Notes · Book A9The Birth and Early Feats of Rostam; Manuchehr’s Closing Counsel

A9.1A Hero Is Born

Rudabeh’s pregnancy brings her near death. Zal burns the Simorgh’s feather, and the bird tells him to have a skilled Mobad drug Rudabeh with wine and deliver the child through her side. Rostam is born, a silk effigy of him delights Sahm, and the boy grows prodigiously.

Cut through the flank of that tall cypress deep: Rostam’s birth is often cited as one of the earliest literary descriptions of a Caesarean delivery, complete with anaesthetic, suturing and a healing salve. The Roman writer Pliny claimed that the first of the Caesars was named for having been cut (caesus) from his mother’s womb.

She said; and Rostam was the name of her son: Rudabeh’s cry, rastam, ‘I am set free’, gives the child his name. It is a poet’s etymology, not a linguist’s. Scholars derive the name from an older Iranian compound, often explained as ‘grown tall’ or ‘strong of stature’, which suits the hero no worse.

A9.2Sahm Comes to Meet Rostam

Sahm comes to Zabul to see his grandson and finds him enthroned on an elephant. Rostam asks for arms, a month of feasting follows, and the drunken Mehrab boasts. Before leaving, Sahm counsels Zal to be just and loyal and says that he feels his own end approaching.

When Mehr began, on Ormozd’s opening day: Each day of the old Iranian month bore a divine name (see A5.6), and the first was always Ormozd, God himself. Mehr, named for Mithra, is the seventh month and falls in autumn; its festival, Mehregan, was second only to Nowruz.

Zahhak’s old custom I shall bring to birth: A drunken joke with an edge. Mehrab boasts that with Rostam at his side he will revive his tyrant ancestor’s ways, which is exactly what Manuchehr feared (A8.11). Zal and Sahm laugh, and so, presumably, does the reader.

A9.3Rostam Slays the White Elephant

Woken by cries that the white elephant is loose, the boy Rostam breaks through the gate and kills it with one blow of Sahm’s gorz. Zal then sends him to avenge Nariman, killed besieging the impregnable fortress on Mount Sepand, by entering it disguised as a salt merchant.

Avenge Nariman’s blood, which none atone: On Nariman as an epithet of Keresaspa that grew into an ancestor, see A7.1.

Like Mount Bistoon it trembled at the blow: Bistoon (Bisotun) is the great cliff near Kermanshah that carries Darius the Great’s trilingual inscription. In later Persian romance, above all Nezami’s, the lover Farhad hews through its rock for Shirin, and the mountain became a byword for the immovable.

A9.4Rostam Goes to Mount Sepand

Rostam hides his gorz and his men’s weapons among camel-loads of salt and is welcomed into the fortress. By night he kills its lord and garrison, and at dawn he breaks into a domed treasure-house heaped with gold and jewels.

Within the loads of salt his gorz concealed: Warriors hidden in a trader’s goods: readers will think of the Trojan Horse and of Ali Baba’s forty thieves in their oil jars.

Tahamtan brought his gorz upon his head: Tahamtan, ‘mighty-bodied’, is Rostam’s commonest epithet, and here it appears for the first time. From now on it can stand for his name alone.

From Thara to Thurayya light prevailed: An Arabic idiom, min al-tharā ilā al-thurayyā, ‘from the soil to the Pleiades’: from the lowest to the highest, everywhere.

A9.5Rostam Proudly Writes His Father

Rostam reports his victory and the fortress’s immense treasure to Zal. Zal replies with delight, sends thousands of camels for the spoil and orders the fort burned. Rostam sets Mount Sepand ablaze and returns to a joyful welcome from his parents.

Who sets Nahid, Bahram, and Mehr to turn: The Persian names of the planets preserve old Iranian divinities. Nahid (Venus) is Anahita, goddess of the waters; Bahram (Mars) is Verethraghna, god of victory; Mehr, the sun, is Mithra. Many centuries after the gods lost their worship, they still rode the sky.

Five hundred thousand kharvar there I found: A kharvār is literally a ‘donkey-load’. It remained a unit of weight in Iran into modern times, reckoned at about three hundred kilograms. Half a million donkey-loads of silver and gold is Rostam’s way of saying ‘beyond counting’.

A9.6Zal Proudly Writes His Father

Zal sends Sahm news of Rostam’s exploit, with gifts. Sahm rejoices and replies that a lion’s cub, however gently reared, will show its father’s nature. The poet then turns to Manuchehr’s last days.

Take up a lion-cub still young and mild: The same parable appears in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, where a lion cub raised as a household pet grows up to slaughter the flock. There it is an image of ruin brought into the house. Sahm tells it with pride: the cub’s nature is Rostam’s glory.

A9.7Manuchehr’s Last Counsel to His Son

At a hundred and twenty, warned by his astrologers, Manuchehr gives his son Nohzar his last counsel: the throne is wind, and only a good name endures. He foretells the coming of Moses, war with Pashang’s son from Turan and Rostam’s rise as avenger, then dies peacefully.

Then Nohzar came before his father’s sight: Nohzar’s name goes back to the Avestan Naotara, a princely family. His sons Tus and Gostaham will be leading figures in the wars to come. His reign, which opens the next book, will be short and disastrous.

Then Moses as a prophet shall appear: Muslim universal historians, Tabari among them, fitted Iranian legend to biblical history by making Moses a contemporary of Manuchehr. The prophecy reflects that scheme.

From Pashang’s son shall bitter harm be bred: The first shadow of Afrasiab, son of Pashang, king of Turan: the great enemy of Iran for much of the poem, Avestan Frangrasyan. This Pashang is not the Pashang of A6, Manuchehr’s own father.