Notes · Book B13Mount Hamavan and the Kamus Campaign

B13.1The Prelude

The poet opens the new book with praise of a Creator who needs nothing and rules the stars, the elements and every human feeling. He then turns to Rostam, whose war with the mighty Kamus he now sets out to tell.

The ant’s small footprint witnesses His hand: The ant is the humblest witness in Persian poetry to God’s craftsmanship. The image goes back to the Qur’an’s sura of the Ant, where Solomon hears an ant speak. Ferdowsi opens a book about giants and armies of millions with the smallest creature he can find.

B13.2Khosrow’s Rebuke of Tus

The beaten army returns from the disastrous campaign against Forood. Kay Khosrow curses Tus for disobeying him, killing his brother and losing the war, and sends the chiefs away in disgrace. They beg Rostam to plead for them.

A thousand stakes to rise for all this stain: Impalement or hanging on the dār, the gallows-tree, was the standard punishment for treason in the Shahnameh, as it was in the real ancient Near East: Herodotus and the inscription of Darius at Bisotun both describe Persian kings impaling rebels. Khosrow’s threat is not rhetoric. Only his reverence for God holds his hand.

B13.3Khosrow Grants Pardon

Rostam pleads for Tus, blaming grief for his son and son-in-law and the fate fixed by heaven. Khosrow relents. Tus comes in shame, begs pardon and vows to wipe out the disgrace, renouncing crown and throne for his helmet.

Three hundred spells cannot delay that breath: Rostam’s defense of Tus is pure fatalism: the hour of death is written in the turning sky, and no one can hurry or delay it. The idea runs through the whole poem, and it gives Ferdowsi’s heroes both their courage and their melancholy.

B13.4Khosrow Dispatches Tus to Turan

Khosrow shames the chiefs for forgetting their vengeance, then honors Giv and gives Tus command again with the Kaviani standard. After consulting the stars, he sees the army off on its march to the river Shahd.

A bloody zunnar binds the mountain’s core: The zunnār was the belt that Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians were required to wear under Islamic law as a sign of their faith. In Persian poetry it became a symbol of unbelief, and later of a lover’s surrender. Here the image is purely visual: a band of blood around the mountain.

B13.5Piran’s Message to the Army of Iran

Piran, grieved by the new invasion, sends an envoy to Tus reminding him of his kindness to Farangis and Khosrow. Tus invites him to come over to the Shah and be rewarded. Piran promises, but only to gain time.

But now the nush-daru has turned to bane: On theriac (teryāk), see A8.10. Ferdowsi pairs the antidote with zahr, poison, again and again as the two faces of fortune.

B13.6Afrasiab Sends an Army to Piran

Piran secretly asks Afrasiab for troops. A huge army arrives within ten days, and Piran breaks his word and attacks at the river Shahd. The two armies clash in a bloody, undecided battle, and the poet reflects on death.

A sandarac-hued cloud obscured the sky: Sandarac (sandarus) is a resin that ranges from pale yellow to amber-red. The translation uses it for the color of dust clouds and of faces pale with fear or flushed with anger. It is one of Ferdowsi’s favorite color words.

B13.7Tus Slays Arzhang

The Turanian champion Arzhang, son of Zereh, challenges the Iranians. Tus rides out and kills him with one blow. Houman steadies the dismayed Turanians and advises single combat first and a massed attack the next day.

Arzhang am I, renowned in fight: Not to be confused with Arzhang Div, the Div commander of Mazandaran whom Rostam killed in the Seven Stages. The Shahnameh has several such repeated names, and this Arzhang, a Turanian warrior, appears only to die.

B13.8Tus and Houman Meet in Combat

Houman and Tus exchange insults and offers of peace, and Giv angrily urges an end to talk. The two commanders fight with gorz, sword and bow. Tus kills Houman’s horse, but night separates them before either wins.

From luckless Viseh’s root has grown: Viseh is the father of Piran, Houman and their brothers, the leading family of Turan. The Iranians insult the whole clan by its founder’s name, while Piran himself will be treated to the end with respect.

At Ladan’s field you saw what I could do: Houman taunts Giv with the Iranian defeat in the Forood campaign, where many of Gudarz’s sons and grandsons died. ‘Go mourn your brother’, a few lines later, points to Bahram, Giv’s brother, killed in that war by the Turanian Tazhav. The wound is still fresh.

Gripped the other’s belt with fingers firm and bold: Seizing an opponent by the belt to throw him from the saddle is the decisive move in many Shahnameh duels. It is the same move Rostam uses on Afrasiab and Sohrab uses on Rostam. Houman escapes only because his belt breaks.

