Notes · Book B9The Story of Siavash

B9.1The Prelude

Ferdowsi opens the tale with advice to poets: shape your work with care and submit it to learned judges. Now fifty-eight, he reflects on age, death and the harvest of words, then turns to the Dehqan’s ancient story.

Now fifty-eight full years have passed me by: One of the poet’s personal asides, which are scattered through the Shahnameh like dates in a diary. If he was born, as is usually thought, around 940, he was writing this preface in the late 990s, deep into his thirty years’ labor on the poem. Elsewhere he speaks of old age with more bitterness; here the tone is calm.

I hope to plant a tree that still shall bear / Its fruit when I no longer breathe the air: The hope that the poem will outlive its maker runs through the Shahnameh and reaches its height in the epilogue, where Ferdowsi claims to have raised a palace of verse that no wind or rain can harm. The tree was well planted: the Story of Siavash became the best-loved tragedy in the poem.

From the dehqan I draw this ancient thread: The thread is very old indeed. Siavash is Kavi Syavarshan in the Avesta, where his son prays for strength to avenge his murder on Frangrasyan (Afrasiab). On the laments and rites for Siavash that survived long after, see B9.61.

B9.2The Mother of Siavash

Hunting near the Turanian border, Tus and Giv find a beautiful girl who has fled her drunken father and claims descent from Garsivaz and Fereydoon. They quarrel over her, and Kavus settles the dispute by taking her into his own women’s hall.

Among the trees a lovely maiden stood: Siavash’s mother is never named in the Shahnameh. She steps out of a forest on the frontier and leaves the story a few pages later (B9.5), like a figure from a folk tale. Her origin matters: through her, the most admired of Iranian princes has Turanian blood, and he will end his days in Turan.

I trace my line to Garsivaz of fame: Garsivaz is Afrasiab’s brother, and he will become the villain of this story. The girl’s claim makes her kin to the royal house of Turan, which descends from Fereydoon through his son Tur. Siavash is thus related by blood to the family that will destroy him.

Then Tus declared: “It was my eye that spied: Two captains quarrel over a captive woman until the king takes her for himself: readers of the Iliad will think of Agamemnon, Achilles and Briseis. Here gifts smooth the quarrel over, but the rivalry between Tus and the house of Gudarz, to which Giv belongs, runs on through the poem.

An unpierced ruby, flawless, red and bright: The unpierced gem (in Persian more often a pearl) is the standard figure for a virgin. The chapter closes on it with some delicacy, and the next one begins nine months later.

B9.3The Birth of Siavash

Siavash is born, lovelier than any mortal child, but the astrologers see a troubled star. Rostam asks to raise him and takes him to Zabulistan, where he teaches him riding, archery, justice and command, then sends him back to his father in splendor.

An Azari idol in his form and grace: Azar is the name the Qur’an gives to Abraham’s father, whom Islamic tradition made a carver of idols. An ‘idol of Azar’ is therefore a statue of perfect workmanship, a common compliment for beauty in Persian verse. The image is more apt than it looks: like Abraham, Siavash will pass through fire unharmed (B9.13).

This lion-hearted child entrust to me: The fostering of royal children by great noble houses was a real Iranian custom. Later in the poem (III, D9.2) the Sasanian prince Bahram Gur is sent to be brought up by the Arab king of Hira. Rostam’s foster-son becomes the model prince, trained in arms, manners and justice alike.

And see Piltan’s instruction made complete: Piltan, ‘elephant-bodied’, is, with Tahamtan, Rostam’s best-known epithet, and in this story it often stands on its own for his name.

B9.4Siavash Arrives from Zabulistan

Tus, Giv and Rostam escort Siavash to court, where Kavus embraces him, thanks God and holds seven days of feasting. After testing his son for seven years, the Shah gives him a crown, a charter and the rule of Khorshan, now called Mawarannahr.

Today Mawarannahr is the name we hear: Mā warā’ al-nahr, Arabic for ‘what lies beyond the river’, was the Muslim name for the lands north of the Oxus (the Jihun) around Bukhara and Samarkand: the Transoxiana of classical geography. The gift is a curious one, since later in this story the Jihun is the frontier and Afrasiab rules Sughd beyond it. The poet’s ‘today’ is a rare glance from legend to the map of his own time.

