Notes · Book B14The Great Battle with the Khan of Chin

B14.1The Khan Learns Kamus Is Slain

After a short invocation, news of Kamus’s death stuns the Turanian camp. Houman despairs, Piran urges the Khan of Chin to find out who the terrible warrior is, and the Khan vows to bring him down with his own kamand.

The dehqan’s treasured record from his store: Ferdowsi often opens a new stretch of story by crediting the dehqan, one of the old landed gentry who kept the memory of Iran’s past (see A0.8). The formula presents what follows as inherited history, not invention.

Soon word reached Chin’s Khan: “Kamus is dead: This book completes the long episode that Persian tradition calls the story of Kamus of Kashan; it ends only with the last lines of the volume (B14.28). The Khan (khāqān) leads a coalition of Central Asian and Indian kings summoned by Afrasiab.

My kamand’s coils shall bring him to the ground: The boast carries its own irony: it is Rostam’s kamand, not the Khan’s, that will pull the Khan from his white elephant (B14.14). Ferdowsi likes to let a boaster name the manner of his own undoing.

B14.2Chingish Faces Rostam

Chingish volunteers to avenge Kamus and rides out shooting arrows at Rostam. Seeing the hero and Rakhsh, he loses heart and flees; Rostam catches his horse by the tail, throws him down, ignores his plea for mercy and beheads him.

Then Rostam seized the tail of Chingish’s steed: The archer who fought from a distance is stopped by a bare hand. Catching a galloping horse by the tail is a feat of pure strength, and a humiliation too, since Chingish is taken from behind as he runs away. His cry for zanhar, quarter, comes too late.

B14.3Houman Bears the Khan’s Message

Houman, in disguise, asks Rostam his name. Rostam will not give it, but names his terms: the surrender of all who are guilty of Siavash’s blood, from Garsivaz to the sons of Viseh. Shaken, Houman gives a false name and learns that Rostam wants to see Piran.

And changed his helmet, on his purpose bent: Each man asks the other’s name and neither gives the true one; Houman even invents one, ‘Kuh’. In the Shahnameh a name is a weapon, and a hero who reveals it gives something away. Sohrab died partly because Rostam refused to tell him who he was.

The mighty men who spring from Viseh’s race: Viseh is the father of Piran and his brothers Houman, Lahhak and Farshidvard, the leading noble house of Turan. Their feud with the house of Gudarz is one of the long threads of the poem. There is a sharp irony here: Houman, in disguise, hears himself named among the guilty.

Do not drive water uphill from below: A proverbial phrase for attempting the impossible or twisting the matter. Rostam cuts short the questions of a visitor whose purpose he may already have guessed.

B14.4Piran Consults Houman and the Khan

Houman reports that the warrior is Rostam and that he asks for Piran. The dismayed Piran tells the Khan, who scoffs that Rostam is only flesh and blood and that the allies outnumber Iran three hundredfold. Piran should go, offer gifts and return.

This lion-heart is Rostam, Zabul’s son: Rostam has only just joined this war, sent by Kay Khosrow to rescue Tus’s beaten army, trapped on Mount Hamavan. For the Turanians, the discovery that the nameless kamand-thrower is Rostam changes everything, and Ferdowsi lets the name travel from mouth to mouth like a tremor.

And like a father Siavash he reared: Rostam raised the young Siavash in Zabulistan, since Iranian princes were often brought up in a great noble house. The bond makes his vengeance personal. Piran, who later gave Siavash a home in Turan, was the prince’s other ‘father’, and the two foster-fathers are about to meet across the battlefield.

Our shafts and zhupin still shall pierce his bone: The zhūpīn is a short spear or javelin made for throwing, a lighter weapon than the lance.

B14.5Piran Comes before Rostam

Rostam names himself to Piran and brings greetings from Kay Khosrow and Farangis. Piran pours out his grief for Siavash and his divided loyalties, and pleads for peace. Rostam demands the guilty men or Piran’s defection; Piran secretly chooses war.

