Notes · Book B11Kay Khosrow’s Kingship

B11.1The Prelude

The poet turns to Kay Khosrow’s reign and pauses to weigh what makes a man great: high birth, native worth and hard-won skill, crowned by wisdom. Kay Khosrow, he says, possessed all four.

High birth, brave deeds, and worth of one degree: Ferdowsi’s classic analysis of human excellence. The three qualities are nezhād (lineage), honar (skill or accomplishment, won by effort) and gohar (inborn nature, literally ‘jewel’ or ‘essence’). The fourth is wisdom, kherad, which alone lets a man use the other three well (on kherad, see A0.1). Ferdowsi returns to this scheme whenever he weighs a hero or a king.

When all four virtues join, the heart finds peace: Ferdowsi pauses to set out a scheme he will use for the whole book: high birth (gohar), achievement won by toil (honar), the native worth that Yazdan's farr makes plain, and, crowning them, wisdom. The four rarely meet in one man. The book that follows (B12) is largely a demonstration of what happens when they do not — Tus has the birth and the prowess and not the wisdom.

B11.2Iran’s Nobles Honor Kay Khosrow

The new Shah restores justice and prosperity and summons his great men. Rostam and Zal come from Nimruz with the chiefs of Kabul. Kay Khosrow weeps to see the man who raised his father, and Rostam sees Siavash in the young king’s face.

The spring rains fell and washed the wounded plain: Nature answers the just king. In Iranian thought a ruler who has the farr brings rain, harvests and health to the land, while an unjust one brings drought and dearth. The idea goes back to the Avesta and runs through Persian advice literature. Here the land greets Kay Khosrow’s justice with spring.

For Rostam reared my father in his youth: Rostam took the boy Siavash to Zabulistan and brought him up as a warrior. Princes were often fostered like this in the households of great nobles. The bond makes Rostam Kay Khosrow’s kinsman in all but blood, and it is why Siavash’s murder was Rostam’s personal grief.

As ney-e sarghin joined the koust’s tide: The ney-e sarghin is usually taken to be a horn, or a pipe made of horn. The same instruments sound for a welcome and for a battle.

B11.3Kay Khosrow Surveys His Kingdom

Kay Khosrow tours his kingdom with Rostam and the nobles, hunting, rebuilding ruined towns and scattering gold. He prays at the fire temple of Azargashasp in Azar Abadagan and then joins his grandfather Kavus.

And reached Azargashasp, the fire’s abode: On Azargashasp, see A7.4. In the Shahnameh the fire is Kay Khosrow’s own foundation, set up after he took the fortress of Bahman (B10.35), and Sasanian kings are said to have visited its temple after their accession.

With dirhams freely drawn from royal hoard: The silver dirham and the gold dinar are the coins of Ferdowsi’s own Islamic world. Their names come from the Greek drachma and the Roman denarius. Ferdowsi gives his ancient kings the money of his day without a second thought.

B11.4The Vow of Vengeance against Afrasiab

Kavus urges Kay Khosrow to swear vengeance on Afrasiab and to refuse every plea, even that of kinship. Khosrow swears before the sacred fire; the oath is written down and entrusted to Rostam. After a week of feasting he prays all night and calls his chiefs to war.

Regard no mother’s kinship on his side: Afrasiab is Kay Khosrow’s grandfather: Farangis, his mother, is Afrasiab’s daughter. Kavus fears that blood will weaken the young king’s resolve, so he makes him swear it away. The vengeance war that fills the rest of this volume and much of the next is a war between a grandson and his grandfather.

In Pahlavi they wrote the oath by hand: The oath becomes a legal document, written in musk in the ‘Pahlavi’ of the old kings and lodged with Rostam as a pledge (zanhār). Ferdowsi likes such touches of chancery practice; compare Zahhak’s signed testimonial (A5.5). This time the document binds the king himself.

He faced the sacred flame in holy fear: Swearing before fire is an old Iranian practice. In Zoroastrian tradition fire is the witness of truth, and the ordeal by fire was the ultimate test of an oath. Siavash, earlier in this volume, proved his innocence by riding through a mountain of flame.