B13.9The Second Battle of Iran and Turan

At dawn both armies deploy. Houman orders a close-quarters charge, while Tus and Gudarz, greatly outnumbered, put their trust in God. The chiefs are paired off in single combats, and Tus leads his footmen forward.

Then man with man was chosen for the field: The pairing of champions against each other looks forward to one of the great set-pieces of the poem: the battle of the Twelve Rokhs (II, C3), when Gudarz and Piran agree to settle a war by a series of paired single combats. Here the pattern is sketched but not completed.

B13.10The Turanians Use Sorcery

The sorcerer Bazoor calls down snow and bitter cold from a mountaintop, and the frozen Iranians are slaughtered. The chiefs pray, and a sage shows Rohham the sorcerer; Rohham cuts off his hand and the storm clears. Still the Iranians are routed.

Amid the tumult and zamehrir’s blast: Zamharir is an Arabic word for piercing cold. The Qur’an uses it for the cold the blessed will never feel in Paradise, and later tradition made it a freezing region of hell. A Muslim audience would have heard the damnation in it.

Among Turan stood Bazoor, known by name: The Turks of Central Asia were famous among medieval Muslim writers for weather magic: their shamans were said to raise rain, snow and storms with a special ‘rain-stone’. Ferdowsi’s sorcerer who freezes an army probably draws on that reputation.

B13.11The Retreat to Mount Hamavan

The Turanians celebrate through the night while the Iranians tend their wounded and mourn. Gudarz grieves for his slain sons and grandsons, and Tus curses his fate. They bury the dead, send word to Khosrow and march for Mount Hamavan.

With fire they seared the wounds their comrades bore: Cautery with hot iron was the standard way of stopping bleeding in medieval surgery, Islamic and European alike. It is a rare glimpse of the field hospital in the poem.

Seek Hamavan, its strong and guarded height: Mount Hamavan cannot be identified with any certainty. In the story it stands somewhere in Turanian territory, beyond the Iranian frontier. The whole of this book takes its name from the siege on its slopes.

B13.12The Turanians Besiege Hamavan

The Iranians march for three days without food and occupy Hamavan. Piran urges caution until reinforcements come, but Houman insists on pursuit. Scouts find the Iranians entrenched on the mountain, and Houman taunts them before summoning Piran’s whole army.

If Kaveh’s Kaviani standard falls: Piran knows that the Kaviani standard is the heart of the Iranian army: if it falls, the army breaks. Real battles were lost this way. The Sasanian standard itself was captured at Qadisiyya (see A5.5).

B13.13Piran’s March to Mount Hamavan

Piran reaches Hamavan and taunts Tus for hiding like a mountain sheep. Tus blames him for Siavash’s death and warns that Rostam is coming. Piran surrounds the mountain and decides to starve the Iranians into asking for quarter.

Your oath destroyed Siavash in Turan’s land: Tus’s charge is unjust but not baseless. Piran did swear to protect Siavash and brought him to Turan, but he was far away when Afrasiab had him killed, and he later saved Farangis and the unborn Khosrow. The Iranians never quite forgive him for having sheltered Siavash in Turan.

They will seek zanhar and turn from the fray: Zanhār is quarter: the plea for mercy and the safe conduct granted in return. Piran’s strategy is siege, not assault, and it is a sound one. The Iranians have only three days’ food (B13.14).

B13.14The Iranians Make a Night-Attack, Tus, Giv, Rohham Are Surrounded but Are Saved

Short of food, Gudarz urges a night attack. Tus, Giv and Rohham strike Piran’s camp and split his standard, but Houman surrounds them. Bijan and Gostaham ride to the rescue, and at dawn the Iranians withdraw to the mountain.

His rein grew light; the stirrup heavy lay: ‘Light rein, heavy stirrup’ is Ferdowsi’s standard formula for the charge: the rider gives the horse its head and stands hard in the stirrups. Here it marks the moment Tus, rescued, turns from defense to attack.

B13.15Khosrow Learns of His Army’s Plight

News of the defeat reaches Khosrow, who summons Rostam, praises his past deeds and begs his help. Rostam agrees at once. The Shah opens his treasury and orders thirty thousand men, with Fariborz leading the van.

The Shah knows well that since Qobad first wore: Rostam’s career began when he brought Kay Qobad down from Mount Alborz to be crowned, the first king of the Kayanian line. He has served four kings since. His speech is the complaint of an old soldier who has never had a day off.

