New NaqqaliFereydoon Binds Zahhak
The city helps defeat its former ruler, but victory does not authorize an immediate killing. The settlement ends in constrained vengeance and an ethical question about what makes a Fereydoon.
The chapter in five texts
| Text | Chapter treatment and distinctive choices |
|---|---|
| F&R English | Eighty-four couplets move from civic resistance to capture, twice-restrained vengeance and remote imprisonment, then a substantial ethical coda and three-couplet closing synthesis. |
| Moscow | Printed pp 74–78 preserve the fighting and binding. The final page’s apparatus refers to transmitted moral conclusions beyond the shorter main endpoint. |
| Mohl | Printed pp 54–57 supply fuller battle images and a long ethical close, including humanly achieved Fereydoon-like goodness. |
| Ganjoor | Sh12 has 69 couplets and ends at remote imprisonment. It lacks the printed moral coda; several action passages are redistributed in the English. |
| Khaleghi | Printed pp 82–86 retain the public settlement and an ethical coda, including justice and giving. Its grouping of achievements differs locally from Mohl, and its five-hundred-year close is not separately reproduced here. |
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 narrative gives the townspeople a share in victory and then returns them to work. Soroush’s repeated intervention keeps just resistance from becoming unlimited personal vengeance. The tyrant’s binding, suffering and exclusion remain fully visible.
The ethical coda has printed support and makes human conduct, rather than magical substance, the basis of Fereydoon’s exemplary force. The final English synthesis gathers those themes without a separate Persian counterpart for every added couplet; the presentation labels that openly.
Couplet commentary
Quoted text · evidence · interpretation1–7A counterattack meets armed townspeople
Ganjoor z12 1–9 and 12–13; Mohl I p 54; Moscow I pp 74–75; Khaleghi I pp 82–83. English moves the younger and older townspeople ahead of the falling missiles.
The English compresses the Persian nightfall image into the rapid preparations. Zahhak approaches by indirect routes, but Fereydoon’s army hears and blocks him. Dismounting belongs to the narrow fighting ground. Townspeople join because of Zahhak’s violence; the defense is not credited solely to the invading army. The shifted order introduces the civic participants before their actions.
8–11The city fights from aboveFuller battle imagery supported
Ganjoor z12 10–11, 17; Mohl I p 54 supplies additional roaring-mountain, weary-earth, cloud and spear-against-stone images.
Bricks, stones, swords and arrows differ in their points of origin, which the English keeps legible. Hail makes the volleys overwhelming. The additional English battle imagery has support in Mohl rather than being an entirely new decorative battle. The hyperboles register tumult; they are not measurements of literal geological damage.
12–14The fire-temple proclamation and its sharper English form
Ganjoor z12 14–18; Mohl I p 54; Moscow I p 75; Khaleghi I p 83.
The Persian proclamation makes a startling concession: the people would obey even a beast as king, but refuse Zahhak. The English replaces that concessive logic with backing the right and rejecting the serpent-shouldered ruler. The political refusal survives, while the source’s deliberately extreme comparison does not. The voice rises from the fire-temple, an explicit location that should not be generalized into an unspecified crowd.
15–21A disguised assailant seeks the women’s blood
Ganjoor z12 19–26; Mohl I pp 54–55; Moscow I pp 75–76; Khaleghi I pp 83–84.
Iron conceals the tyrant’s identity as he climbs with the long kamand. The Persian shast-yazi expression is retained through the English’s sixty-zara measurement, without pretending it is a securely converted modern length. Shahrnaz’s day-like cheeks and night-like hair precede her curse. Jealous rage displaces concern for life and throne. The drawn blade is directed at the women, so their peril should remain explicit even though Fereydoon interrupts it.
22–26A first blow, then a prohibition
Ganjoor z12 27–31; Mohl I p 55; Moscow I p 76; Khaleghi I p 84.
The gorz breaks the helmet, and Soroush forbids killing because the appointed time has not come. The English’s raised second blow dramatizes the moment of restraint; it is an inferred poised action rather than a separately specified blow in the digital source. The instruction is binding and remote confinement, cut off from kin. It does not announce forgiveness or prove that the captive is already dead.
27–30Lion-hide bonds and a new royal seat
Ganjoor z12 32–34; Mohl I p 55; Moscow I p 76; Khaleghi I p 84.
The leather is specifically lion-hide, and the elephant comparison tests the binding’s strength. Hands and waist are restrained. The English’s two couplets let that material severity register before the enthronement. Casting out the former custom signals a change of rule; it is not evidence that every later institutional problem has already been solved.
31–37Demobilization and the allocation of work
Ganjoor z12 35–41; Mohl I pp 55–56; Moscow I pp 76–77; Khaleghi I pp 84–85.
The victorious ruler asks people to lay down war equipment and return to their occupations. Distinguishing warrior from artisan is the source’s order of functions, not a new English claim about modern professional licensing. The additional English repetition makes the public instruction accessible. The captive’s incapacitation supplies the stated reason why civilians can resume work; that causal link keeps the speech from becoming a disconnected maxim.
