New NaqqaliThe Mobadan Question Zal
Six riddles test whether the young warrior can see ordinary time, celestial alternation and mortality beneath images of trees, horses, travelers and cities.
The chapter in five texts
| Text | Chapter treatment and distinctive choices |
|---|---|
| F&R English | Twenty-six couplets retain all six riddles and their final interpretive challenge. |
| Moscow | Pp 219–220 retain the riddle sequence, with local alternative and additional lines in the apparatus. |
| Mohl | Pp 165–166 supply the full questions in the received narrative order. |
| Ganjoor | Sh20.2–27 supplies 26 couplets after its secrecy order has closed A8.17. |
| Khaleghi | The questions can be consulted within pp 247–250. |
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 English preserves the distinction among the six puzzles, including the two different tree images. The commentary prepares their answers without pretending that one rigid modern scientific scheme explains every image.
Couplet commentary
Quoted text · evidence · interpretation1–6Twelve trees with thirty branches
The court assembles for the questions; the first describes twelve cypresses each bearing thirty branches in the Persian count.
The English retains the riddle’s controlled numbers. This is a schematic calendrical image, not a complete modern calendar specification; the answer will name months and days without setting out every intercalary or additional day.
7–11Racing horses and a vanishing rider
The white/crystal and black/pitch horses cannot catch each other; the thirty riders lose one and become thirty again.
The English preserves the two distinct puzzles rather than treating both as the same day/night image. The first concerns alternation; the second concerns the lunar count’s recurring variation.
12–14The reaper has not yet been named
A sickle-bearing man cuts dry and green grass without stopping. English already says he hears no plea, a detail developed in the later Persian answer.
This anticipation strengthens the menace without revealing the answer. It transfers an explanatory attribute into the question, so it should be described as redistribution rather than a new seventh riddle.
15–18A bird shifts vitality between two trees
The bird rests alternately on two cypresses; one flourishes while the other dries.
The English preserves the deliberately puzzling dawn/evening language. The answer’s larger half-year pattern should not be flattened into the simpler claim that these are only two trees representing one ordinary day.
19–24A forgotten stronghold and a chosen thorn-land
People leave a secure mountain city, settle a thorny plain, build high and forget the first place until upheaval creates need for it.
The English gives the riddle a miniature narrative. The former city is not identified as a specific historical fortress, and its destruction is not narrated: it is the chosen lower settlement whose security collapses.
25–26Interpretation must make the hidden visible
The challenge asks for the meaning behind the veil and compares successful disclosure to turning black earth into musk.
The English’s closing demand keeps wisdom as interpretive action. The physical impossibility is a metaphor for insight’s value, not a seventh practical task in chemistry.