A garden tree I planted; from its root / Came leaves of blood and colocynth for fruit: Piran’s tree is Siavash, whom he sheltered and married to his daughter Jarireh; its bitter fruit is the prince’s murder and this war. On colocynth, see B8.22.

Had I no grief except for Pilsam slain: Pilsam, Piran’s brother, fell to Rostam in the first war of vengeance for Siavash. Piran is pleading with the man who killed his brother, which gives his courtesy its edge.

Between two kings and realms I stand in pain: Piran is the Shahnameh’s great divided man. He serves a king he knows to be unjust and has shown kindness to the enemy’s prince, and neither side fully trusts him. Ferdowsi never quite settles whether he is sincere or cunning, and the Iranians argue the point in B14.7. He will die at the hands of Gudarz in II, C3.39.

B14.6Turan’s Counsel before Battle

Piran warns his kinsmen and the Khan that Rostam has come for vengeance, while the kin of Kamus and Chingish swear to burn Sistan. Shangul, king of Hind, mocks the fear of ‘one Sagzi’ and promises to lead the attack. Houman foresees disaster.

Because one Sagzi now has drawn so near: On Sagzī, see B13.29. Rostam takes the word as the insult it is (B14.11).

Then Shangul said, “Exalted one, why speak: A king of India named Shangul appears again in the reign of the Sasanian Bahram Gur (III, D10.26–D10.36), who marries his daughter. The name seems to have served Ferdowsi or his sources as the standard name for an Indian ruler.

There bloody tulips bloomed on saffron cheeks: Tears of blood on cheeks turned saffron-yellow by grief: the pairing is a stock image of Persian verse. Weeping blood is the poem’s measure of extreme sorrow. Yellow is the color of fear and sickness, as red is the color of health and joy.

B14.7Rostam Exhorts the Troops

In council, Rostam says Piran has been kind to Siavash and the Shah, and if he hands over the guilty the war can end. Gudarz, bitter over his slain sons, calls Piran a double-hearted deceiver. Rostam resolves to hope but prepare, and promises the enemy’s treasures to his warriors.

I saw in dreams how Afrasiab would fall, / Slain by Kay Khosrow: Rostam’s dream foretells the end of the long war of vengeance, which comes in II, C4.44, when Kay Khosrow kills his grandfather Afrasiab with his own hand. Rostam’s other foreboding, that Piran will be among the first to fall, also comes true. Ferdowsi rarely lets his audience forget where the story is heading.

Bahram; behold what Piran’s guile has done: Gudarz’s son Bahram was killed earlier in this war, after riding back alone to the battlefield for a lost whip. Gudarz had already lost many sons in an earlier defeat by the Turanians. His hatred of Piran and the house of Viseh is the hatred of a father counting graves.

At dawn I grip great Sahm’s renowned gorz fast: Rostam fights with the ox-headed gorz of his grandfather Sahm. The heirloom ties him to his family’s earlier deeds, and the weapon’s shape looks back to Fereydoon’s gorz-e gāvsar (A5.2).

B14.8The Battle Lines Are Drawn

At dawn both armies deploy: Gudarz, Fariborz and Tus face the Khan’s elephants, Kundur and Gahar. Piran reminds Shangul of his boast, and Shangul stands by it. The allied army advances in three divisions, its jeweled line of elephants stretching two mil across the plain.

Chin diba hung from elephants arrayed: Dībā is silk brocade, and the brocade of Chin was the luxury textile par excellence. The whole description is a picture of wealth waiting to be seized, and Rostam has already promised it to his men (B14.7).

B14.9Rostam Rebukes Piran

Shangul rides out under an Indian parasol, and Piran takes heart, telling Houman to stay out of Rostam’s sight. Piran tells Rostam his terms were refused. Rostam denounces his treachery, and Piran, promising to reconsider, returns to his lines still bent on war.

A parasol from Hind rose to the sky: The royal parasol (Sanskrit chattra) was an emblem of kingship in India and across Buddhist Asia. Ferdowsi marks Shangul as an Indian king by it.