38–45Receiving gifts while acknowledging the giver of power
Ganjoor z12 42–50; Mohl I p 56; Moscow I p 77; Khaleghi I p 85.
The townsmen bring gifts, and Fereydoon responds according to their standing. His acknowledgment that God raised him from Alborz and gave deliverance counters Jamshid’s earlier appropriation of all good. The English distinguishes the human hand holding the gorz from the divine beneficence it acknowledges. The reply to a gift is good action, not merely verbal self-congratulation.
46–50A ruler must move onEnglish 49 is a local elaboration
Ganjoor z12 51–54; Mohl I p 56; Moscow I p 77; Khaleghi I p 85.
Fereydoon’s worldwide responsibility explains leaving a welcoming city. Drums accompany departure, and the army takes no share of its wealth. English 49 adds a public demand to display the captive: no separate counterpart has been identified in the inspected main passages. It is plausible staging but should remain labeled as English elaboration. “No spoil” is a fair interpretation of taking no portion, rather than a claim that no individual ever possessed property.
51–54A camel, Shir-khvan and the narrator’s old world
Ganjoor z12 55–57; Mohl I p 56; Moscow I p 77; Khaleghi I p 85.
The once-supreme king is carried bound across a camel, not riding in royal state. Shir-khvan is retained as a received place-name; no exact modern identification is asserted. The turn toward the world’s age belongs to the narrator. English footprints in grass is an added mortality image that renders the passing of ages without becoming a new event on the route.
55–58Soroush must restrain the victor again
Ganjoor z12 58–62; Mohl I p 56; Moscow I pp 77–78; Khaleghi I p 85.
A second impulse toward killing prompts a second intervention. The repetition shows that the initial order has not simply dissolved the hero’s desire for vengeance. The source’s call to take only indispensable companions becomes the English’s tried few. It does not authorize importing a later ritual group or a specified headcount. Damavand now supplies the named destination already forecast in the dream.
59–66Imprisonment rather than execution
Ganjoor z12 63–69; Mohl I pp 56–57; Moscow I p 78; Khaleghi I p 85.
The cave’s unseen bottom makes removal from ordinary society emphatic. Heavy nails or spikes secure the body where the brain is not; the English generalizes the apparatus into spikes and chains and does not reproduce that anatomical precaution. Blood and hanging mark prolonged punishment. “The name … sank beneath the clay” is disgrace and disappearance from rule, not a narration of death that would contradict Soroush’s prohibition.
67–70The moral coda survives outside Ganjoor’s endpointPrinted coda retained
Mohl I p 57 and Khaleghi I p 85 print the goodness, treasure and remembered-speech coda. Ganjoor’s Zahhak poem body ends with imprisonment. Moscow I p 78 refers to a transmitted moral conclusion in its apparatus.
These lines should not be declared unsupported simply because the digital section ends earlier. The English moves from collective responsibility to mortality and the survival of words. “Your words live on” gives the source’s remembrance a natural English form. The coda’s function is to make the story a test of conduct after the spectacle of punishment, not to append another adventure.
71–73Be Fereydoon through justice and generosity
Mohl I p 57 and Khaleghi I p 85: Fereydoon is not an angel or made of musk and ambergris; justice and giving made his goodness, and the addressee can be Fereydoon by doing likewise.
The two source couplets become three English couplets, separating the ordinary human material, the achieved reputation and the invitation to imitate. Musk and ambergris deny magical composition, not the fragrance of a particular garment. The English’s open hand makes dahesh concrete. This is the coda’s strongest distinction between inherited royal wonder and conduct available to the reader.
74–77Three achievements redistributed
Khaleghi I p 85 and Mohl I p 57 enumerate binding Zahhak, dealing with foolish or wicked oppressors and avenging the father; their local order differs.
The English places filial revenge before clearing wicked hands, while the displayed Khaleghi block places the public redress first. Grouping prevents false one-to-one verbal claims. “A wounded world a second birth” is an English renewal image for cleansing the earth. The passage credits action, while the subsequent mortality reflection refuses to exempt the good king from time.
78–81The good king too must leave
Mohl I p 57; Khaleghi I pp 85–86. The printed close explicitly gives five hundred years and relinquishment of place, then the world’s loveless nurture and the shepherd-and-flock comparison.
The English retains departure and regret while not reproducing the five-hundred-year number here. That duration must not be confused with Zahhak’s thousand or the forty years remaining at the dream. Worldly nurture that later destroys returns to A4’s close. The shepherd and flock make mortality universal across rulers and ruled, not proof that their conduct has equal moral value.
82–84A closing English synthesisEnglish concluding synthesis
No additional separate Persian couplets corresponding to these three are identified in the inspected close. Their materials recall the preceding treasure, mortality and remembered-goodness passages.
The final three English couplets gather the coda’s themes into a luminous name and lasting deeds. They add no new action to Fereydoon’s story, but they are a closing synthesis rather than three further independently matched Persian couplets. Leaving the Persian cell empty and naming that status is more informative than manufacturing a source equivalent.