Notes · Book E1The Story of Mahbud and Other Matters

E1.1Zarvan’s Sorcery and the Fall of Mahbud

Mahbud, the Shah’s trusted minister, has his two sons carry the royal food. The envious chamberlain Zarvan and a sorcerer look on the dishes, then warn that the milk is poisoned; the sons die tasting it, and the Shah destroys Mahbud, his house and his kin.

Now hear the tale a rustic minstrel sings: Ferdowsi flags his source, and it is not the royal book: this story and the next come to him from a village reciter, a dehqan’s tale (on the dehqan, see I, A6.23). The shape bears him out. Envy, a sorcerer, a ruinous misunderstanding and a delayed revelation belong to folk narrative rather than to a chronicle of reigns.

When war was planned, or barsom for the rite: The barsom (Avestan baresman) is the bundle of thin rods held by the priest at the Zoroastrian rite, plant stems originally and metal wires in later use. Its appearance marks the ceremonial days, and on those days the Shah would eat nothing but what Mahbud’s household had prepared — which is the whole hinge of the plot.

My evil eye will poison what they bear: No poison is ever put in the food. The sorcerer needs only to see it from a distance, and the tale turns on the evil eye, the belief that a look can carry harm — which is also why nothing can ever be proved. The text requires milk to be on the tray for the craft to work, though it never says what makes milk the vehicle.

E1.2Anooshirvan Avenges Mahbud

Years later Mahbud’s brand on a hunting horse reopens the Shah’s grief. Zarvan’s talk of milk and magic betrays him; he confesses and blames the sorcerer, who is fetched and confirms it. Both are flayed alive and hung on the gibbet, and the Shah endows Mahbud’s surviving kin.

Among their brands, one marking caught his eye: Owners marked their horses, and a great household’s brand outlived the household: Mahbud is years dead and dispossessed, but his mark is still on the stock now in the royal stables. Ferdowsi lets a buried crime be reopened by a detail no one thought to erase.

As one unjust, deserving tyrant’s shame: The tale of Mahbud is the dark twin of the portrait of the just king that surrounds it. Anooshirvan the Just is made to commit an irreparable injustice on a courtier’s word, and Ferdowsi does not absolve him: he leaves him praying all night to be spared the name of tyrant, which is a punishment and not a pardon.

E1.3Anooshirvan’s Wisdom and Sursan

With the sorcery tale done, the poet praises just rule. Iran rests, arms are laid aside and tribute comes in. The Shah builds a city in the style of Rum, settles craftsmen from Rum and Hind and captives from Barbar and Rum in it, and names it Sursan.

The wolf and sheep drank where all strife did cease: The peaceable kingdom is the standard image for a reign of perfect justice — Isaiah has the wolf dwelling with the lamb — and in Persian it is the wolf and the sheep at one water. Ferdowsi returns to it later in this book, when the Kuch give up raiding and “the wolf no longer preys upon the fleece” (E1.11).

He then called it Sursan, a joyful name: Khosrow I was remembered as a great founder and re-settler of cities, peopling new foundations with craftsmen and with prisoners taken in the Roman wars; the best known is the town built near the capital for the captives of Antioch. Sursan is not easily matched with a known site, but the practice the chapter describes — a planned city, a mixed population, each man given a trade and a plot — is well attested for his reign.

E1.4Ghatfar Defeated, Faghanish Crowned

The Khan of Chin sends gifts to Anooshirvan, and Ghatfar the Heytalian intercepts and kills the envoy. The Khan marches; after a week’s battle near Bukhara the Heytalians break. Their people resolve to seek Iran’s protection, and crown Faghanish of Chaghaniyan.

Hear how the Khan and Heytalians fought: The Heytalians are the Hephthalites, the power that had held the Oxus lands for a century and had killed the Shah Pirooz. Their empire was in fact broken in Khosrow’s time, and most historians hold that it fell to an alliance of Iran and the rising Turks, whose khaqan the poem calls the Khan of Chin (on the title, see I, B13.18). Ferdowsi gives the victory to the Khan alone and keeps his Shah at a distance, which is better politics and better drama.

They all have dragon-faces, claws like pards: The survivors’ account of their conquerors is the classic frightened description of steppe cavalry: they sleep with their weapons beside them, their horses feed on thorns, they raid at night and seem to need neither food nor rest. Greek and Chinese writers describe nomad armies in almost the same terms, and the wonder in it is a measure of how the settled world saw them.