B9.5The Death of the Mother of Siavash

Siavash’s mother dies, and the prince mourns her for a month, tearing his robes and casting dust on his head. The nobles come to comfort him, and Gudarz reminds him that everyone born of a mother must die.

Her soul is in Minu; do not despair: Minu, from Pahlavi mēnōg, is the unseen, spiritual world, as opposed to gētīg, the material one; in Zoroastrian thought the two together make up creation. In Persian poetry minu came to mean simply ‘paradise’, and that is how Gudarz uses it.

B9.6Sudabeh Falls in Love with Siavash

Sudabeh sees Siavash and is seized by passion. When he refuses her secret invitation, she persuades Kavus to send him into the women’s hall to visit his sisters. Siavash suspects a trap, and perhaps a test, but agrees to obey.

Sudabeh suddenly beheld his face: The stepmother who desires her stepson, is refused and accuses him is one of the oldest plots in literature. Greek tragedy has Phaedra and Hippolytus; the Bible and the Qur’an have Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, whom later tradition named Zuleikha and Jami made the heroine of his Yusuf and Zuleikha. With its astrologers, its test by smell and its ordeal by fire, Ferdowsi’s version is among the fullest.

My father means to try my mind: Siavash credits his father with a subtlety he does not possess. Kavus, the most impulsive king in the poem, is testing no one; he simply believes his wife. The prince’s mistake is the generous one of a son who thinks better of his father than he deserves.

B9.7Siavash Visits Sudabeh

Led by the Hirbad, Siavash enters the women’s hall, where Sudabeh embraces him far too long. He escapes to his sisters, then praises the hall to his father. Kavus proposes a royal marriage, and Siavash agrees but asks that Sudabeh have no part in it.

A Hirbad, pure in spirit, heart, and mind: Hērbed was a Zoroastrian priestly title in Sasanian Iran, borne by teaching priests. In the Shahnameh the word has drifted a long way: here the Hirbad is the trusted keeper of the women’s quarters, and the title works almost as his name.

Like Yemen’s Canopus her beauty shone: Canopus (Soheyl), the second-brightest star in the night sky, rides low in the south and is seen best from Arabia, so Persian poets call it the star of Yemen. Folklore held that its light gave color to leather and ripeness to fruit, which lends the compliment an extra glow.

Kay Arash, Kay Pashin, have daughters too: Kay Arash and Kay Pashin are brothers of Kavus, sons of Kay Qobad, founder of the Kayanian line. Both are old names: the Avesta lists Kavi Arshan and Kavi Pisinah among the Kayanian princes, alongside Kavi Syavarshan, Siavash himself.

The hidden water underneath the straw: Āb zir-e kāh, ‘water under the straw’, is still a Persian idiom for a hidden danger or a quiet schemer: water that seeps unseen beneath a layer of straw until the ground gives way.

B9.8Siavash Visits the Bower Again

Sudabeh parades her daughters and maidens before Siavash, then unveils herself, offers him her body and demands his oath. Remembering Hamavaran, he answers softly and asks only for her daughter. She tells Kavus the match is made, but vows to have Siavash or ruin him.

I know the tale of Hamavaran well: Earlier in his reign Kavus married Sudabeh, daughter of the king of Hamavaran, who then lured him to a feast and threw him into prison. Sudabeh chose to share her husband’s captivity until Rostam set them free. Her loyalty then makes her treachery now the more unsettling, and Siavash sees in her only the enemy’s daughter.

When Kavus leaves this world, by me abide: Sudabeh’s proposal is political as well as erotic. In many ancient courts a new king took over his predecessor’s women, and a son who did so was laying claim to the throne; compare Absalom and Adonijah in the Bible. She is offering Siavash the succession, and securing her own future.

B9.9Siavash Visits a Third Time

Sudabeh shows Siavash the treasure Kavus has set aside for him, promises him her daughter, confesses seven years of love and threatens ruin if he refuses. He will not betray his father and rises in anger, and she seizes him.

Two hundred elephants would bear its weight: The elephant-load is Ferdowsi's unit for wealth beyond counting, borrowed from the real Indian measure by which treasure and tribute were reckoned in loads rather than coins. Sudabeh offers a bribe, then a threat, in the same breath — and the treasure she promises is not hers to give.

