New NaqqaliSahm Dreams of His Son
Dreams and reproach force Sahm to seek the child. Reunion restores a father, but it also requires Zal to leave the mother who actually reared him.
The chapter in five texts
| Text | Chapter treatment and distinctive choices |
|---|---|
| F&R English | One hundred and one couplets retain fuller reproach, an early departure beat, maternal naming, speech-learning, the feather promise and gratitude to the Simorgh. A short camp transition is omitted. |
| Moscow | Pp 142–146 contain the dreams and reunion. Naming and speech-learning additions appear in the apparatus at p 144, while other stretches of the farewell are bracketed. |
| Mohl | Pp 111–115 print the fuller narrative that supports much of the English’s extent, including the Dastan explanation, language acquisition and praise of the bird. |
| Ganjoor | Sh2.52–121 supplies seventy reference couplets. Three late camp couplets have no separate English counterpart and are displayed as source-only. |
| Khaleghi | Pp 168–174 retain the reunion core. P 171’s apparatus records the fuller maternal naming and language-acquisition material; that differs from Mohl’s continuous presentation. |
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 chapter stands especially strongly in its treatment of attachment. Zal’s return to a father is also a painful leave-taking from a mother. Source-supported breadth gives the Simorgh agency, makes the son’s speech explicable and lets Sahm’s repentance remain incomplete but consequential.
Couplet commentary
Quoted text · evidence · interpretation1–8A dream joins already circulating news
The first dream brings a rider from Hind with news of the child. The father then consults the Mobads. Mohl pp 111–112 includes reference to caravan reports and the question of survival through heat and cold, beyond Ganjoor’s shorter consultation.
The English correctly lets dream and worldly report reinforce one another. The dream does not create Zal’s survival; it changes the father’s capacity to acknowledge a life that has continued without him.
9–17The sages hold a warrior accountable
The source’s reproach compares Sahm with animals that rear their young and accuses him of breaking goodness’s covenant. Mohl p 112 includes the fuller thanksgiving argument, whiteness-only qualification, command to search and assurance of divine preservation.
The English’s expanded counsel has printed support. The sages do not flatter the champion into self-forgiveness: they name his deed as a breach against an innocent child and require a practical change of conduct.
18–19A planned departure becomes action
Mohl p 112 states Sahm’s intention to hasten to Alborz the next day, then introduces the second night’s sleep. English 18 makes that intention an actual choice and ride before the second dream. Ganjoor passes directly from the reproach to sleep without this separate planning couplet.
The additional planning beat has a printed source, but the English advances intention into action. The later decisive approach remains intelligible after the renewed warning; no otherwise unreported return journey should be invented to reconcile the two. The distinction is local and can be explained while retaining the verse.
20–30A second dream attacks false standards
A youth appears with a great force and two wise attendants; one reproaches Sahm. The attack on white hair points to the father’s own whitening head and beard.
The reasoning is direct: the feature condemned in the infant already belongs to the condemning father. The English makes the moral contradiction audible without turning the dream figures into newly identified historical persons. Mount Hind belongs to the dream’s geography, not an assertion that Alborz has moved.
31–34From the nightmare to purposeful action
Sahm cries out in sleep, summons wise men and army chiefs, and hastens toward the child. Mohl p 113 adds fear that Time will teach him a harsher lesson.
The English turns anguish into movement. Reproach matters because it produces a search; emotion alone would not undo abandonment. The child remains explicitly guiltless as the father begins the attempt at repair.
35–40An inaccessible dwelling made of precious woods
The mountain reaches the Pleiades; the nest escapes Saturn’s harm, uses shiz, sandal and aloeswood, and rises toward Simak. Mohl p 113 additionally shows the youth moving like his father at the nest. English calls shiz “ebony.”
The celestial names measure an unimaginable height through the poem’s own sky. The wooden nest is contrasted with ordinary earth-and-water construction; English “nor a man” conveys the denial of human labor. “Ebony” is a concrete interpretive identification of shiz, not a separate timber named by the displayed Persian. The resemblance lets the father see kinship before he can recover it.
41–45Praise before an impossible ascent
Ganjoor gives the search for a road, then praise and prostration. The English places praise and recognition before renewed searching. Mohl p 113 likewise provides the fuller recognition of divine power and fruitless circling.
The small redistribution keeps the same causal predicament: a father cannot reach the child by martial strength. He has to acknowledge the limits of the power celebrated in the preceding accession chapter.
