New NaqqaliZahhak Is Tempted by Iblis
The tempter changes profession as he tightens his hold: adviser, cook and physician. Nourishment becomes dependence, bodily transformation and a demand for human victims.
The chapter in five texts
| Text | Chapter treatment and distinctive choices |
|---|---|
| F&R English | Forty-three couplets trace kitchen access, growing appetite, the shoulder kisses and the false medical prescription. Longer closing questions expose the scheme’s ultimate aim. |
| Moscow | Printed pp 46–48 include the core menu and transformation. The dawn image is preserved in the apparatus, while the diet opening is less absolute than Mohl’s. |
| Mohl | Printed pp 31–32 support the plant-only diet, intention to kill living creatures and jeweled dawn, alongside the four-day menu and serpent narrative. |
| Ganjoor | Sh3 couplets 6–45 supply this chapter’s reference. Its first five couplets occur in A4.2; it lacks the dawn and Mohl’s stronger vegetarian opening. |
| Khaleghi | Printed pp 49–51 retain the dawn in the main text. Its opening description of nourishment differs from Mohl’s plant-only account. |
Parallel text
English left · Persian right. Ganjoor is the reference except where a row names a printed source. Select a number to open the relevant note. G identifiers distinguish digital sections across chapter boundaries.
Narrative and poetic form
The succession of foods creates a measured approach to the sudden bodily horror. The English preserves the keys, the menus, the kiss, the failed cutting and the false prescription, so the episode remains a chain of actions rather than an allegorical summary.
Mohl’s stronger dietary account and the printed dawn image explain conspicuous differences from Ganjoor. The expanded final questions are interpretive pacing; they grow from questions already present in Persian. The commentary distinguishes such supported development from literal verbal equivalence.
Couplet commentary
Quoted text · evidence · interpretation1–4The cook gains institutional access
Ganjoor j3 6–10; Mohl I p 31; Moscow I p 47; Khaleghi I p 49. Two Persian approach-and-profession couplets combine in English 2.
The disguise is a capable young adviser and cook, not merely an apparition offering an isolated dish. The keys transfer control of the royal kitchen. The English makes that grant plain, showing how flattery becomes access to an institution that sustains the king’s body.
“By king’s decree” makes the chain of authority explicit. This does not erase the steward’s participation; the English retains the steward as the person handing over the keys.
5–7Vegetarian beginnings and altered natureMohl supports the stronger diet claim
Ganjoor j3 11 has the less absolute statement that nourishment or prepared food was not abundant. Moscow I p 47 and Khaleghi I p 49 print that reading. Mohl I p 31 instead says that people ate nothing but plants, then gives Ahriman’s intention to kill living creatures.
The absolute “No flesh was slain” follows the implication of Mohl’s plant-only diet rather than the wording of the other three main-text presentations. This is a meaningful version difference, not grounds for silently correcting the English against Ganjoor.
“Change men’s nature” and “plant a darker hunger” interpret the tempter’s intended moral redirection through diet. Mohl makes the intention to kill living creatures explicit; the English’s change of human nature and need is a broader psychological interpretation, not the wording of that additional couplet. The passage is mythic narrative; it is not evidence that the poet condemns every instance of meat eating.
8–10Blood, boldness and obedience
Ganjoor j3 12–14; Mohl I p 31; Moscow I p 47; Khaleghi I p 49.
Beast and bird become prepared meat, then blood-feeding is compared to raising a lion. The culinary process is directed toward boldness and captivity of the heart, both of which the English preserves. “With blood” need not imply that a separate cup of raw blood is served; the dishes just described supply the immediate context.
The goal is obedience to Iblis. The sequence converts nourishment into dependence and makes appetite part of the conspiracy already established by the oath. It should not be reduced to a general contrast between vegetarian purity and bodily strength.
11–14Eggs, praise and the next promise
Ganjoor j3 15–19; Mohl I p 31; Moscow I p 47; Khaleghi I p 49. Two Persian promise couplets become English 13.
Egg yolks begin the staged menu, and the source gives them a strengthening or health-sustaining effect. The translation’s “nourishing” is therefore grounded rather than an attempt to excuse the cook. A useful dish can serve a destructive design.
The promise of tomorrow follows praise for today. The compressed speech keeps that exchange brisk while the following night’s planning reveals the manipulation concealed behind service.