B9.10Sudabeh Beguiles Kay Kavus

Sudabeh tears her robes and cries that Siavash assaulted her, adding that she is pregnant. Kavus hears both, then smells his son’s hands and body and finds no trace of her perfume. Convinced of Siavash’s innocence, he spares Sudabeh out of love and old loyalty.

And first drew near Siavash’s hand to smell: Kavus’s test has a famous cousin. In the Qur’anic story of Joseph a witness proposes that if the young man’s shirt is torn at the front the woman is telling the truth, and if at the back, he is; it is torn at the back. Ferdowsi’s evidence is scent instead of cloth: Sudabeh is drenched in wine, musk and rosewater, and Siavash carries none of it.

And rosewater hung heavy through the room: Rosewater (golāb) was one of medieval Iran’s famous products, distilled for perfume, cooking and hospitality and exported far to the east and west. The rose harvest around Kashan still supplies it today.

B9.11Sudabeh and a Sorceress Devise a Scheme

Sudabeh bribes a pregnant sorceress in the palace to take a drug and miscarry, then displays the two stillborn infants as her own children, killed by Siavash’s violence. Her lament wakes the palace, and Kavus, troubled, begins to doubt again.

Two infants came, as if the Divs gave birth: Monstrous births were widely taken as the work of evil powers. In Zoroastrian thought whatever is harmful or misshapen belongs to Ahriman’s counter-creation, which is why the astrologers will call the infants ‘Ahriman’s seed’ (B9.12). Sudabeh’s lie needs bodies that no one would want to examine closely.

B9.12Kavus Questions the Matter of the Infants

Kavus’s astrologers find that the dead infants are neither his nor Sudabeh’s. The sorceress is caught but will not confess, and Sudabeh claims the seers are too frightened to speak the truth. The Mobadan advise a trial by fire, and Siavash accepts it.

They took their zij and astrolabes in hand: The word zij goes back to Pahlavi zīg, and the Sasanian ‘Royal Tables’ (Zīg-ī Shahriyārān) were still consulted and translated by Muslim astronomers (see A8.17). With the astrolabe, used to measure the height of stars, the tables were the astrologer’s basic kit in Ferdowsi’s day.

Let one pass through the fire and truth be sealed: The ordeal (var) was a real legal procedure in ancient Iran, used when ordinary evidence failed. Zoroastrian tradition tells how the priest Adurbad, son of Mahraspand, proved the truth of his faith under Shapur II by having molten metal poured on his chest. Siavash’s ride between burning pyres is the ordeal at its most spectacular.

B9.13Siavash’s Trial by Fire

Two mountains of timber are soaked in naphtha and lit. Siavash, dressed in white and scented with camphor like a corpse, rides his black horse through the flames and comes out unharmed. The people rejoice, and Kavus begs his son’s forgiveness.

He sprinkled camphor lightly on his frame: Camphor was used in preparing the dead for burial, and white is the color of the shroud. Siavash rides into the fire dressed for his own funeral: ready for death, as the line says, but not for disgrace.

He drove his black horse where the fire had spread: Siavash’s name is usually explained from Avestan Syāvarshan, ‘having black stallions’. The black horse belongs to his identity, and his steed will matter again, to his son, in B10.19.

Then from the flames the noble youth rode free: The Qur’an tells how Abraham was thrown into a fire and God commanded it to be ‘coolness and safety’. Siavash’s ride is the Shahnameh’s own version of that miracle, and it became a favorite subject of manuscript painters: the prince on his black horse, unhurt, framed by tongues of flame.

B9.14Siavash Intercedes for Sudabeh

Kavus condemns Sudabeh to the gallows, and she claims that Zal’s sorcery saved Siavash from the flames. Seeing his father’s grief, Siavash begs for her life, and Kavus gladly pardons her. His love soon returns, and she resumes her plotting. The poet reflects on fate.

Zal worked his arts so flame could do no harm: Sudabeh’s excuse plays on Zal’s uncanny reputation. Raised by the Simorgh, and able to call her with a burning feather, the white-haired lord of Zabul was easily cast as a sorcerer by his enemies; the charge is heard again later in the poem (II, C8.26 and II, D1.1).

Then Siavash thought: “If by his decree: Siavash’s mercy is shrewd as well as generous: he sees that Sudabeh dead would weigh on his father more heavily than Sudabeh alive. Ferdowsi lets the pardon pass without comment, and then shows in a few lines what it will cost.

