Notes · Book D7The Early Sasanians

D7.1Ardeshir Babakan Assumes the Throne

Ardeshir takes the ivory throne and is hailed as King of kings. He declares that justice is his only treasure, that no subject shall sleep with a need denied, and that his court is open to friend and foe, then sends armies against the chiefs who resist.

At Baghdad, Ardeshir took the ivory throne: Baghdad was founded in the eighth century, long after Ardeshir, and the previous chapter gave the royal seat its proper name of Tisfoon. Persian and Arabic writers commonly used the city of their own day for the capital on the Tigris; it is less a mistake than geography translated into the reader’s terms.

“Justice is all my treasure here on earth: Every Sasanian reign in the poem opens with a speech from the throne and closes with a testament, and the speeches are built from the same materials: justice as the king’s real wealth, an open court, no subject going to bed wronged. The pattern is inherited. These books grew out of a literature of royal counsel as much as of chronicle.

D7.2Ardeshir and the Daughter of Ardavan

Ardeshir marries Ardavan’s daughter. Her brother in Hind sends poison; she mixes it into a cup, the cup breaks, and hens fed the spilled food die. Ardeshir orders her killed, but she is pregnant, and his minister hides her, gelding himself and sealing the proof in a casket.

He bade a servant fetch four household hens: Testing suspect food on birds is court realia rather than invention; dread of poison shapes the etiquette of these chapters. The cup that slips from the king’s hand and breaks of its own accord does for Ardeshir what his own suspicion had failed to do.

He gelded himself, seared the flesh that bled: The most startling act of loyalty in the poem. Disobeying the king was fatal, so the minister makes himself incapable of the adultery he might be accused of, salts what he has cut away, and lodges it in the royal treasury under seal and date: a chancery document made out of his own body. The dynasty continues because of it.

D7.3The Daughter of Ardavan Bears a Son

The hidden queen bears Shapur, raised in secret for seven years. Grieving that he has no heir, Ardeshir is told the truth and picks his son out of a hundred matched boys at polo. He showers Shapur with gems, pardons the mother, and honors the minister on his coins.

He named the child Shapur, concealed him well: Shāpūr, Middle Persian Šābuhr, means ‘the king’s son’, from an older compound of shāh and ‘son’. The minister says later that he chose the name out of love, which carries a gentle joke: the hidden child of a condemned mother is given a name that states exactly whose son he is.

The other bore his minister’s alone: Sasanian coins are among the best-known objects of the ancient world, and they carry the king’s bust on one face and a fire altar with its attendants on the other; no minister appears on them. The gesture in the poem is a storyteller’s way of measuring a debt that cannot be repaid, not a record of the mint.

The name of Gund-e-Shapur still is known: Gondeshapur in Khuzestan, which the record credits to this Shapur, who settled Roman captives there; the verse leaves the founder open. Later tradition makes it the most famous center of medicine and learning in Iran, its physicians working with Greek, Syriac and Indian material, and the reputation carried over into the sciences of the Islamic period, though how much of the school is Sasanian and how much later report is argued.

D7.4Ardeshir Writes to Kayd of Hind

Never free of war, Ardeshir sends an envoy to the Indian sage Kayd. Kayd reads the stars and answers that peace will come only when Ardeshir’s line is joined with Mehrak’s. Enraged, Ardeshir orders a hunt for Mehrak’s one surviving daughter, who is hidden in a village.

Of sages, Kayd, whose knowledge brings relief: India is where this poem goes for knowledge of the stars, and Kayd is the name it has already used for the Indian sage-king who sent Iskandar his four gifts (II, D5). Whether a name or a title, he returns here to tell Ardeshir the one thing he cannot bear: that his peace depends on marrying into the house he has just destroyed.

He brought his astrolabe to read the skies: The astrolabe is Greek in origin and became the emblem of the Muslim astronomer, and the Indian tables beside it are the zij of I, A8.17. Ferdowsi equips a third-century Indian sage with the working kit of an observatory of his own century, as naturally as he gives Ardeshir a chancery of Pahlavi scribes.

