Notes · Book E4Anooshirvan’s Last Years

E4.1Anooshirvan Prepares to March on Rum

Caesar dies. Anooshirvan writes kindly to his grandson, who takes offense at the Shah’s style, lodges the envoy far from court and refuses tribute. Anooshirvan swears by Azargashasp’s fire to humble Rum, and marches out from Madain.

And Christ befriend his soul beyond all pain: The Zoroastrian Shah commends a Christian emperor’s soul to Christ — a courtesy of address, and a reminder of how much of this correspondence was form. The quarrel that follows is about precisely that: the young Caesar objects to the Shah’s heading, and answers by insisting on his own style as lord of Rum’s country, field and town.

“No tribute from our realm shall ever flow: Tribute from Rum is the hinge of the whole Anooshirvan’s‑Rum material, and the record too remembers a new emperor refusing the payments his predecessor had agreed, with a long war following. Ferdowsi keeps the grievance but makes it a matter of manners: the letter, the lodging and the shabby robe of honor given to the envoy.

By Azargashasp’s fire, I swear that he: On Azargashasp, the fire of the warriors, see I, A7.1. It is the right fire to swear a war by, and Ferdowsi is setting up his own echo: six chapters on, a rider will come to this same king with the news that the sacred fire of Fars has gone cold (E4.7).

E4.2Anooshirvan and the Shoemaker

Besieging Halab, the Shah runs short of money. Bozorgmehr advises borrowing locally, and a shoemaker lends the whole sum, asking only that his son be schooled as a scribe. Anooshirvan refuses the request and sends the silver back.

And seek out shoemakers for loans no more.”: The most discussed passage in the Sasanian books. The just king will take a tradesman’s money but not let his son learn to write, because a scribe’s office belongs to men of birth; on the four estates and their founding, see I, A4.1. Ferdowsi reports it without a word of blame, and leaves his readers, who know how the Sasanian order ended, to supply one.

And Halab’s walls were ringed by spear and shield: Halab is Aleppo; Amuriyah, from which the Shah comes down to it, is usually identified with Amorium in Asia Minor. The campaign’s realia are unusually concrete for this part of the poem — engines on the walls, a flooded trench, thirty thousand captives in a fortnight, and a shortfall of three hundred thousand dirhams in the pay chest.

E4.3Apologies and Gifts from Caesar

Caesar’s envoys come with gold and philosophers to beg pardon. The Shah scolds the young emperor but takes the tribute; Bozorgmehr adds a demand for a thousand lengths of gold-worked brocade. Anooshirvan returns in state to Tisfoon.

Two score philosophers from Rum drew near: Rum sends philosophers to sue for peace, which is not as odd as it looks: Anooshirvan’s court had a real name for Greek learning, and a group of Greek philosophers is said to have taken refuge with him, their return home provided for in a treaty with Rum. Ferdowsi’s Rum negotiates with the commodity the Shah is known to value.

A thousand pieces, gold-worked, finely dyed: What is new is the minister costing out the peace: the tribute must include a thousand pieces of gold-worked brocade on top of the gold. It is the most quietly professional thing Bozorgmehr does in the poem.

E4.4Anooshirvan Appoints Hormizd Heir

In his seventy-fourth year Anooshirvan looks for an heir among his four sons. He sets hidden watchers on the eldest, Hormizd, tells Bozorgmehr that Hormizd is his choice, and orders the Mobadan to examine the prince’s learning.

The Shah sent trusted watchers, out of sight: The secret agents who kept the Shah informed of every wrong in the realm (E3.3) are now turned on his own son. The Sasanian throne did not pass by simple seniority: the reigning king named his successor, and the priests and nobles confirmed the choice. Hormizd is eldest, but it is the surveillance and the examination that make him heir.

And let them test his learning through and through.”: The succession is settled by a viva voce. It is a striking idea of kingship — that the throne should go to whichever son answers best — and Ferdowsi gives the examination a chapter of its own. It is also the last unqualified good thing the poem says about Hormizd.

E4.5Hormizd Answers the Mobadan

Bozorgmehr puts a long string of questions to Hormizd and requires them answered in order. The prince answers each, and the court is delighted. The succession is written on Chinese paper, sealed, and given into a Mobad’s keeping.

Count each upon your hand, and each one keep: The test is memory before it is wisdom: some eighteen questions are put in one block and must be answered back in sequence, and Ferdowsi lets the sage say so. Held-and-answered question sets of this shape are a familiar form in Pahlavi wisdom books; here the exercise happens also to test the faculty a king most needs, holding many petitions in the head at once.

The Chinese paper dried beneath the breeze: Paper is Ferdowsi’s century, not Anooshirvan’s: there is no evidence the Sasanians used it, and a chancery of that court would have drawn such a document on parchment or leather. Silk is what the poem itself prefers — the parting counsel in the next chapter is written on silk, as is the safe-conduct at E5.15. ‘Chinese paper’ was the prestige grade in the poet’s own world, and it has reached back into the Sasanian record office.

E4.6Anooshirvan’s Parting Counsel to Hormizd

Anooshirvan’s testament, written on silk: rule justly, use no deceit, take counsel, relieve the poor. He then dictates his own funeral — a sealed painted palace, his body embalmed, an ivory throne, two months of mourning. He lives one more year.

Dress me in Kayanian royal mode: The Sasanian king asks to be buried in the manner of the Kayanians, and has the Sasanian code named in the next line as though the two were one usage. That claim on the legendary house is what holds Ferdowsi’s poem together as a single history; on kayāni and the line it descends from, see I, A5.4.

Embalm my corpse with camphor, as is due: What the Shah orders is hard to square with Zoroastrian practice as the poem reports it elsewhere, where a body is exposed and the bones are afterward gathered (on the dakhmeh and the ossuary, see I, B12.25 and I, B1.9). Here the corpse is packed with musk and camphor, throned, and shut into a painted hall no later king may open — closer to a pharaoh than to a dastur’s rule.

E4.7The Dream Foretelling Mohammad

Anooshirvan dreams of a sun rising from the Hijaz up a stair of forty steps, filling the world with light except his own hall. Bozorgmehr reads it: a prophet will come, the fires will fail, and an army from the Hijaz will end the line. The Shah dies.

Except the Shah’s own hall, still dark at home: The whole of Ferdowsi’s position is in this one line. A Muslim poet spends a lifetime on the Zoroastrian past, and when he brings the two halves of his loyalty into one image he lights the world from Arabia and leaves the palace he has been building for fifty thousand couplets in the dark. Nothing in the dream is argued; it is simply seen.

“The sacred Fire of Fars has died away: The going out of the great fire and the crying of the royal hall belong to the Muslim accounts of the Prophet’s birth, which is traditionally placed in Anooshirvan’s reign, and Ferdowsi brings them into the Shahnameh and pins them to the Shah’s last year. The king who swore by Azargashasp’s fire in E4.1 is told at the end of his life that the sacred fire of Fars has gone out.

Jamasp himself foretold this coming age: Bozorgmehr closes by citing a prophecy older than himself. Zoroastrian apocalyptic was attributed to Jamasp, Goshtasb’s sage, answering the king’s questions about the ages to come; on Jamasp at that court, see II, C6. The effect is to make the fall of Iran something the religion itself had always known.