B9.15News of Afrasiab Reaches Kavus

News comes that Afrasiab has invaded with a hundred thousand horsemen. Kavus means to lead the army himself, but a Mobad dissuades him. Siavash, hoping to escape Sudabeh, asks for the command, and Kavus grants it, charging Rostam to go with him.

Twice in your haste you let your throne go down: The Mobad means Kavus’s two great follies: his invasion of Mazandaran, where the White Div blinded and imprisoned him until Rostam’s Seven Labors set him free, and his captivity in Hamavaran (see B9.8). Kavus is a king who has to be rescued, and everyone at court knows it.

Through counsel of an evil-hearted man: The poet names no one yet, but the evil counselor will be Garsivaz. Ferdowsi often tells his readers the end before the story reaches it. The tragedy lies not in surprise but in watching it come.

B9.16Siavash Leads the Army

Kavus equips twelve thousand horsemen and twelve thousand foot under the Kaviani banner and parts from Siavash in tears. After a month in Zabulistan, Siavash and Rostam march by Herat to Balkh, defeat the forces of Garsivaz and take the city.

From Pahlav, Pars, from Kuch and Baluch came: The roll-call spans the empire. Pahlav is Parthia, roughly Khorasan; Pars is the old Persian heartland; Kutch and Baluch here are the Koch and the Baluch, hill peoples of the south-east, in Kerman and Makran, where the Baluch still live. Gilan lies on the Caspian shore.

No meeting waited them on roads ahead: Father and son sense, without knowing it, that this is their last meeting. It is one of Ferdowsi’s quietest pieces of foreshadowing, and one of the most effective.

They marched toward Talikan and Marvrud’s line: Talikan and Marvrud (Marv al-Rud, ‘Marv on the river’) were towns of medieval Khorasan near the Murghab, on the road from Herat to Balkh. Balkh itself, the ancient Bactra, was among the oldest cities of the Iranian world, often called ‘the mother of cities’.

B9.17Siavash’s Letter to Kavus

From Balkh, Siavash has a letter written on silk in musk and rosewater. After praising God, it reports his victory: the Turks have fled across the Jihun, and Afrasiab waits in Sughd. He asks leave to cross the river and attack.

With musk and rosewater the words were traced: Royal letters in the Shahnameh are written on silk in ink scented with musk and abir, a perfumed powder, and they always open with praise of God before turning to business. Ferdowsi rarely skips these preambles, and the contrast between their calm and the letters’ contents can be sharp (see B9.27).

Afrasiab in Sughd holds all his force: Sughd is Sogdiana, the rich valley of the Zarafshan around Samarkand and Bukhara, whose merchants carried much of the Silk Road trade. Tarmez, where Sipahram fled, is Termez on the Oxus (the Jihun), still a river crossing on the border between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.

B9.18Kavus Replies to Siavash

Delighted, Kavus writes back praising his son but ordering him to keep the army together and wait for Afrasiab to cross the Jihun. Meanwhile Garsivaz describes the Iranians’ strength to Afrasiab, who drives him out in a rage and then holds a feast.

Though milk still scents your lips, so young are you: The same idiom as in B2.1. From Kavus it is affectionate; in other mouths in the poem it is an insult.

Do not be swift to challenge him to fight: Remember this advice. When Kavus later changes his mind, Rostam will quote it back to him almost word for word (B9.25).

B9.19Afrasiab Is Troubled by a Dream

After the feast Afrasiab wakes screaming. He tells Garsivaz his dream: a desert of serpents, his army slaughtered, himself dragged in chains before Kavus, and a fourteen-year-old youth beside the throne who cuts him in two. Garsivaz urges him to summon the dream-readers.

When Afrasiab woke with dreadful cry: Tyrants’ dreams follow a pattern in the Shahnameh. Zahhak too woke screaming from a dream of a young warrior who would strike him down, and gathered terrified sages to explain it (A5.2). The echo marks Afrasiab as a king whose fate is already written.

With one sword-stroke he cleft my waist in two: The sages will read the youth as Siavash, but dreams in the Shahnameh often come true in unexpected ways. Much later in the poem (II, C4.44) Afrasiab meets his end by the sword of a young king of Kavus’s line, with Kavus himself there to see it.