D7.5Shapur and the Daughter of Mehrak

Hunting, Shapur stops at a village where a girl offers to draw sweet water for his horse. When a servant cannot raise the bucket she had raised alone, Shapur guesses her descent. She admits she is Mehrak’s daughter; he promises her safety and marries her by the fire rite.

A moon-faced maiden, drawing from the well: Meeting a future wife at a well is among the oldest scenes in Near Eastern storytelling; Genesis uses it three times over. Here the well does double duty, since it is the weight of the bucket rather than the girl’s face that gives away who she is.

Must come of Kayanian blood within this land.”: Descent is a physical fact in these chapters. A ferryman saw it in Ardeshir’s build (D6.7), and Shapur deduces it from a girl who can lift what his servant cannot. The device also lets the poem present the marriage that saves the dynasty as something closer to fate than to choice.

D7.6The Daughter of Mehrak Bears a Son

She bears Hormizd, kept hidden for seven years. The boy slips out to the polo field and carries the ball off in front of Ardeshir, who questions him and learns the truth. Ardeshir accepts him gladly, crowns him with gold, and tells the nobles Kayd’s prophecy is fulfilled.

He took the ball before the old king’s eyes: The recognition is staged twice, in the same game and almost the same words: Shapur was picked out of a hundred matched boys for riding the ball off in front of the king (D7.3), and now his own hidden son does it. Ferdowsi lets the rhyme stand without comment. On chowgān, see I, B6.6.

Shapur named him Hormizd; the boy stood tall: Hormizd is Ohrmazd, the name of the Creator himself (see I, A9.2), and this is the first king of the line to carry it; several more Hormizds follow in these books. The child of the proscribed house is named for God, and his birth is what completes Kayd’s prophecy.

D7.7Ardeshir’s Wise Administration of the Realm

Ferdowsi sets out Ardeshir’s government: recruitment and muster of troops, scribes graded by their pens, charges to governors and generals, care of envoys, relief for ruined districts and impoverished nobles. The king remits the tenth, counsels his nobles on God and conduct, and lays down rules to live by.

Whose knowledge matched their mastery of the pen: The scribes, the dabīr class, were one of the great estates of Sasanian society and ran its treasury, chancery and courts; here the king grades them by their handwriting and keeps only the best near the crown. On the founding division of society into classes, see I, A4.1.

An empty center puts it in death’s hand: The battle orders here amount to a manual in miniature: elephants in front, scouts four farsang out, your left against the enemy’s right, the center never stripped, no plundering until the field is certain, quarter for anyone who asks for it. Books of Sasanian institutions and military custom of just this kind were still being quoted by Arabic writers centuries later.

Though one-tenth from communities is mine: Giving back the tenth is the most concrete act of justice in the chapter, and it is the same gesture the poem praised at the opening of this volume, where Mahmud forgives a year’s taxes (D6.1). Ardeshir’s reign is partly written as a mirror held up to Ghaznin.

Now hear, O king, the sayings of this sage: The narrator turns from Ardeshir to a living king and tells him to make his own age as bright as that one. These books are history and instruction at once, and now and then Ferdowsi drops the third person to be sure the lesson lands.

D7.8Kharrad Praises Ardeshir

An elder named Kharrad comes before the newly crowned Shah with a formal address: justice is the foundation stone of his throne, he has shut out the enemies of Hind and Chin, and he is God’s own robe of honor. He prays that the reign may last forever.

Both birds and beasts stand in their ranks aligned: Praise of a just king regularly extends his peace to the animals, which draw up in ranks as the court does; Solomon’s command over beasts and birds stands behind the image in Persian usage. The whole chapter is a set piece of court panegyric — the same form Ferdowsi has to practice himself at the opening and close of this volume.

You are God’s robe of honor, richly sewn: The khal‘at, the robe of honor conferred by a superior, is the standard Persian image for legitimacy handed down (see I, B14.18). Kharrad turns it inside out: the king is not given the robe, he is the robe, God’s honor worn in the sight of the world.