15–17A yellow ruby dawn and the second courseDawn has printed support
The dawn couplet is printed in Mohl I p 31 and Khaleghi I p 49 main text; Moscow I p 47 records it in apparatus note 7. It is absent between Ganjoor j3 19 and 20. The birds and Zahhak’s attachment follow in j3 20–21.
The yellow ruby against the blue vault is source-supported celestial imagery, not an English ornamental insertion. The translation makes the dome’s blue into the sky and its yellow jewel into sunrise without adding a second event.
White pheasant and partridge distinguish the second menu. Zahhak’s foolish surrender of affection links taste to trust. Keeping that link is more consequential than reproducing the exact Persian order of the two bird names.
18–20The four-day menu
Ganjoor j3 22–24; Mohl I pp 31–32; Moscow I p 47; Khaleghi I pp 49–50.
The third day offers bird and lamb; the fourth, the back or loin of a young bovine. Poultry and tender veal make the culinary progression clear for English readers. The source’s saffron, rosewater, musk and aged wine are retained, keeping the luxury historically and culturally particular within the poem’s world.
“Red” specifies the wine’s color beyond the inspected wording. That small addition supplies sensuous texture without changing the menu’s action. The narrative’s force lies in increasing elaboration and the appetite for the cook’s favor.
21–25A reward redirected toward the body
Ganjoor j3 25–30; Mohl I p 32; Moscow I pp 47–48; Khaleghi I p 50. English 21 combines astonishment and the offer of reward.
The cook refuses the obvious material reward and claims that the king’s face feeds his soul. The source already uses the language of nourishment for this flattery, so the English preserves a deliberate echo of the meals.
The request to kiss both shoulders and press eyes and face against them carries courtly abasement into intimate bodily access. “Embrace” helps English flow but should be understood through the specified kisses rather than as a separate physical rite.
26–30Consent, disappearance and serpents
Ganjoor j3 31–35; Mohl I p 32; Moscow I p 48; Khaleghi I p 50. The actual kissing, disappearance, unprecedented marvel and snakes are grouped across English 28–30.
Zahhak grants the request without understanding its hidden commerce or scheme. The English’s “Off guard” renders that vulnerability compactly. Kissing precedes disappearance, and the snakes then grow from the shoulders; this sequence remains clear despite redistribution across couplets.
“Beneath the ground” makes the disappearance more spatially explicit than the source’s becoming unseen at or into the earth. “Black and twisting” gives the new bodies motion. The paired shoulders and two serpents remain the governing symmetry.
31–34Cutting fails; learned medicine fails
Ganjoor j3 36–39; Mohl I p 32; Moscow I p 48; Khaleghi I p 50.
The tree-branch simile is essential: cutting provokes regrowth rather than a final cure. The English retains it, making the failure imaginable without supplying a new biological explanation.
The physicians gather and try their arts but do not know a remedy. Their failure prepares Iblis’s new claim to expertise. It does not prove that all healing is fraudulent; Jamshid’s earlier medicine was counted among beneficial arts.
35–39The physician’s decree and false cure
Ganjoor j3 40–43; Mohl I p 32; Moscow I p 48; Khaleghi I pp 50–51. One Persian brain-feeding couplet expands into English 38–39.
Iblis now borrows learned composure and the authority of what must be. “Written by decree” interprets budani, the destined or inevitable event, without requiring that the narrator endorse the impostor’s fatalism.
Feeding the snakes is presented first as soothing them and then as a way they might die. The English separates the human-brain prescription from the false hope, exposing the contradiction’s persuasive shape. “From day to day” anticipates a continuing supply; the particular number of daily victims is not specified here and should not be imported from the following reign.
40–43The narrator asks what the scheme means
Ganjoor j3 44–45; Mohl I p 32; Moscow I p 48; Khaleghi I p 51. Two Persian couplets occupy four English couplets.
The source itself interrupts the story to ask what the devil seeks and suggests depopulation of the world. The English’s questions and repeated “Perhaps” expand that interpretive turn rather than adding a wholly new moral address.
The additional space distinguishes the immediate prescription from its ultimate aim. “Thin mankind” and “emptied of human life” describe stages of the same imagined extermination, not two rival explanations. The modal phrasing preserves the narrator’s conjectural manner while leaving the horror legible.