Notes · Book B3Kay Qobad

B3.1Kay Qobad Takes the Throne

Kay Qobad is crowned and at once leads the army against Afrasiab. The Iranian battle order is set out with Rostam in the van, the Kaviani banner flies, and Gharan cuts through the Turanian ranks and kills Shamasas.

The Kaveh standard streamed before the fight: The blacksmith’s apron of A5.5 has become a many-colored royal banner. Ferdowsi tells there that each new king added jewels to it, so its red, yellow and violet are the colors of silk and gems accumulated over generations.

Then cried, “Gharan am I!” as blood ran red: Heroes shout their names as they strike, so that friend and foe know who has done the deed. Name and fame (nām) are what a warrior fights for. Later in this volume Rostam’s refusal to tell Sohrab his name will have terrible consequences.

B3.2Rostam Fights Afrasiab

Rostam asks Zal how to recognize Afrasiab, then charges him, seizes him by the belt and lifts him from the saddle, but the belt snaps and the Turanian king escapes. Kay Qobad leads a general attack, and the Turanians flee back towards the Jihun.

The girdle snapped and slipped from Rostam’s hand: The first meeting of the poem’s two great antagonists ends in a near miss, and Afrasiab will escape Rostam again and again. It is not Rostam who finally brings him down but the hermit Hom, who seizes him, and Kay Khosrow, who kills him, at the end of the Great War.

Earth became six and heaven became eight: One of the most celebrated hyperboles in Persian: of the seven earths, one layer was kicked up by the horses’ hooves as dust and became an eighth heaven. Rhetoricians have quoted the couplet for centuries as the model of epic exaggeration.

B3.3Afrasiab Goes to His Father

Afrasiab returns to Pashang and blames him for the war. He describes Rostam’s terrifying strength, lists the Turanian champions lost, confesses the shame of killing Aghriras, and urges his father to make peace and keep to Fereydoon’s old frontiers.

the fault was yours alone: Afrasiab, who began the war with such relish in B1.2, now blames his father for it and argues for peace. One encounter with Rostam has done what Aghriras’s wisdom could not. Ferdowsi’s Afrasiab sees clearly when he is frightened, and forgets as soon as he is not.

What eye has seen is stronger far than tale: ‘Hearing is not like seeing’ is a Persian proverb, and the thought is universal. In Herodotus, King Candaules says that men trust their ears less than their eyes, and his story too ends in ruin.

B3.4Pashang Sues Kay Qobad for Peace

Pashang writes to Kay Qobad offering peace on the basis of Fereydoon’s ancient division of the world, with the Jihun as the frontier. Qobad accepts and the Turanians withdraw. Despite Rostam’s protest, the Shah rewards his champions and gives Rostam the rule of Nimruz.

He wrote an Artang-like and splendid scroll: Artang (or Arzhang) was the illustrated book of Mani, the third-century founder of Manichaeism, whom Persian legend remembered above all as a painter. A letter ‘like Artang’ is a gorgeously decorated one. Ferdowsi tells Mani’s story in the Sasanian part of the poem. The Div Arzhang of B4.4 bears the same name.

From khargah toward Mawarannahr’s side: Mawarannahr is Arabic for ‘what lies beyond the river’, the Muslim geographers’ name for Transoxiana, the land beyond the Jihun (the Oxus, today’s Amu Darya). Pashang is using the vocabulary of Ferdowsi’s own day. The river really was the old frontier between Iran and the steppe.

Pashang, sprung from Fereydoon’s noble line: Easy to forget: the Turanian kings are Fereydoon’s descendants through Tur, and so cousins of the Iranian kings. The long war between Iran and Turan is a family feud, begun when Fereydoon divided the world among his three sons and Tur and Salm murdered Iraj.

B3.5Kay Qobad Goes to Istakhr of Pars

Kay Qobad makes Istakhr in Pars his capital, proclaims a reign of justice and spends ten years touring his realm and building. After a hundred years on the throne he calls his eldest son, Kay Kavus, warns him to be just and not to trust fortune, and dies.

Istakhr then shone, the seat of Kayanian might: Istakhr, a few miles from Persepolis, was a real city and the home of the Sasanian family, who had served its temple of Anahita before they became kings. It was still a notable town in early Islamic times but declined afterwards, and only ruins remain.

First Kay Kavus, then Kay Arash by name: The list of sons is very old. The Avesta names a line of kavis that includes Kavi Usadhan (Kavus), Kavi Arshan (Arash) and Kavi Pisinah (Pashin). Of these, only Kavus has a story in the Shahnameh, and it is a long one.