With Gorgin, son of Milad, at your side: Gorgin is one of the Iranian chiefs whom readers learn to distrust. In the story of Bijan and Manijeh (II, C2.4) his jealousy will lead him to betray Bijan to the Turanians.

B13.16Fariborz Asks for Farangis’s Hand

Fariborz, Kavus’s son, asks Rostam to win him Siavash’s widow Farangis. Rostam persuades Khosrow, who asks his mother. She weeps but consents out of respect for Rostam and the Shah, and the marriage is made before the army marches.

It is most fitting I should wed his wife: Fariborz is Siavash’s half-brother, so the marriage makes him both uncle and stepfather to the Shah. Marriage to a dead brother’s widow was an accepted custom in many ancient societies, and Ferdowsi presents it as fitting. Farangis’s tears show what it costs her.

Yet I cannot urge this, as you know well: Khosrow will not propose a husband to his own mother; a son cannot decently do so. Rostam, the family’s foster-father and oldest friend, is the proper go-between. The scene is a small study in court manners.

B13.17Tus Sees Siavash in a Dream

Siavash appears to Tus in a dream, enthroned in light, promising victory and telling him not to grieve for Gudarz’s sons, who now drink with him in a rose-garden. Piran holds back his army, preferring starvation to battle. Tus resolves to fight.

For here a fresh rose-garden now is made: The dead Siavash, enthroned in light, speaks from a paradise where the fallen sons of Gudarz feast with him. Siavash is the poem’s great innocent martyr, and his death is the cause of this whole war. It is fitting that he appears to comfort the men who died avenging him.

B13.18Afrasiab Sends Aid to Piran

A messenger announces that Afrasiab has sent a vast allied army: the Khan of Chin, Manshur, Kamus of Kashan and kings from Kashmir to the Slav lands. Piran rejoices and boasts that he will lay waste all Iran.

Then comes Kamus, the swordsman none can beat: This Kashan is not the city in central Iran but a land beyond the Oxus, identified by some with Kasan in the Fergana valley and by others with Kushaniya near Samarkand. Kamus of Kashan is the great enemy champion of this book, and Ferdowsi builds him up with care before his fall.

First comes the Khan of Chin with crown and throne: The Khan is the khāqān, the title of the supreme ruler of the Turks. The Shahnameh’s Chin is not so much China as the vague, fabulous East beyond Turan. Its ruler appears here as a young and splendid king, with Chinese silks as his luxury.

Behead the captives, set their flesh aflare: The gentle, hesitant Piran shows another face once he thinks victory is certain. His boast of burning bodies and scattering the ashes is especially savage in Iranian terms, since fire must not be polluted by corpses. Ferdowsi lets pride speak just before a fall.

B13.19The Coming of the Khan of Chin

Piran rides to the allied camp, dazzled by its silken splendor, and kisses the ground before the Khan. The Khan honors him and asks about the Iranians. Piran scorns them as a beaten remnant, and the Khan calls for wine.

Of diba and parniyan richly sewn: Dibā is brocade and parniyān a fine painted or patterned silk. Both were luxury textiles of the Silk Road, and both words passed into Arabic. The Khan’s camp is a display of wealth, and the Iranians will hope to take it as spoil (B13.24).

Iran’s men have no signet, crown, or throne: Piran’s scornful account of the Iranians will come back to haunt him. The Khan, seeing them for himself, will say that Piran misled him (B13.22), and after the death of Ashkabus he will accuse him outright (B13.28).

B13.20The Iranians Debate Their Course

Tus and Gudarz fear that the enemy’s pause means fresh troops and certain ruin. Giv answers that God has not abandoned them and fate cannot be avoided, and he proposes to dig a trench and wait two days for news.

No ossuary or grave shall be our bed: On the ossuary (astōdān), see B1.9. The fear of dying unburied, trampled by enemy horses, is as old as the Iliad.

Let us construct a trench before our line: The Persian kandak, trench, passed into Arabic as khandaq. Tradition says that at the Battle of the Trench (627) the Muslims defended Medina with a ditch dug on the advice of Salman the Persian, who knew it as an Iranian technique.

B13.21Gudarz Hears of Rostam’s Coming

The lookout reports a great new Turanian army, and Gudarz despairs. Then the watchman sees banners approaching from Iran. Tus plans a desperate night attack, but news that the Shah’s relief army is near turns the camp to joy.

Saddle my steed; let brick now be my bed: On the brick pillow, see B8.21. Gudarz means to ride out and die. He has lost most of his descendants in this war, and his laments are some of the most moving passages in the book.