E1.5Anooshirvan Marches against the Khan

The Shah’s council urges caution: the Heytalians deserve their ruin for Pirooz’s blood, but Rum may strike while the Shah is in the east. He rebukes them for growing soft on banquets, and at the new moon leads the army out of Madain toward Gorgan.

Save Pirooz’s blood they shed upon that day: The death of Shah Pirooz in the Hephthalite war (III, D11) is the standing Iranian grievance in the east, and the nobles produce it as a reason to let the Heytalians be destroyed unavenged. It is a neat piece of council-chamber logic: an old wrong used as an argument for doing nothing.

Thus matters stood until the new moon rose: Armies in the poem set out at a chosen hour. Here the Shah waits for the new moon and the month’s turn; at E1.9 Mehran Setad begins his journey “upon Khordad,” under a sign made fortunate that day. The court kept astrologers for exactly this, and Ferdowsi almost never lets a royal departure go undated.

E1.6The Khan Writes for Peace

The Khan boasts that he will overrun Iran, but news of the Shah’s advance shakes him. Counseled that gold buys peace, he sends ten envoys with a silk letter. Anooshirvan feasts them a month, then stages a review of his troops and of his own horsemanship.

In Chin’s own script and tongue from end to end: Ferdowsi is careful about the physical business of diplomacy throughout this episode: the Khan writes on silk in his own script and seals with gold, the Shah answers on satin in Pahlavi with a perfumed pen (E1.7), and the bride’s letter is sealed with musk (E1.10). Each court corresponds in its own materials, and a scribe must be found who can read the other side’s.

From sun to Fish, the realm was his alone: On the formula that measures empire from the fish beneath the earth to the heavens, see I, A7.5. What is new here is the audience: the whole review of troops, envoys and elephants is staged so that the men of Chin will carry the claim home as eyewitnesses.

E1.7Anooshirvan Replies to the Khan

The scribe writes the Shah’s answer on satin in Pahlavi: God rules all, the Heytalians fell into the trap they set, the Khan’s boasting is a stain, and since he prefers the feast there will be no war. The envoys return and report the Shah’s greatness.

In Pahlavi the answer from the crown: Pahlavi, Middle Persian, was the language and script of the Sasanian chancery and of the books Ferdowsi’s sources descend from. He names it at every formal moment of this volume: this letter, Bozorgmehr’s scroll of counsel laid up in the treasury (E1.13), the praise spoken to the Raja of Hind (E2.2), and the first translation of the Kalila (E2.4).

He bathed his pen’s two cheeks in fragrant scent: The two cheeks are the halves of the split reed nib; on the reed pen, see I, B13.25. Scenting pen and ink with musk and ambergris was real scribal luxury, and it belongs to the same diplomacy as the satin: the letter is meant to be smelled as well as read when it reaches the Khan’s court.

E1.8The Khan Proposes Alliance by Marriage

Shaken by what his envoys report, the Khan resolves to bind the Shah by kinship and sends three nobles with a silk letter offering a daughter. Anooshirvan accepts on one condition: his own sage must view the women and satisfy himself of the girl’s descent.

He shall learn her mother’s father’s name and birth: The condition is a point of dynastic law, not fastidiousness: a child of a slave mother could not be preferred, so the bride must be the Khan’s daughter by a wife of the Faghfoor’s line. Everything in the next two chapters follows from it, and so does the succession — the son of this marriage is Hormizd, who will take the throne after Anooshirvan (III, E5).

He would give every coin at Kisra’s call: Kisra is the Arabic form of Khosrow, used of the Sasanian king as a title much as Caesar was used in the west. Ferdowsi puts it in the mouths of the Khan’s envoys, where it has the ring of a foreign court naming the great power to the south.

E1.9Anooshirvan Sends for the Khan’s Daughter

The Shah writes back and sends Mehran Setad to choose. The Khan and his queen try to pass off daughters born of slaves; Mehran picks the plainly dressed girl on the teak throne, the queen’s only child. Star-readers confirm that the match will give Iran a famous king.

Whose mother shares Khatoon’s own lineage too: Khatoon is the Turkish title for a royal lady, the counterpart of khaqan. It passed into Persian from the steppe courts along with much else in this episode, and it is still a respectful word for a lady. The Shah’s instruction uses it as a rank, not a name: the mother must be of the queenly line.