46–50A prayer still marked by doubt
The father asks divine help, conditionally identifying the youth as his own pure offspring rather than Ahriman’s. Mohl p 113 includes the fuller penitence and answered-prayer transition; its رنگین کمان, rainbow, also supports English 46 against Ganjoor’s روشن روان, luminous soul.
Sahm’s prayer is imperfect. He seeks forgiveness while still using the suspicion that first made him reject the infant. The English preserves the conditional instead of improving his moral progress beyond what the scene permits.
51–59The foster-mother and the name DastanNaming explanation supported
Mohl p 113 gives the Simorgh’s observation of Sahm; it also expands her maternal declaration and explains Dastan through wordplay on the father’s guile or stratagem. Khaleghi p 171 preserves that fuller naming material in the apparatus rather than its short main-text address. Ganjoor has no separate naming explanation here.
The English is supported in assigning the name to the Simorgh and relating it to the father’s deed. This is the tale’s literary name-explanation, not a claim to establish historical etymology. “Mother” identifies care performed, a relationship the return cannot simply cancel.
60–66Zal’s first answer is grief at another separation
Ganjoor gives his fear that the Simorgh has tired of him and his nest-as-throne, wings-as-crown response. Mohl p 114 prints the fuller account of learning human speech from the bird and the child’s gratitude next after God. Khaleghi p 171 records speech-learning verses in the apparatus.
The English’s articulate Zal is not an unexplained contradiction with his isolation. The fuller text explicitly supplies the means of learning. More important, he does not greet a human father by disowning the nonhuman family: his first concern is whether his foster-mother still loves him.
67–70The Simorgh offers a future, not expulsion
The reference invites him to experience the crown and human royal custom. Mohl p 114 adds that separation is not hatred and that his staying would please her, though royal destiny is preferable for him.
The fuller English preserves the foster-mother’s generosity: she releases someone she would rather keep. Her counsel concerns his place in human society; it need not be taken as a prophecy that Zal will become Shah of Iran.
71–76The feather keeps care available
Ganjoor’s feather, flame, immediate arrival and promise of safe return are all retained; English moves the retrospective wing-and-brood reminder to the close.
The feather offers continuity of attachment rather than a replacement for thought or human learning. Its power is stated in the story’s supernatural terms. English 73’s “when you speak my name” supplements the specified act of burning the feather; the Persian does not make a spoken invocation an additional condition.
77–84The foster-mother delivers, the father gives thanks
The flight and Sahm’s prostration are shared. Mohl pp 114–115 additionally prints the extended address to the bird as a helper of the helpless and a good judge.
The English’s “queen of birds” states her sovereign dignity within the address. The father’s blessing now recognizes a goodness he could not perform himself. His gratitude acknowledges an actual debt to the bird, not merely a marvel he happened to witness.
85–89Whiteness remains after recognition
The source names lion-like limbs, a radiant face, white lashes, dark eyes, coral lips and red cheeks. Mohl p 115 adds that only the white hair invited reproach.
The hair is not changed to make acceptance possible. The language of “fault” and suitability for a crown records the father’s renewed appraisal, against a narrator who already called the abandoned child innocent. The English retains the precise distinction between pale lashes and dark eyes.
90–96An oath that will matter beyond this reunion
Sahm swears never again to harden himself against the son and promises to seek his wishes in good or ill. Clothing and descent follow. Mohl p 115 explicitly distinguishes Sahm’s Zal name from the Simorgh’s Dastan.
The promise carries forward into later conflicts; it is not a disposable statement of present happiness. Robes make the return to society visible, but they cannot alone settle the earlier injury. Two names preserve two relationships rather than competing claims that one must erase the other.
97–100The army welcomes the recovered son
The army’s open-hearted reception, elephant, indigo-like dust, drums and bells follow the digital sequence.
The public that Sahm feared would ridicule him now celebrates the child’s return. The English keeps that corrective reception, while “indigo dust” preserves the dark color-comparison rather than proving colored powder was deliberately scattered.
101A journey compressed at its close
Ganjoor inserts three couplets of nightfall, camp and the next sunrise before arrival in the city. The source-only row retains them. English moves directly from the joyful journey to entry.
This is a modest compression of travel time, not a claim that the party never stopped. Preserving the omitted transition in the display lets a reader see the difference without expanding or revising the English.