He sought the center, black of heart, his tongue / All lies: Here the narrator himself calls Piran a liar, siding with Gudarz (B14.7). Elsewhere Ferdowsi paints him as the most humane man in Turan. The two portraits are never reconciled, and that is much of Piran’s fascination.

But boar and leopard skins you choose to wear: Rostam contrasts a Turan of rough skins with an Iran of silks. The contrast echoes the old opposition between settled Iran and the steppe, which the Shahnameh turns into Iran and Turan, although both peoples descend from Fereydoon.

B14.10Battle Is Joined

Rostam tells his army of an astrologer’s prophecy of a great battle between two mountains. He urges them to fight for a lasting name, not for this passing world. The armies clash in a storm of arrows and gorz, and old Gudarz declares he has never seen such slaughter.

To die with my good name is well for me; / I seek that name; my flesh death’s own shall be: One of the best-known couplets of the Shahnameh: be nām-e nekū gar bemiram ravāst / marā nām bāyad ke tan marg-rāst, ‘If I die with a good name, it is well: I must have a name, for the body belongs to death.’ It sums up the heroic ethic of the whole poem and is endlessly quoted.

Their hearts to this frail inn of humankind: One of Ferdowsi’s favorite images of transience is the world as a passing inn (sarāy-e sepanjī) where travelers stop and move on. Later poets inherited it, and FitzGerald’s Omar Khayyam made the ‘battered Caravanserai’ famous in English.

The reader of the stars once said to me: Astrologers are consulted at every turning point of the poem, and their forecasts never fail. The ‘two mountains’ are the heights between which the armies now stand (see B14.17).

B14.11Rostam Puts Shangul to Flight

Shangul challenges ‘the Sagzi’. Rostam, stung, unhorses him with one spear-thrust, but his men carry him off unhurt. Shangul warns that no one can face Rostam alone, so the Khan orders a mass attack, and Rostam cuts through Chin’s left wing. Piran fears Afrasiab’s anger.

Zal named me Rostam; why, you man of shame: Rostam defends his given name against the slur (B14.6). On its origin, see A9.1.

Whoever tells this tale, no sage will hear / And deem it true: Piran’s remark that no sage would believe the story is a knowing wink from Ferdowsi, who opened his book by asking readers not to dismiss such tales as lies (A0.8).

B14.12Rostam Battles Sava

Rostam declares that he needs no helper but God and Rakhsh, and orders drums and cymbals to sound when he charges. He routs Kundur’s wing, then kills Kamus’s kinsman Sava with a single blow of his gorz, and the Kashani standard falls.

God and the hooves of Rakhsh shall be my guide: Rakhsh (B2.2) is the one horse in the poem with a character of his own. Rostam chose him as a colt; he fought beside his master through the Seven Stages, and he will die with him.

B14.13Rostam Slays Gahar of Gahan

On the left wing, Gahar rides out against Rostam, loses his nerve and flees, and Rostam spears him and hurls him down. Calling up a thousand men, Rostam threatens any deserter with disgrace, charges towards the Khan and demands the surrender of the allied kings.

And on his head a paper cap shall show: A tall paper cap was a mark of public disgrace in the medieval Islamic world: offenders were paraded through the streets wearing one. Rostam’s threat promises shame as well as punishment.

B14.14The Khan Is Taken Prisoner

Under a storm of arrows, with Rohham guarding his back, Rostam sweeps enemy chiefs from their saddles with his kamand. The Khan sends a smooth-tongued envoy to ask for peace; Rostam snares the envoy, then drags the Khan from his white elephant. The poet reflects on fortune.

The envoy said, “Do not divide the prey: The envoy’s proverb is a Persian cousin of ‘don’t count your chickens before they are hatched’. Rostam answers it by catching the envoy.

He neared the white elephant in the fray: The white elephant was the prized mount of eastern kings, and the Khan fights from one as if from a throne. Taking an enemy king alive from his elephant’s back is the crowning feat of the whole Kamus episode.