B9.20Afrasiab Seeks the Sages’ Counsel

Afrasiab swears the sages to secrecy and promises them safety. One explains the dream: Siavash is coming, and whether Afrasiab fights him or kills him, Turan will be ruined. Shaken, Afrasiab resolves to buy peace with treasure and land.

And asked safe-conduct before truth was laid: The Persian idea is zanhar, a pledge of safety or quarter. Dream-readers in the Shahnameh know that bad news can cost the messenger his head, and they secure a promise before they speak (compare A5.2).

Manuchehr did not divide the world with right: The frontier between Iran and Turan was fixed, in the usual tradition, in the reign of Manuchehr, when the archer Arash shot an arrow from the mountains of northern Iran and the border was drawn where it fell, far off by the Oxus. The Shahnameh names Arash only in passing, but Biruni and others tell the story in full, and it is still linked with the summer festival of Tirgan.

B9.21Afrasiab Consults the Nobles

Afrasiab tells his nobles he is weary of war and will seek peace. With their agreement he sends Garsivaz to Siavash with two hundred riders and lavish gifts, offering to restore the old concord and the frontier set by Fereydoon.

When world-rulers turn their hearts from right: An old Iranian doctrine: the king’s justice keeps nature healthy, and his injustice withers it. Wild asses stop foaling, udders dry up and springs turn black. Later in the poem, in a tale of Bahram Gur (III, D10.12), a cow’s milk fails the moment the king merely thinks of an unjust act.

Through Tur and Salm the world was overturned: The feud between Iran and Turan began when Fereydoon divided the world among his three sons. Salm and Tur, jealous that Iraj received Iran, murdered him, and Turan takes its name from Tur. Afrasiab, a descendant of Tur, concedes here that his own family began it.

B9.22Garsivaz Comes before Siavash

Garsivaz crosses the Jihun and presents Afrasiab’s gifts at Balkh. Rostam puts off the answer for a week. Suspicious of the envoy’s haste, he and Siavash decide to demand a hundred of Afrasiab’s kinsmen as hostages and to consult Kavus.

Yet beats a drum beneath the carpet’s hide: Tabl zir-e gelim zadan, ‘to beat a drum under a rug’, is a Persian idiom for trying to hide what cannot be hidden. However Afrasiab muffles it, his fear can be heard in Balkh.

Choose one hundred kinsmen of renown: Hostages of royal blood were a common guarantee of treaties in the ancient world, from Rome to China. The demand is prudent, but it sets the trap that will ruin Siavash: a Shah who wants the hostages killed, and a prince who has sworn to protect them.

B9.23Siavash’s Treaty with Afrasiab

Siavash gives Garsivaz his terms: a hundred of Afrasiab’s kin as hostages, the return of Iranian towns and a withdrawal to Turan. Afrasiab reluctantly agrees, sends the men Rostam named and pulls his army back from Bukhara, Sughd and Samarkand to Gang.

From Chakh and Sipanjab, he drew his hand: Chakh (Chach) is the region of modern Tashkent. Sipanjab is Isfijab, a frontier town near modern Shymkent in Kazakhstan. Together with Bukhara and Samarkand they mark a withdrawal from the whole breadth of Transoxiana.

He led his men toward Gang without delay: Gang is Afrasiab’s seat deep in Turan. The name recalls Kangdez of the Pahlavi books, a marvelous castle in the east which the Bundahishn says was built by Siavash himself; the Shahnameh gives its own account of Siavash as a builder later in this story.

B9.24Rostam Bears Siavash’s Message

Siavash looks for an envoy to Kavus, and Rostam, knowing the Shah’s temper, offers to go himself. A letter reports Afrasiab’s submission and the hostages, and Rostam sets out. Garsivaz returns and praises Siavash, and Afrasiab rejoices that his treasure has bought peace.

To Kavus, whose swift wrath is lightly stirred: Rostam has felt that wrath before. When he was slow to answer the summons in the story of Sohrab, Kavus ordered him hanged, and only Gudarz’s diplomacy mended the quarrel. He knows exactly what kind of king he is going to reason with.

B9.25Kavus Receives the Message

Rostam delivers the letter, and Kavus explodes: Afrasiab’s gold has dazzled Rostam. Siavash must burn the gifts, send the hostages in chains to be killed and invade Turan. Rostam replies that breaking the peace would be shameful and would ruin Siavash.

