The great stories

Jamshid’s pride costs him his glory, and Zahhak, tempted by Iblis, takes the throne with two serpents growing from his shoulders, fed each day on young men’s brains. A thousand years later a blacksmith who has lost his sons raises his apron as a…

Born white-haired and abandoned on a mountain, Zal is raised by the Simorgh. Grown to rule Zabulistan, he falls in love with Rudabeh, princess of Kabul and a descendant of Zahhak, and two families and a Shah must be won over before the lovers can marry.

Kay Kavus marches on Mazandaran and is blinded and captured by the White Div. Rostam rides to free him by the short and deadly road, and on it meets a lion, a desert, a dragon, a witch, a warlord and the Divs themselves. Told with 330 manga panels…

Hunting on the frontier, Rostam loses Rakhsh and finds a bride in Samangan. Years later the son he has never seen rides against Iran at the head of a Turanian army, and father and son meet on the field without knowing each other.

Kavus’s son passes through fire to prove his innocence, leads Iran’s army to Balkh, and keeps his word to Afrasiab when his father will not. Exiled in Turan, he marries Farangis and builds Siavash-Gard, until Garsivaz’s envy brings him to his death,…

A young Iranian knight crosses into Turan to hunt boar, and finds the daughter of Afrasiab at her spring feast. Betrayed by a jealous companion, he ends in a pit beneath a stone, until Rostam comes disguised as a merchant.

The brazen-bodied prince passes seven stages to storm the Brazen Hold, then is sent by his own father to bring Rostam to court in chains. Two heroes who should be allies meet on the Hirmand, and only the Simorgh’s tamarisk arrow can end it.

Shaghad, Rostam’s half-brother, plots with the king of Kabul to lure the hero to a hunting ground lined with hidden pits of spears. Rakhsh and Rostam fall together, and with his last strength Rostam pins his brother to a tree with a single arrow.…

Iskandar of Rum defeats Dara and takes the throne of Iran, then sets out to see the whole world: Hind and its wonders, Mecca and Mesr, Queen Kaydafa of Andalus, the City of Women, the Land of Darkness and the Fount of Life, the wall against Yajuj…

The last Parthian king rules at Rey when Babak of Pars, warned in a dream, gives his daughter to the shepherd Sasan, of the line of Dara. Their son Ardeshir flees Ardavan’s court with the slave-girl Golnar, overthrows the Parthians, loses and then…

Raised among the Arabs of Yemen, Bahram Goor wins his father’s throne by taking the crown from between two lions. The hunter-king then roams his realm in disguise, rewarding the generous and shaming the mean; routs the Khan of Chin with a daring…

Hormizd calls an old frontier general to stop the Turkish host of King Savah, and Bahram Chubin destroys it, killing Savah with an arrow. Shamed by his king with a spindle and a woman’s robe, he rebels, drives the young Khosrow Parviz to Rum, and…

Khosrow Parviz brings his first love, Shirin, to the palace against his nobles’ counsel and builds the wonders of his age: the Throne of Taqdis, the city of Madain, a court where Barbad sings. But injustice turns the chiefs against him, his son…

After Khosrow Parviz the throne passes through a run of short reigns, two of them queens’, until the young Yazdegard is crowned. Sa’ad’s Arab army advances; Rostam, son of Farrokhzad, foresees the end in the stars and falls at Qadisiyya. Yazdegard…