B14.15The Turanians Are Overthrown

Rostam strikes down great and small. At nightfall a black wind darkens the sky and the enemy flees into the desert. Piran tells his men to lay down their weapons and slips away; Giv searches for him in vain, and the Iranians wash off the blood.

A black wind rose; a cloud spread through the sky: Sudden wind and darkness in the Shahnameh often seem to come from heaven, as if the sky were taking sides. The same darkness that ends the battle also lets Piran escape, as he will escape again and again until his last fight.

Like francolin’s plumes, vale and plain spread out: The francolin (durrāj), a game bird whose dark plumage is thickly spotted with white, gives Ferdowsi a picture of a landscape strewn with bodies and gear.

B14.16Rostam Divides the Spoils

Rostam has his men give thanks to God, confessing that the sight of Kamus had made him fear his end. When he finds that the enemy slipped away overnight, he rebukes Tus for careless sentries. Then he gathers a mountain of spoil and sends Fariborz to the Shah.

Then I thought: surely now my time is done: A rare confession of fear from Rostam, made to his own men once the danger is past. Ferdowsi’s heroes are not fearless supermen: their courage is measured against real dread, and that gives it weight.

My heart took on dark shiz-wood’s sable hue: Shīz is a black, very hard wood. It is often glossed as ebony, but the kamān-e shīz of B12.7 points rather to the chaste tree, whose dense dark wood was prized by bowyers and inlayers alike. Either way the color is the point: a heart gone shiz-black is a heart darkened by grief and rage.

I will bring idolaters’ heads to dust: Rostam calls the enemy idol-worshippers (on bot, see B4.4). The poem gives the Turanians no clear religion, but the Central Asia and India of Ferdowsi’s day were lands of Buddhist and Hindu temples. The ancient Iranians, by contrast, are always shown worshipping one God.

Then I myself will spur to Gang my steed: Gang is Gang Dezh, the paradise-fortress in the east built by Siavash and later Afrasiab’s stronghold; it is not Zahhak’s Gang Dezh-Hokht (A5.6). Kay Khosrow will lay siege to it in II, C4.18–C4.21.

B14.17Rostam’s Letter to Kay Khosrow

Rostam dictates a letter to Kay Khosrow: a hundred thousand enemies, forty days of fighting, and kings taken with his own kamand. Fariborz leads the captives and spoil home on three thousand hiyuns, while Rostam marches his army across the desert into Turan.

On parniyan, with ambergris, they penned: Royal letters in the Shahnameh are written on parniyān, a fine painted silk, often in ink scented with musk or ambergris. They follow a fixed order: praise of God, praise of the recipient, then the business. Persian chancery style kept that pattern for centuries.

B14.18The Shah Replies to Rostam

Kay Khosrow meets Fariborz, sees the captives and spoil, and lies in the dust to thank God rather than the victors. He writes Rostam a letter of praise, sends lavish robes and gifts for him and the chiefs, and urges him to pursue Afrasiab.

I thank You, not the men who won the strife: Kay Khosrow is the most devout king in the poem, and his first act on seeing the spoil is to lie in the dust before God. His piety grows until, at the height of his power, he gives up the throne and vanishes into the mountains (II, C4.60–C4.62).

A robe of honor, at his word, they brought: The robe of honor (khal‘at), a garment from the king’s own wardrobe, was the standard royal reward throughout the medieval Islamic East, and horses, slaves and gold were often given with it. Ferdowsi’s long gift-lists reflect the real ceremonial of the courts of his day.

B14.19Afrasiab Hears of His Army’s Defeat

News of the disaster reaches Afrasiab: the allies are crushed, the Khan is a captive, Piran has fled towards Khutan, and Rostam is coming. Afrasiab remembers young Rostam lifting him from the saddle. His nobles dismiss the losses and urge war, and he opens his treasuries.

He seized me from my saddle by his might: Afrasiab recalls Rostam’s first battle, in the reign of Kay Qobad, when the young hero lifted him from the saddle by his belt. The belt broke and Afrasiab escaped. The humiliation of that day still haunts the king.