Upon Khordad he started on his way: On Khordad, see I, A5.6. In the Zoroastrian calendar each of the thirty days of the month carries the name of a divine being as well as each month, so a departure can be dated by the day-name alone; Ferdowsi often does this, and here the day is chosen because its sign is fortunate.

E1.10The Khan Sends Bride and Treasure

Glad of the star-reading, the Khan gives up his own daughter with a vast dowry of thrones, crowns, brocade, two hundred maidens with golden chalices, three hundred handmaids and an elephant-borne throne. He brings her to the Jihun and weeps, and Iran meets her with silver and musk along the roads.

He reached the Jihun’s bank and wept heart’s blood: The Jihun is the Amu Darya, the Oxus, and in the Shahnameh it is more than a river: it is the line between Iran and everything beyond. The Khan escorts his daughter to the bank, waits until the train has crossed, and turns back. A father who can go with his child only as far as the water is the geography of the whole poem in one gesture.

And sifted musk and amber through the air: On nesar, the showering of coins and scent over a bride or a returning hero, see I, A6.4. What is striking here is the scale: whole cities do it along the road from Amuy through Marv and Bistam to Gorgan, so that the bride’s progress becomes a public ratification of the peace.

E1.11Anooshirvan Marches to Tisfoon

The Khan yields Sughd, Chakh and Samarkand and withdraws. The eastern lords come with gifts and recite the history of their sufferings. The Shah prays, gives alms, halts at the fire of Azargashasp on the way home, and sends bride and treasure on to Tisfoon.

Yet we found rescue when Kay Khosrow came: The deputation’s speech is a compressed history of the eastern marches, and it runs from Afrasiab and Arjasp through Goshtasb straight on to Narsi, Shapur, Bahram Goor, Pirooz and Khoshnavaz without a seam. For Ferdowsi the legendary and the Sasanian books are one chronicle of the same frontier; the speech is in effect the poem’s own table of contents for its eastern wars.

The yearly sum of tax owed, duly paid: Caesar’s envoy brings ten ox-hides of coin as the yearly sum owed. Under the peace made in Khosrow’s reign Constantinople did pay Iran an annual sum, presented on the Roman side as a contribution to guarding the Caucasus passes and on the Persian side as tribute. Ferdowsi takes the Persian view, and has Caesar promise a crown as well.

E1.12Anooshirvan’s Just Rule

The Shah returns to his throne and the world becomes a garden: thieves leave silver lying in the road, and trade flows in from Chin, Hind and Rum. Each dawn a herald proclaims his law — debts paid from the treasury, adultery, trespass and concealment punished.

If bright silver fell upon the public road: Coin lying untouched on the highway is the standard proof of a just reign in Persian and Arabic writing about kings, and it attaches to Anooshirvan more often than to anyone else. It is a test of the ruler through the behavior of his subjects: the thief who passes by is afraid of the law, not converted by it.

Our treasurer shall pay; their peace is sure: The herald’s proclamation reads like an edict, and Khosrow I is remembered above all as a reformer of the land survey and the taxes — administrators in the Islamic centuries traced their own fiscal practice back to him. Ferdowsi keeps the reforming king but recasts the reforms as charity: the crown settles the poor man’s debts instead of assessing his crop.

E1.13Bozorgmehr’s Counsel to Anooshirvan

Bozorgmehr says he has left a scroll of counsel in the treasury: nothing outlives a king but good words and good deeds. A long catechism follows on the ten Divs of the soul, greed the strongest of them, wisdom as the soul’s jowshan, and on friends, grief and kingship.

Ten Ahrimans possess a lion’s might: The ten are Greed, Need, Wrath, Envy, Shame, Revenge, Slander, Double-dealing, Heresy and Ingratitude. The move is not a poet’s metaphor: Zoroastrian tradition personifies the vices as Divs of Ahriman’s making, Greed among the most dangerous of them, so Bozorgmehr is turning a cosmic war into a psychology with materials the tradition gave him.

It is the jowshan that can check their blade: On the jowshan, see I, B13.30. The epic’s own equipment is turned inward here — wisdom as mail against the Divs, a guarded fortress for the heart — and the figure comes back at the close of the chapter, when the Shah asks what serves the wise as jowshan and is answered: good deeds, and thanks to God.

They say that dust must be our final bed: A remarkable admission, and Ferdowsi gives it to his wisest character: much is said about what lies beyond, and nothing certain is known. It comes a few hundred lines after pages on Judgment Day and the garden of the righteous, and the poet lets the two stand side by side without reconciling them.