A hundred Turks, base-born and without fame: Kavus has the facts wrong: Afrasiab chose the hostages from his own kin, from a list Rostam drew up (B9.23). The Shah’s contempt lets him demand their deaths with an easy conscience.

You said before: ‘Do not cross the stream: Rostam turns the Shah’s own letter against him (B9.18): wait for Afrasiab to attack, and do not cross the Jihun. The peace came precisely because Siavash obeyed. It is the argument of a loyal servant, and it is exactly the kind of argument Kavus cannot bear.

B9.26Kavus Dispatches Rostam to Sistan

Kavus accuses Rostam of talking Siavash out of vengeance, strips him of command and gives the army to Tus. Rostam retorts that if Tus counts as Rostam, he may as well be dead, and rides off in fury to Sistan.

If Tus is Rostam in your royal eye: Rostam’s withdrawal after a quarrel with his king recalls Achilles sulking in his tent, and it removes the one man who might have protected Siavash. Tus’s record as a commander, as later chapters of this volume show, fully justifies Rostam’s scorn.

B9.27The Shah’s Reply to Siavash

Kavus writes angrily to Siavash: the peace is a disgrace, the hostages must come in chains, and he must attack Afrasiab or hand the army to Tus and come home. Siavash, knowing the hostages would be killed, sees ruin on every side.

He rules Mars, Saturn, moon, all good and ill: Mars (Bahrām) and Saturn (Keyvān) are the two ‘malefic’ planets of astrology, the lesser and the greater bringers of misfortune. A letter written ‘in wrath and war’ fittingly praises God first as their master.

In heavy chains, on asses sent away: Parading captives or criminals on donkeys was a familiar public humiliation in the medieval Islamic world. Kavus wants the princes of Turan not just killed but disgraced on the way.

Whichever path I choose, dark troubles grow: Here is the heart of the tragedy. Obeying his father means breaking an oath and killing innocent men; keeping faith means defying his father and his king. Ferdowsi gives Siavash no path that is both right and safe.

B9.28Siavash Consults Bahram and Zangeh

Siavash pours out his sorrows to Bahram and Zangeh and resolves to keep his oath: he will return the hostages and gifts, leave the army to Tus and seek refuge abroad. Bahram begs him to write to Kavus instead, but he refuses and sends Zangeh to Afrasiab.

These oaths were sworn before Yazdan divine: The sanctity of the sworn word is among the oldest Iranian values. In the Avesta, Mithra is the god of the contract, and the ‘contract-breaker’ (mithrō-druj) brings ruin on his whole land. Siavash’s refusal to break faith, even at his father’s command, sets truth above obedience, as Zoroastrian ethics would.

To Bahram, son of Gudarz, thus he said: Bahram is one of the many sons of Gudarz, loyal and gentle, and his advice here is the voice of good sense. His own death later in this volume (B12.23), after he rides back onto a battlefield to recover a lost whip, is one of its small, memorable tragedies.

B9.29Zangeh Bears Word to Afrasiab

Zangeh brings the hostages and gifts to Afrasiab, who consults Piran. Piran praises Siavash and urges the king to welcome him as a son and give him a daughter. Afrasiab quotes a proverb about raising a lion cub, but Piran persuades him.

Then called for Piran, trusted in command: Piran, son of Viseh, is Afrasiab’s chief counselor and general, the most honorable of the Turanians. From here on he is Siavash’s patron in Turan, and his loyalty to his king and to his friend will be tested to breaking point. Many readers find him the most human figure on the Turanian side.

Take in a lion’s cub within your fold: Sahm told this parable with pride (A9.6); here it is a warning. Afrasiab’s fear is justified, though not as he imagines. The danger lies less in Siavash than in the son he will leave behind.

Thus both great realms, their crown and throne, may fall: Piran’s clinching argument is political: through Siavash, Turan might one day inherit Iran. The dream of reuniting Fereydoon’s divided world will come true, but in reverse, under a grandson of Kavus who conquers Turan.

B9.30Afrasiab’s Offer to Siavash

Afrasiab writes Siavash a warm letter, swearing by God to treat him as a son, offering crown, treasure and army, and warning that the road beyond Turan ends at the Sea of Chin. Siavash is glad but uneasy, and the poet warns against trusting an old enemy.

