of the poem’s most dashing heroes, and his love for Afrasiab’s daughter Manijeh is one of the best-loved romances of the Shahnameh, told in the next volume (II, C2).

B10.17Giv Finds Kay Khosrow

After seven years of wandering, Giv finds a youth by a stream who looks like Siavash. Kay Khosrow greets him by name, for Siavash foretold his coming, and proves his identity with the black birthmark of the Kayanian line.

My fortune, like a walnut on a dome: A walnut on a dome cannot stay put, and ‘a walnut on a dome’ (gerdū bar gonbad) is a Persian image for anything unstable or restless. Giv uses it of his own luck.

Siavash bore a dark and royal sign: The black mark on the arm is the birthmark of the Kayanian kings, passed down from Kay Qobad. Recognition by a mark on the body is an old device of storytelling; the best-known example is the scar by which Odysseus’s nurse knows him.

B10.18Giv and Kay Khosrow Go to Siavash-Gard

Khosrow rides Giv’s horse to Siavash-Gard. Farangis urges secret flight and tells her son how to win Behzad, Siavash’s black horse, which has run wild on the mountain since Siavash released it to wait for his son.

And reached the walls where Siavash once stayed: Siavash-Gard, ‘Siavash’s city’, is the city the prince built in Turan. Medieval writers placed Siavash’s tomb at Bukhara, and one tradition names him as that city’s founder.

To Shabrang Behzad then Siavash said: Behzād means ‘well-born’. The horse who waits years for its master’s son belongs to a long Iranian tradition of heroic horses, of which Rakhsh is the most famous. Siavash’s parting words to it were spoken before his death (see B9).

B10.19Kay Khosrow Wins Behzad

Behzad recognizes Siavash’s saddle and lets Khosrow mount, then vanishes like the wind, and Giv fears a trick of Ahriman. Khosrow returns and reads his thoughts. Farangis opens a hidden treasury, and Giv chooses Siavash’s armor.

Through farr and Kayan burz you read so fine: Burz is stature or majesty, often paired with farr (see A4.1). The prince’s power to read Giv’s mind is the first sign of the near-sacred kingship Kay Khosrow will embody.

He chose Siavash’s jowshan, worn in life: Siavash’s armor will prove proof against water, fire and weapons (see B10.27). By taking it Giv becomes, in a sense, the dead prince’s champion as well as his son’s.

B10.20Kay Khosrow, Giv, and Farangis Flee to Iran

The three ride secretly for Iran. Piran learns of the flight and sends Kulbad and Nastihan with three hundred riders to kill Giv and bring back Khosrow. While mother and son sleep, Giv keeps armed watch.

Beneath the dust make Farangis disappear: Piran, who saved Farangis and her son from Afrasiab’s rage, now orders her death. His loyalties are torn, and Ferdowsi shows him acting from fear of his master rather than hatred. It is part of what makes him one of the poem’s most human figures.

B10.21Giv Puts Kulbad and Nastihan to Flight

Giv alone scatters Kulbad’s and Nastihan’s riders and returns to reassure Khosrow. Kulbad tells Piran that Giv shrugged off a thousand blows, and Piran scornfully accuses his captains of cowardice.

Piran grew angry. “Enough!” then he cried: Piran mocks his officers for making one rider into a mad elephant. Ferdowsi enjoys the irony: within two chapters Piran himself will be caught by Giv’s kamand and will make the same excuses to Afrasiab (B10.26).

B10.22Piran Pursues Kay Khosrow

Piran pursues with a thousand riders to the Gulzaryun river. Farangis, on watch, wakes the others. Khosrow wants to fight, but Giv refuses: champions are many and kings are few, so the prince must watch from the height.

For Pahlevans are many, kings are few: Giv’s reasoning is the ethic of the Iranian nobility in the Shahnameh: the Pahlevan serves, and the king must survive. Gudarz’s great clan will pay dearly for that loyalty in the wars that follow (B12–B13; II, C3).

That stream was Gulzaryun, its current dread: The Gulzaryun cannot be identified with a real river. It serves in the poem as a border stream of Turan.

B10.23The Contest of Piran and Giv

Across the river Piran and Giv exchange insults. Giv boasts of his deeds against Piran’s household and of his marriage to Rostam’s daughter, chosen over every prince, and his sister’s marriage to Rostam, and threatens Piran with death.

Faghfoor and Caesar and Chin’s Khan beside: Faghfūr is the Persian title for the emperor of China. It goes back to a Middle Iranian form meaning ‘son of God’, a translation of the Chinese ‘Son of Heaven’. Caesar (Qaysar) is the emperor of Rum. The list makes Rostam’s daughter the most sought-after bride in the world.

My sister too, the fair Shahr-Banu, wed / Great Rostam: The houses of Zal and Gudarz are bound by a double marriage: Giv married Rostam’s daughter, and Rostam married Giv’s sister. Such alliances between the great families, rather than the king, hold the Iranian side together in the Shahnameh.

Then Piran spoke a proverb of the deer: The exchange of insults before combat, known to scholars of epic as ‘flyting’, is found from Homer to the Norse sagas. Giv’s long boast, full of family pride and personal insult, is one of the finest examples in the Shahnameh.