The third, a dragon with a lion’s head: Each great hero of the Shahnameh has his own banner device, and a watchman can tell the chiefs apart from afar by them. Rostam’s is the dragon, and it announces him here before he is named (see B13.26 and B13.27).

B13.22The Khan Surveys the Iranian Army

The Khan rides out on his elephants to view the Iranians and admires their courage, rebuking Piran for belittling them. Piran proposes resting and fighting in relays, but Kamus demands an all-out attack and the invasion of Iran, and the Khan agrees.

Who hides a pit beneath the thorny ground / May drive his own horse in and tumble down: The proverb is common to many cultures: ‘Whoever digs a pit will fall into it’ (Proverbs 26:27), in Persian chāh-kan tah-e chāh ast. The Khan applies it to Piran’s false reports. It will soon apply to Kamus.

B13.23Fariborz Reaches Mount Hamavan

Fariborz’s vanguard arrives. Gudarz rides to meet him, and the two embrace and weep for the dead. Gudarz describes the vast enemy army. Fariborz says Rostam is close behind and has ordered them to hold their ground.

Are one black hair upon a white bull’s flank: A single hair of the wrong color on an ox’s hide is a Persian image for a tiny minority. Gudarz uses it to measure the few Iranians against the many allied troops.

B13.24Piran Consults the Khan of Chin

Kamus scorns Piran’s five months of failure and boasts that he will kill Rostam. The Khan backs him. Piran is relieved to hear that the new arrival is only Fariborz. Tus rouses his men with Rostam’s coming, but they urge him to wait for Rostam.

Your caution locked the gate; we bring the key: Kamus’s scorn for Piran is the scorn of the new ally for the old one, and it is not entirely unjust: Piran has fought for five months without result. But Kamus’s next boast, that he will kill Rostam first, is the one the poem is waiting to punish.

B13.25Giv and Tus Battle Kamus

Kamus leads his army to Hamavan and challenges the Iranians. Giv shoots at him and is wounded by his spear. Tus comes to help, but Kamus kills his horse. The two Iranians fight him on foot until nightfall.

As scribes trim reeds for pens and cut them through: The Persian pen (qalam) is cut from a reed, and trimming it with a knife was the first skill of every scribe. Ferdowsi, a man of the pen himself, turns the scribe’s neat stroke into an image of Kamus shearing a spear.

Against a single foe, two warriors go: Two famous Iranian chiefs together cannot overcome Kamus. The scene is Ferdowsi’s preparation for Rostam: the enemy champion must be shown to be too much for everyone else before the hero arrives.

B13.26The Coming of Rostam

Rostam arrives by night. Gudarz and the chiefs weep as they tell him of the slain and describe the huge enemy army and the fearsome Kamus. Rostam mourns, reflects on the fickleness of the world and vows vengeance.

The dragon-standard glowed in fading light: Rostam’s banner bears a dragon, and in this book it is the sign that he has come (see B13.21 and B13.27). The dragon on the flag was an Iranian military emblem long before Ferdowsi. Roman writers describe Parthian and Sasanian cavalry riding under dragon standards.

Nimruz’s forces camped behind their lord: Nimruz, the old name for Sistan (A7.5), survives in Nimruz province in south-western Afghanistan.

B13.27Iran and Turan Set Their Battle Lines

Houman spots Rostam’s dragon banner and warns Piran, but Kamus scoffs. The allied army deploys around the Khan’s elephants. Rostam views the vast enemy from the mountain, marvels, and orders the Iranian advance, sparing the exhausted Rakhsh.

And bit the moon’s pale lips until they bled: One of Ferdowsi’s most violent dawns: the sun seizes night by the hair and bites the moon’s lips until they bleed, the red of sunrise. His openings of day are small poems in themselves, and no two are the same.

I did not wait; Rakhsh made three stages one: Rostam has driven Rakhsh so hard that the horse is worn out. This detail explains the next chapter, where Rostam fights Ashkabus on foot. Ferdowsi is careful with such causes.

From Kashan, Shakn, and Wahr their armies came: The catalogue of nations belongs to an old epic tradition: Homer’s catalogue of ships and Herodotus’s list of the peoples in Xerxes’ army are the best-known examples. Its effect is the same here: the whole world seems to be marching against a small band on a mountain.

B13.28Rostam Battles Ashkabus

Ashkabus of Kashan beats Rohham in single combat. Rostam comes out on foot, mocks him and shoots his horse, then kills him with one arrow through the chest. The Khan, seeing the huge arrow, accuses Piran of hiding the enemy’s strength.