D7.9The Faithlessness of Fortune

Ferdowsi turns from the reign to the faithlessness of the world: king and servant alike must pack up and go, cypress backs bend, bright cheeks turn saffron, and the great of former days lie with brick for a pillow. Only the sower of good deeds is blessed.

Where are the chiefs once crowned in royal gold: On the ‘where are they now’ lament, see I, B9.39. What is new is its position: from Ardeshir onward Ferdowsi uses a short interlude of this kind as a formal hinge between the account of a reign and the death of the king, so that the moral is heard before the deathbed.

D7.10Ardeshir’s Last Message to Shapur

At seventy-eight and failing, Ardeshir charges Shapur: faith and kingship are twin brothers, treasure and anger are traps, slander and confidences are to be shunned. He foretells that his house will break the covenant and fall, lists the six cities he founded, and dies.

Then Faith and kingship stand as brothers true: The most quoted sentence ever attributed to Ardeshir: religion and kingship are twin brothers, and neither can stand without the other. It reaches us outside the poem as well, in the Testament of Ardashir and the Letter of Tansar, and it was still being cited as political doctrine long after the dynasty that coined it had gone.

Now when five hundred years have passed away: Ardeshir foretells the ruin of his own house: descendants who spurn the covenant, oppress their subjects and take up Ahriman’s creed. The dynasty in fact lasted a little over four centuries. The prophecy is Ferdowsi’s long fuse — everything from here to Yazdegard and the last chapters of the poem stands under a sentence pronounced at the founding.

The third is Ormozd-Ardeshir, whose air: Sasanian kings stamped their names on their foundations, and a dying king’s list of cities is a genre of record in its own right. Hormizd-Ardashir is usually identified with Ahvaz, which agrees with the verse placing it in Khuzestan; Ram-Ardashir and Khorra-e-Ardeshir (D6.9) belong to Pars.

D7.11Praise of God and of Mahmud, the Great King

Ferdowsi closes with praise of the Creator of space, earth and time, a blessing on Mohammad and his companions, and a long eulogy of Mahmud: just, generous, terrible in war, open-handed at feasts, and the delight of every faithful heart.

Great Mahmud, graced by God, the King of kings: The volume opens and closes on the same note (D6.1): praise of God, then praise of Mahmud, framing the Ashkanians and the first Sasanians. How much of the praise of Mahmud in the Shahnameh is Ferdowsi’s own, and how much was added or reworked later, has been argued over for a long time, and the manuscripts do not agree about these passages.

His farr makes Jupiter release its rain: The old royal farr (I, A4.1) is handed here to a sultan of Ghaznin, along with the title King of kings, the war elephant and the scattering of jewels at feasts. The entire vocabulary of Iranian kingship is being offered, quite deliberately, to the ruler the poet hopes will reward him.

D7.12Shapur, Son of Ardeshir

D7.12.1Shapur Assumes the Throne

Shapur, son of Ardeshir, takes the throne and addresses the sages and nobles. He declares that kingship and wisdom are the two great estates, sets the landholders’ rate at a thirtieth, promises open justice, and renounces all claim on his subjects’ goods.

To tell of Shapur’s kingship, pour the wine: Each reign in the Sasanian books opens and closes with a call for wine. The formula is the storyteller’s frame: it marks off one reign from the next, as the chapter headings of a chronicle would, and keeps the poet’s own voice audible between the speeches of kings. Hormizd’s reign, which follows, closes the same way (III, D7.13.2).

One-thirtieth, for troops who guard the state: Ferdowsi has almost every Sasanian king announce his fiscal policy in his accession speech, and the announcement is always a light impost justified by the customs of Ardeshir. A thirtieth of the landholders’ yield, earmarked for the troops, is presented as restraint rather than reform; the great survey and fixed land tax come later in this volume, with Qobad and Anooshirvan.

D7.12.2Shapur Fights Rum and Caesar Makes Peace

Rum and Kaydafa march on the new Shah. At Palavina Shapur routs the Romans and takes their chief Baranush. Caesar sues for peace with tribute, slaves and hostages. Shapur founds cities, and sets Baranush to bridge the river at Shushtar.