B10.24Giv Captures Piran

Piran swims the river to attack. Giv feigns flight, then turns and catches him with his kamand, binds him, and routs the Turanians by carrying Piran’s banner across the river. Piran begs Khosrow for his life.

Then Giv turned down the slope and seemed to flee: The feigned retreat, drawing an enemy away from his support before turning on him, was the classic tactic of the horse archers of the steppe and of the Parthians, whose ‘Parthian shot’ became proverbial in English.

He seized Piran’s banner in his hand: Giv uses the captured standard to fool the Turanians into approaching. Banners in the Shahnameh are the eyes of an army. Where the flag goes, men follow, and a fallen banner means a lost field.

B10.25Farangis Wins Piran’s Release

Farangis pleads for Piran, who saved her and her son. Giv has sworn to shed his blood, so Khosrow has him pierce Piran’s ear. Piran is freed, his hands bound, on oath that only his wife Golshahr may untie them.

Pierce only Piran’s ear with khanjar-blade: A clever solution: the oath requires blood, and a pierced ear sheds it. The pierced ear may also carry a sting of humiliation, since in many ancient societies it marked a servant. The Hebrew Bible prescribes an awl through the ear for the slave who chooses to stay with his master.

And read the azarm joined with royal grace: Āzarm is a hard word to translate: gentleness, respect and a sense of shame together, the restraint a noble person shows. The young prince’s first act of judgment is an act of āzarm, mercy that still honors the oath.

B10.26Afrasiab Comes upon Piran

Afrasiab rides to the battlefield and hears that Giv alone routed his men. Piran arrives bound on his saddle and tells his story. Afrasiab drives him away and swears to kill Khosrow, Giv and Farangis.

While I alone stood firm and would not yield: Piran’s account improves on the facts: in B10.24 he chased Giv, was caught in his kamand, and his men were routed by a trick. It is the same excuse he mocked in Kulbad (B10.21). Ferdowsi lets it pass without comment.

I know not, nor why pure Mehr from us slides: Mehr means love and kindness, and also the sun. It is the Persian descendant of Mithra, the Iranian god of the covenant, and an oath-bound captive who invokes it is choosing his word with care.

B10.27Giv Confronts the Toll-Man

Afrasiab sends Houman ahead to the Jihun. At the river the toll-man demands Giv’s mail, his black horse, the woman or the prince’s crown as the fare. Giv scorns him and praises his impenetrable armor.

Your jowshan, or your horse of darkest hue: The toll-man asks for the four things that make the escape possible: Siavash’s armor, Siavash’s horse, Siavash’s widow and Siavash’s heir. The greedy ferryman is a small comic figure, but he names exactly what the quest has recovered.

B10.28Kay Khosrow Crosses the Jihun

Trusting his farr, Khosrow prays and rides Behzad into the flooded Jihun, and all three cross safely. The amazed ferryman follows with gifts, which Giv refuses. Houman persuades Afrasiab not to pursue into Iran.

When Fereydoon once crossed the Arvand’s tide: Arvand is the old Iranian name of the Tigris, which Fereydoon swam with his army in A5.6. The name survives in Arvand Rud, the Persian name of the Shatt al-Arab. Crossing the river without a boat is a test of true kingship: only one who has the farr can do it.

Gudarz stands close with Piltan Rostam near: Houman’s advice saves Afrasiab from folly, but it lets Khosrow reach Iran. The Turanian commanders are no fools. Houman and Piran are often wiser than their king, and they will be dangerous enemies in the wars ahead.

B10.29Kay Khosrow Reaches Isfahan

From Zam, Giv sends news to Gudarz and Kavus, and there is rejoicing throughout Iran. Banu-gashasp comes with Rostam’s gifts. Gudarz rides out to meet the prince, welcomes him to Isfahan, and feasts him for seven days.

When Khosrow and brave Giv reached Zam, mankind: Zam is probably Zamm, a medieval town and crossing-place on the middle Oxus, on the road from Merv towards Bukhara. If so, Ferdowsi places Khosrow’s landing at a real ferry point.

Toward Giv and Isfahan she took her way: In the Shahnameh, Isfahan is the seat of Gudarz’s family (B5.11); on the family’s possible Parthian roots, see B4.1.

B10.30Kay Khosrow Comes before Kavus

Kavus embraces his grandson. Khosrow describes his exile and how he played the fool before Afrasiab, then praises Giv’s deeds. Kavus rewards Giv with a charter to rich provinces and gives Farangis a golden residence.

If he spoke heads, I answered him with base: Khosrow recalls how, as a boy brought before Afrasiab, he gave senseless answers on Piran’s advice so that the king would think him simple and harmless (B9.60).

On parniyan a royal charter named: Parniyān is a fine painted silk. Royal grants in the Shahnameh are written on silk and sealed, much as Sasanian and later Persian charters were. Giv’s reward, Khorasan, Rey, Qum and Isfahan, is enormous, a measure of what the quest was worth.