My mother named me death to men like you: Among the best-known couplets of the Shahnameh: marā mādaram nām-e marg-e to kard / zamāne marā potk-e targ-e to kard, ‘My mother named me your death; Time made me the hammer for your helmet.’ Rostam refuses to give his name and gives a death sentence instead. Iranian schoolchildren still learn the lines.

And set his thumbstall to the deer-hide strand: The thumbstall or thumb-ring (angoshtvāne) protected the thumb that drew the string in the Asian draw, used from the steppe to Iran. Ferdowsi’s slow description of the shot, from choosing the arrow to the loose, is one of the finest pieces of archery in any poem.

Qazā cried, “Take!” and Qadar answered, “Give!”: Another famous couplet: qazā goft gir o qadar goft deh / falak goft ahsant o mah goft zeh. Qazā and qadar are the Arabic terms for divine decree and destiny, and the heavens and the moon join in the applause. Zeh is a pun: it is both ‘bravo!’ and ‘bowstring’.

Tus sent me forth on foot for one design: Rostam is on foot because Rakhsh is worn out (B13.27), but he turns necessity into a joke: he has come to take Ashkabus’s horse. The mockery before the kill is part of the scene’s appeal, and Ferdowsi gives Rostam the last laugh.

B13.29Piran Reckons with Rostam’s Coming

Piran insists that the unknown archer cannot be Rostam, who never fights on foot, and describes Rostam’s strength, arms, tiger-skin and horse. Kamus, far from afraid, swears by God not to rest until he has avenged Ashkabus.

The Sagzi, whose might you have long proclaimed: Sagzi, ‘man of Sistan’, comes from the name of the Sakas, the Scythian people who settled Sistan (Sakastan) in antiquity. In enemy mouths the word is often a sneer: Rostam’s foes call him ‘the Sagzi’ as if he were a mere provincial.

Ten sitir weighs each shaft and pikan wrought: The sitir (estir) was a unit of weight, probably from the Greek stater. The pikān is the arrowhead. The point is that Rostam’s arrows are as heavy as other men’s gorz.

B13.30Iran and Turan Prepare for Battle

The allied kings hold a war council by night and resolve on an all-out attack, the Khan refusing further delay. Rostam encourages the Iranians, promises spoils, and arms himself in mail, jowshan, Babr-e Bayan and helmet before mounting Rakhsh.

Today I shoe brave Rakhsh and ride to fight: Rakhsh has rested and been reshod since his forced march (B13.27). Rostam will fight on horseback today.

Beneath, a jowshan on his body lay: The arming of the hero is a set-piece as old as Homer. Rostam's layers run from the jowshan, a coat of plates or scales, to the Babr-e Bayan over everything, and the helm last. Such layering matches what we know of Sasanian heavy cavalry.

B13.31Kamus Slays Alva

The armies deploy, and Kamus rides out with his ox-headed gorz to challenge ‘the footman’. No Iranian chief will face him. Only Alva, Rostam’s spear-bearer, rides out, and Kamus unseats him with one thrust and tramples him to death.

He bore an ox-head gorz within his hand: The ox-headed gorz is usually the weapon of Fereydoon and the Iranian heroes (see A5.2). In the hand of an enemy champion it is a sign of how great a warrior Kamus is taken to be.

Alva, by name, stepped forward, not afraid: Alva is Rostam’s squire and spear-bearer, trained by the hero himself. His death is what finally brings Rostam into the fight. The pattern of the beloved companion killed before the hero takes revenge is familiar from Patroclus in the Iliad.

What did that eloquent old sage advise: Ferdowsi breaks into the battle to quote an ‘eloquent old sage’, the voice of wisdom he so often cites. The warning against setting a brook against the ocean is aimed at Alva, but it applies just as much to Kamus.

B13.32Rostam Slays Kamus

Rostam comes out with his kamand to avenge Alva. Kamus mocks it as a thread and slashes Rakhsh’s armor, but Rostam snares him with the kamand, drags him from the saddle and carries him bound to the Iranian lines, where the warriors hack him to pieces.

Though sixty coils around your arm are spread: Rostam’s kamand here has sixty coils. The enemy caught in the kamand is Rostam’s trademark victory, and a real steppe technique. Kamus’s joke about a ‘thread’ is his last boast.

Their swords cut flesh; blood drenched the stones and plain: Kamus is given no warrior’s death. Rostam throws him down, and the army hacks the bound man to pieces. Ferdowsi turns at once to reflection on pride and time. The great boaster of the book ends as a lesson.