Fire rose from water; such is our report: An image of the impossible come true, since fire does not rise from water. Rostam turns the same figure on Afrasiab in B14.20.

B14.20Rostam Fights Kafur the Maneater

Fariborz returns with the Shah’s gifts. Rostam marches to Sughd, then to Bidad, whose man-eating king Kafur overwhelms Gostaham’s force until Rostam kills him. Rostam undermines and burns the walls of Tur’s ancient fortress, takes it, and sends Giv raiding towards Khutan.

The king was named Kafur: Kāfūr means ‘camphor’, the white aromatic resin. In the medieval Islamic world it was a common name for slaves; its most famous bearer was Kafur, the tenth-century ruler of Egypt, whom the poet al-Mutanabbi praised and then savaged. The cannibal king belongs with the travelers’ tales of the far East.

One stage brought them to Bidad’s fort, whose walls: Bīdād means ‘injustice’, a fitting name for a city of cannibals. Ferdowsi and his sources liked such speaking names.

Tur’s spells, the Catholicos’s breath defy: Catholicos (Persian jāthalīq) is the title of the head of the Church of the East, the Christians of Iran and Central Asia. The defenders boast that their walls are guarded by Tur’s magic and by a patriarch’s blessing. The anachronism reflects the real Christian communities along the Silk Road.

With black naphtha were coated as they spread: This is real siege-craft: dig under the wall, prop it with timber, then burn the props so that the wall comes down. Naphtha, crude oil from surface seepages, was well known in Iran and was used as an incendiary in medieval warfare.

B14.21Afrasiab Hears of Rostam’s Coming

Afrasiab’s warriors urge him to fight, and he vows to kill Rostam and even his own grandson. He sends Farghar to spy and confides his dread of Rostam to his son Shideh, who counsels caution. After Farghar reports and Piran arrives, Afrasiab sends Piran out with the army.

From Chin and from Machin call every band: ‘Chin and Machin’ together means China and the lands beyond it. Māchīn comes from Sanskrit Mahāchīna, ‘Great China’, and Persian geographers sometimes used it for southern China.

He summoned Shideh, born of royal line: Shideh, Afrasiab’s son, is the voice of honor at his father’s side (B14.25). His name seems to contain shīd, ‘light’, as in khorshīd, ‘sun’. In II, C4.8–C4.9 he meets Kay Khosrow in single combat.

B14.22Afrasiab Writes to Puladvand

Afrasiab has a letter written to Puladvand, lord of the mountains of Chin, promising half his kingdom for Rostam’s death, and sends Shideh with it. Puladvand arrives with his army. Wary of Rostam, he advises cunning, then boasts over his wine that he will cut him to pieces.

I made Jamshid, Zahhak, and Fereydoon / Find food and sleep and rest a bitter boon: Puladvand boasts of troubling kings who reigned many centuries earlier (A4–A5). He is no ordinary king but a Div of the old world, as the poem soon calls him. His name is built on pūlād, ‘steel’.

Who rent the White Div’s flank and tore away: Puladvand recalls Rostam’s deeds in Mazandaran in Kavus’s reign, when he killed the White Div in his cave and overcame the Div chiefs Pulad Ghandi and Bid. Rostam’s fame now travels ahead of him, even among the Divs.

B14.23Puladvand Battles Giv and Tus

Puladvand throws Tus from his saddle, catches Giv in his kamand, hurls down Rohham and Bijan, and slashes the Kaviani standard with his khanjar. The Iranians wail and call on Rostam. Old Gudarz, believing his sons and grandson dead, takes off his belt and cap.

He reached the standard of Kaveh in war: The Kaviani banner, Kaveh’s apron raised on a spear (A5.5), is the soul of the Iranian army. Slashing it is the gravest insult Puladvand could offer, and it marks the lowest point of the campaign.