B11.5The Mustering of the Pahlevans

When the sun enters Virgo, Kay Khosrow has a new army register drawn up, clan by clan: the kin of Kavus under Fariborz, Nohzar’s line, the sons of Gudarz and the other great houses. He orders the army out to the plain to await the new month.

Then ordered a new register for all: The army roll was a real institution. Sasanian and early Islamic states kept a register (dīvān) of every soldier entitled to pay, and the rozi-dehan, ‘givers of the daily ration’, are its paymasters. Ferdowsi’s list of clans, each with its leader and its numbers, reads like a page from such a register.

Then eighty scions sprang from Nohzar’s line: Nohzar, son of Manuchehr, was the Pishdadian king killed by Afrasiab. His descendants, Tus and his kin, still carry royal blood and its privileges, including the golden shoes (see B12.2). That descent explains Tus’s pride, and it will save his life (B12.20).

Then Gudarz, son of Keshvad, came to stand: The house of Gudarz is the backbone of Iran’s army; on its possible Parthian roots, see B4.1.

B11.6Kay Khosrow Honors the Pahlevans

Kay Khosrow opens his treasury and sets prizes for feats of war: Palashan’s head, Tazhav’s crown, the capture of Tazhav’s companion Espanoye, Tazhav’s head, the burning of Afrasiab’s timber barrier and an embassy to Afrasiab. Bijan, Giv and Gorgin claim them.

For wealth exists for men to give away: Open-handed giving is a king’s first duty in the Shahnameh, as it was at real Persian and Turkish courts, where a ruler’s treasury bought his warriors’ loyalty. Kay Khosrow’s speech states the ideal. Ferdowsi, who complained that his own patron rewarded him poorly (see A0.7), may have written it with some feeling.

Then Bijan, son of Giv, sprang to his feet: The prize-giving is a scene of pledges, and the rest of this volume pays them off one by one. Bijan kills Palashan (B12.14) and seizes Tazhav’s crown and Espanoye (B12.17). Giv burns the barrier (B12.15) and takes Tazhav’s head (B12.25). Gorgin’s embassy is not heard of again in this book.

Her name is Espanoye, moon-faced and bright: Espanoye is one of the many named women who appear only briefly in the war stories. Her portrait uses the stock beauties of Persian verse: the cypress stature, the reed-thin waist, the pheasant’s gait, the musky hair. The king’s order that she be taken alive and unharmed is a small courtesy in a brutal campaign.

B11.7Rostam Is Sent to the Land of Hind

Rostam asks Kay Khosrow to win back a border province once held by Tur, which now pays tribute to Turan. The Shah agrees and gives the task, with a strong army, to Rostam’s son Faramarz.

Once held by Tur before Manuchehr’s reign: Tur, son of Fereydoon, is the ancestor of the Turanians, and Manuchehr is the king who avenged Iraj on him (Book A). Iranian legend used that ancient division of the world to explain every later frontier. Each border quarrel between Iran and Turan replays the quarrel of Fereydoon’s sons.

Through Faramarz the venture shall succeed: Faramarz is a shadowy figure in the Shahnameh, but he became the hero of his own later epic, the Faramarz-nameh, one of several poems that extended the saga of Rostam’s family. Its adventures, like the task given him here, lie in India.

B11.8Kay Khosrow Inspects the Army

Kay Khosrow reviews the army from a throne on an elephant. Clan after clan passes under its banner: Fariborz, Gudarz and his sons, Gostaham, Ashkash, Farhad, Guraza, Zangeh and Faramarz, whom the Shah sends to Hind with counsel. At the feast Khosrow reflects on the passing world.

He struck the mohreh in the royal cup: Striking a mohre (a bead or ball) in a cup seems to have been the signal for an army to move, and the phrase is used in the Shahnameh for setting out.

A wolf displayed upon its folds of flame: The review is a parade of heraldry: each great house flies its own animal, sun or moon. The devices help Ferdowsi keep his many warriors distinct, and Tokhvar will read them again from the mountain (B12.4), though not always the same way. Sasanian nobles are thought to have used personal emblems, which survive on their seals.

Where now are Salm and Tur and Fereydoon: On the ‘where are they now?’ lament, see B9.40. Kay Khosrow’s turn from war plans to wine and the shortness of life anticipates the quatrains later attached to Omar Khayyam.