Then bridge this river; let your work now start: On Shushtar and its great Sasanian weir-bridge, said to be the work of Roman prisoners, see I, B14.28. What is new here is that Ferdowsi names the engineer and makes the bridge a clause of the peace: a captive Roman pays his ransom in masonry. The Shah’s own reason is the one a poet would give — the work will outlast the man who ordered it.

The day of Ard saw all its labors close: The Zoroastrian month has thirty days, each with a name rather than a number; on Ard, see I, B9.43. Dating the completion of a building by day-name is how the poem records a lucky day, and Ferdowsi’s Sasanian kings finish walls, bridges and cities on named days as often as they win battles on them.

D7.12.3Shapur Names Hormizd His Successor and Dies

After thirty years and two months Shapur’s farr disperses. He calls Hormizd, charges him to make justice his vow, to read the record of the old kings, to shield the lowly and hold gold lightly, then pales and dies as his son looks on in dread.

Read constantly the book of Jamshid’s reign: The dying charge to an heir is the backbone of the Sasanian books. Pahlavi literature is full of such andarz, testaments of wisdom attached to the names of kings and priests and copied for the instruction of officials, and Ferdowsi keeps them almost whole, so that several short reigns consist of little else. The charge to read about the former kings is also a charge to read this poem’s own earlier books.

His royal farr dispersed beneath the sky: On the farr, see I, A4.1. In the Sasanian books its departure becomes a way of telling time: the farr leaves a king before his body does, so that the reign ends at one line and the man at another. It will be said to return to a Shapur who has lost everything but his life (III, D8.1.6).

D7.13Hormizd, Son of Shapur

D7.13.1Hormizd Addresses the Assembly

Hormizd takes the throne, and wolf and lamb drink from one cistern. He tells the assembly to shun quarrels, envy, idleness and greed, to bind wisdom to knowledge, and to guard their speech. The court blesses him, and the years whiten his hair.

Both wolf and lamb drank from one cistern sweet: The image is the standard shorthand for a just reign: predator and prey at one watering place, because the strong can no longer prey on the weak. Persian and Arabic panegyric use it constantly, and it stands close to the peaceable kingdom of Isaiah, where wolf and lamb lie down together — though in the poem the point is police, not paradise.

For walls have ears, as every sage has said: Persian still says divār mush dārad, mush gush dārad, ‘the wall has mice and the mice have ears.’ The king’s warning is practical advice to courtiers rather than a proverb about secrets in general: in the preceding couplet he tells them plainly that whatever they conceal, the throne will hear of it.

Black musk gave way to camphor on his head: Black musk for dark hair, white camphor for gray: the pairing is one of the poem’s fixed ways of saying that a man has aged, and Ferdowsi uses it to end a reign in a single line. On camphor, see I, B14.20.

D7.13.2Hormizd Bequeaths the Throne to Bahram and Dies

Dying, Hormizd calls Bahram and gives a long testament: reject falsehood and flattery, master anger, prefer patience to haste, weigh speech, honor the deserving, keep envy out. A scribe takes it down. The king’s color fails, and Bahram mourns forty days.

A noble scribe recorded all he heard: Ferdowsi shows the document being made: the king speaks, a scribe writes, the minister receives the copy. That is how such counsel actually circulated, as written testaments under a royal name, and it explains why these speeches reached the poet in so finished a form. On the andarz, see III, D7.12.3.

Slight not my sayings; make your heart a bow: The figure is worked out over four lines: the heart is the bow, the tongue the arrow, and the speaker is told to expand his chest and hold his arm straight before choosing his mark. An archery lesson has been turned into a lesson in speech, and the technical vocabulary is real — this is how the poem elsewhere describes a man about to shoot.

D7.14Bahram, Son of Hormizd

Bahram’s reign lasts three years, three months and three days. He warns the chiefs against passion and idleness, tells them a king must shelter the Faith, and opens his treasury to the poor. Then he hands the world to his son and namesake, who buries him.