He loosed his belt and took his cap away: Belt and cap (kolāh) are the insignia of a noble’s rank and service. To take them off is a gesture of mourning and of renouncing honor: Gudarz feels shamed as well as bereaved.

B14.24Rostam Battles Puladvand

Rostam rides against Puladvand and answers his taunts with contempt. A blow of the gorz stuns the Div but does not kill him. Rostam prays for victory only if his cause is just. When no weapon can pierce either man, they agree to wrestle, with no one to interfere.

If I fight unjustly, when I leave this strife: Rostam’s prayer turns the fight into an ordeal: let the unjust side lose, even if it is his own. Trial by ordeal, in which God shows who is innocent, runs through Iranian tradition; its most famous instance in the poem is Siavash’s ride through the fire.

Put off your babr and khaftan here: On the Babr-e Bayan, see B5.1. Puladvand’s demand that Rostam take it off is a backhanded tribute, and Rostam’s refusal states the warrior’s code.

B14.25Rostam Wrestles Puladvand

The champions wrestle. Afrasiab rides up to urge Puladvand to use his khanjar, despite his son Shideh’s protest. Giv warns Rostam, who is unmoved, lifts Puladvand and hurls him down. The Div, thought dead, leaps onto his horse and flees, and his army scatters.

Those two exalted warriors, bent on fight, / Prepared to wrestle: On wrestling and the zurkhaneh, where Rostam is the patron hero, see B8.20.

If this witless sorcerer breaks his sworn word: Afrasiab is a sorcerer as well as a king; in the Avesta, the Turanian Frangrasyan hides in an iron palace under the earth. Rostam answers with the heroic code in a sentence: a broken oath harms only the man who breaks it.

B14.26Afrasiab Flees before Rostam

Piran tells Afrasiab that all is lost and he must flee. Leaving his banner and army behind, Afrasiab escapes towards Chin and Machin. Rostam’s men fight on with gorz and sword until the enemy breaks; then Rostam stops the slaughter, shares the spoil and burns Afrasiab’s towns.

They left his flag, but he himself was gone: An old ruse: the royal standard stays in place so that the army does not know its king has fled. Afrasiab escapes Rostam again and again, and his long flight will end only with Kay Khosrow (see B14.7).

Then blooms, a bride in color, scent, and light: The world as a bride, lovely but faithless, is a stock figure of Persian poetry. Hafez would later call her ‘the bride of a thousand bridegrooms’.

B14.27Rostam’s Return to Court

The army returns laden with Turanian treasure. Kay Khosrow rides out in festive state, embraces Rostam and brings him to the palace, where Gudarz tells the story of the war over wine. The Shah praises Rostam, and the court feasts for a month.

The tabira and ney rang far and wide: The ney is the reed flute, the instrument whose lament for its reed-bed opens Rumi’s Masnavi.

no mother’s womb / Will bear a chief like Rostam: Gudarz, who in B14.7 doubted Rostam’s patience with Piran, ends the campaign as his warmest admirer. Praise from the grim old father of heroes counts for more than any court flattery.

B14.28Rostam Returns to Sistan

After a month, Rostam asks leave to visit Zal. Kay Khosrow loads him with gifts and rides two stages beside him before Rostam goes home to Zabul. The poet closes the long tale of Kamus and announces the story of Rostam and Akvan Div.

With diba, robes from Shushtar, rich and bright: Shushtar in Khuzistan was famous for its textiles in the Middle Ages, and for its great Sasanian weir-bridge, said to have been built by Roman prisoners of Shapur I.

No jot has fallen from my tale, not one: Ferdowsi insists that he has left nothing of his source out. The claim of fidelity is a regular part of his craft: he presents himself as the keeper of an old book, not its inventor.

Now hear how Rostam met Akvan, his foe: The last line of Volume I points to Rostam’s fight with Akvan Div, who takes the form of a Gur-e-Khar; that story opens Volume II (II, C1). The name Akvan is often linked with Akoman (Avestan Aka Manah, ‘Evil Mind’), one of Ahriman’s chief Divs in Zoroastrian tradition.