B10.31Tus Refuses Allegiance to Kay Khosrow

At Keshvad’s palace in Istakhr the nobles hail Khosrow, but Tus refuses. Proud of his descent from Manuchehr, he calls Khosrow Afrasiab’s seed and backs Fariborz, son of Kavus. Giv argues with him and reports the refusal to Gudarz.

He held the koust and golden shoes of state: The kettledrums, the golden boots and the Kaviani banner (see A5.5) are the insignia of the sepahbod, the commander-in-chief, an office that belongs to Tus. By withholding them he withholds the army from the new king.

No king from Alborz would have had to rise: Giv reminds Tus of an old humiliation. When Nohzar died, his sons Tus and Gostaham were passed over for lack of farr, and in the end Iran had to fetch Kay Qobad from Mount Alborz (B2.4). The quarrel over Khosrow reopens that wound.

A king needs honar, gohar, din, and farr: Tus’s list of what a king needs, virtue, noble birth, true faith (dīn) and divine glory, is the Shahnameh’s own theory of kingship (on honar and gohar, see B10.6). Tus’s objection is to Khosrow’s gohar: half his blood is Turanian.

B10.32Gudarz’s Anger at Tus

Gudarz marches out with his sons and grandsons and twelve thousand horsemen, with Khosrow enthroned on an elephant. Tus musters his own men, but seeing the prince’s splendor and fearing civil war, he appeals to Kavus instead.

Whose farr, orung, and fortune sanction it: Orung (also awrang) is a throne, and more broadly royal splendor and authority. It sits naturally beside farr in the Shahnameh’s vocabulary of kingship.

Afrasiab would rejoice to see this day: Tus’s second thoughts are the Shahnameh’s political wisdom in a sentence: civil war among the Iranians is the enemy’s best weapon. It is to his credit that he sees it before a single arrow flies.

B10.33The Kingship Is Debated before Kavus

Before Kavus, Tus argues for Fariborz and Gudarz for Khosrow, and the two nearly come to blows. Kavus sets a test: whichever prince takes the Div-haunted fortress of Bahman near Ardabil will be king.

Let each lead troops to Ardabil and ride: Ardabil is a real city in Azerbaijan, in north-western Iran. Kavus’s solution is a trial of farr: the kingship will go to whichever prince heaven favors, and neither claimant can then complain of the king’s choice.

B10.34Bahman Castle Defies Tus and Fariborz

Tus leads the army with the Kaviani banner in Fariborz’s name. At Bahman the ground burns, armor becomes unbearably hot, and no gate can be found. After seven days they withdraw defeated.

When Sol in Leo rose and night withdrew: The sun is in Leo at the height of summer, the hottest weeks of the Persian year. The date suits a fortress whose ground is fire.

By Fariborz’s farr and Kayan might: Tus fights in Fariborz’s name, and fails. The magic castle is a test of farr, not of strength, and the true king has not yet come. Tus’s later career in the poem is a long run of such failures.

B10.35Kay Khosrow Captures Bahman Castle

Khosrow writes a letter in God’s name, and Giv plants it on the wall on a spear. The fortress splits in darkness and thunder, the Divs die under arrows, and Khosrow enters. He builds a domed fire-temple there, Azargashasp.

In Pahlavi with amber they began: Letters in the Shahnameh are written in ‘Pahlavi’, the script of the ancient kings, and often with musk or ambergris mixed into the ink. A king’s words were perfumed as well as sealed.

He raised Azargashasp’s enduring flame: Azargashasp (Adur Gushnasp) was one of the three great sacred fires of Sasanian Iran, the fire of kings and warriors. Its temple stood at Takht-e Soleyman in Azerbaijan, where impressive ruins remain, and Sasanian kings went there on pilgrimage. Pahlavi tradition too credits Kay Khosrow with its founding, after he destroyed a center of idol-worship in the region.

The famous letter vanished; in its stead: The castle falls not to siege but to a written word of God. Kay Khosrow’s first victory is a sacred one, and it marks him as the priest-king of the Shahnameh.

B10.36Kay Khosrow’s Triumphant Return

The chiefs flock to Khosrow. Fariborz enthrones and crowns him. Tus lays down the drums, golden boots and banner and asks pardon; Khosrow laughs, forgives him and restores his command. Kavus comes out joyfully to meet his grandson.

You did not wish a foreign Shah to be: Khosrow’s pardon is shrewd as well as generous: he reads Tus’s rebellion as loyalty to Iran rather than malice. The young king’s capacity to forgive is one of the qualities that make him the most admired ruler of the Shahnameh.

B10.37Kavus Sets Khosrow upon the Throne

Kavus seats Khosrow on his own throne, crowns him, and takes a lower seat. The nobles hail him as Shah and shower jewels. The poet reflects on the world’s giving and taking, and urges joy and generosity.

Then left the ivory throne and took a chair: Kavus crowns his grandson in his own lifetime and steps down to a lower seat. Voluntary abdication is rare in the Shahnameh. Kay Khosrow himself will in time leave his throne more strangely still (II, C4.60–C4.62).

This world will take with one hand, give with one: The book of vengeance ends with the poet’s usual reflection on fortune. It is well placed: Kay Khosrow’s reign, which opens here in joy, will be filled with the great wars against Afrasiab.