Three years, three months, three days his reign would last: The Sasanian books give every reign an exact span, down to months and days, because they come to Ferdowsi from a chronicle list. The triple three has the ring of a figure rounded for the ear, and the record likewise allows this Bahram only about three years; a whole reign here is one speech, a warning, and a funeral.

The son gave him a dakhmeh’s peaceful sleep: The couplet is built as an exchange: the father hands over the world, the son hands back a tomb. On the dakhmeh, see I, B12.25. Ferdowsi likes to close a short reign on this kind of balanced line, where the syntax does the grieving.

D7.15The Reign of Bahram, Son of Bahram

After forty days of mourning Bahram is persuaded to the throne and crowns himself by Kayan rite. He praises God, tells the Mobadan not to let learning breed pride, preaches contentment and moderation, rules justly nineteen years, and goes to the dakhmeh.

Their lips like lapis-lazuli, dark blue: The blue is mourning. The court has yellow cheeks and lips the color of lapis, and dark blue was worn for the dead in Iran as black is now; the poem colors grief the same way in clothes and in faces. The whole scene is the standard forty days between a death and a coronation.

Your soul lies trapped in the nahang’s throat still: On the nahang, see I, A0.11. In these short reigns it becomes an image for death and for greed alike — a sea-beast that swallows, so that the greedy man’s soul is already in its throat. The next chapter names death itself the nahang, and adds that its hunting frightens the elephant and the rhinoceros.

D7.16The Four-Month Reign of Bahram Bahramian

Bahram Bahramian is crowned, styled Kermanshah, and pledges justice and bounty. Four months later death draws near; he counsels his son, hands crown and throne to Narsi, and dies. The poet breaks off to ask for red wine at sixty-three.

And named him Kermanshah of high renown: The word is a title, not a personal name: ‘Shah of Kerman’, one of the governorships Sasanian princes held before coming to the throne. The record gives this Bahram a different one — king of the Sakas — and attaches Kermanshah to a later Bahram of the house, who governed Kerman before his accession and after whom the western city (I, A9.3) is usually named. The poem has moved the title back.

The poet now has lived for sixty-three.”: The closing wine-couplets of a reign are where the poet speaks in his own person, and here he gives his age. These asides accumulate across the Sasanian books — sixty-three returns at the end of the Shapur cycle (III, D8.1.12) and again after it (III, D8.4) — so that the poem records its own composition alongside the reigns it narrates.

D7.17The Reign of Narsi, Son of Bahram

Narsi takes the ivory seat, blesses the still-mourning nobles, and praises wisdom, courage and diligence while condemning sloth. After nine years his strength fails; he charges his son Hormizd to rule by the laws of kings, then draws his mantle over his head and dies.

Like wax grew soft the steel helm on his head: A helm of steel gone soft as wax: the poem registers the end of a reign in one physical image, as it does elsewhere with the bending cypress, the rose turning quince-yellow, and musk giving way to camphor (III, D7.13.1). Here the image is martial, which suits a king praised for valor.

When Narsi sat upon the ivory seat: Narsi is Middle Persian Narseh, usually derived from the Avestan divine messenger Nairyō.saŋha; it runs in the Sasanian house and is borne by a brother of Shapur earlier in these books. The ivory seat is one of the poem’s several thrones, distinguished by material rather than by shape.

D7.18The Reign of Hormizd, Son of Narsi

Hormizd keeps the world at peace, praises God, and warns against base company, ingratitude, sloth and self-praise. After nine years he dies, leaving no son. The nobles despair until the Mobad finds a pregnant woman in the harem, and the crown is hung above her.

Above her head they hung the royal crown: A crown suspended over an unborn child is the poem’s solution to a dynastic emergency, and the Arabic historians who drew on the same Persian sources report it too: this Shapur was said to have been made king in the womb. Whatever lies behind the story, it gave the tradition the longest reign of the dynasty, since it is counted from his birth.

Her lashes curved like khanjars Kabul made: Curved lashes compared to a khanjar, and Kabul named for the blade: Indian steel is the standard of excellence in Persian verse, and Kabul stands on the road by which it reached Iran, so the comparison may be reaching for a blade’s edge as well as its shape. On Kabul, see I, A8.1.