Beyond, no land appears along the way; / The Sea of Chin must bear you many a day: Chin is China, and the Sea of Chin is the ocean at the eastern edge of the known world, where Jamshid was caught at last (A4.4). Siavash had asked for a land where Kavus would never hear his name; Afrasiab tactfully points out that there is nowhere else to go.

But when from fire can cooling breezes blow: The poet closes with a warning for the reader to carry into the rest of the story. The fire Siavash rode through in Iran did not burn him (B9.13); the old enmity between Iran and Turan is a fire of another kind.

B9.31Siavash Yields Command to Bahram

Siavash writes a last bitter letter to Kavus, hands the army and treasure to Bahram, and crosses the Jihun with three hundred riders. Piran meets him in splendor, weeps with him, and pledges his wealth, his kin and his protection.

Though Afrasiab bears a name of ill, / In truth a godly heart is in him still: Piran is the most attractive figure on the Turanian side: loyal to his king, generous to his guest, and trapped between the two. His honest misjudgement of Afrasiab here is the first step of a tragedy that is as much his as Siavash’s. Nothing in the poem suggests he is lying; he simply trusts too much.

B9.32Siavash’s Audience with Afrasiab

Afrasiab comes out on foot to embrace Siavash, promises him a father’s love, and blames Kavus for casting off such a son. He lodges the prince in a splendid palace and showers him with gifts for seven days.

Then Afrasiab said to Shideh: “Go: Shideh is Afrasiab’s son, sent here as an honored escort. Later in the poem, in the great war of revenge (II, C4.8–C4.9), he will face Siavash’s son Kay Khosrow in single combat and be killed. The welcome and the reckoning are held by the same hands.

B9.33Siavash Displays His Prowess before Afrasiab

Afrasiab tests his guest at polo, archery and the hunt. Siavash hits the ball out of sight, strings a bow no Turanian can bend, pierces the target and cuts a Gur-e-Khar in equal halves. The king grows fonder, but some Turanians grow uneasy.

With ball and chowgan to the field we go: Polo (chowgān, the mallet that gives the game its name) is an Iranian game of great antiquity and the sport of kings and warriors. The Byzantines borrowed it as tzykanion, and Shah Abbas’s great square in Isfahan still keeps its stone goalposts. Siavash’s match before Afrasiab is one of the scenes most often chosen by painters of illustrated Shahnamehs. In III, D7.6, a Sasanian king recognizes his own grandson by the boy’s boldness at polo.

And spoke Pahlevani, while purpose burned: Siavash speaks to his men in Pahlavi so that the Turanians will not understand. The detail is unusual: elsewhere Iranians and Turanians talk freely without interpreters, and Ferdowsi rarely marks a difference of language. His tactful order to lose the game is a small portrait of the prince’s courtesy.

But all in vain; his utmost could not bring / That stubborn bow to bend: The great bow that only the hero can string is an old test of worth. Readers of Homer will think of Odysseus’s bow, which none of the suitors can bend. Here the man who fails is Garsivaz, Afrasiab’s brother, and the humiliation is worth remembering: it is the first of several that he will not forgive.

B9.34Siavash Weds Piran’s Daughter

Piran urges the lonely prince to marry and offers his eldest daughter, Jarireh. Siavash gladly accepts, Piran’s wife Golshahr brings the richly dowered bride, and Siavash lives happily, forgetting Kavus as his standing at court grows.

Yet Jarireh, my eldest, leads them all: Jarireh will be the mother of Siavash’s first son, Forood (B9.46). Her story does not end here: later in this volume she will see that son killed by an Iranian army and will die beside him. Ferdowsi gives her only a few lines now, but readers should keep her in mind.

And knit our house to Qobad’s line thereby: Piran is proud of the match because Siavash descends from Kay Qobad, founder of the Kayanian dynasty. Marriage is politics in the Shahnameh: a daughter given to a prince binds a great family to the throne, and Piran is doing for himself what he will soon do for his king.

B9.35Piran Proposes Farangis to Siavash

Piran suggests that a marriage to Afrasiab’s daughter Farangis would suit Siavash better still. The prince, accepting that he may never see Iran or his friends again, weeps and agrees, asking that the plan be kept secret.

Among his daughters, Farangis is best: Farangis will be the mother of Kay Khosrow, the poem’s ideal king, and one of the Shahnameh’s strongest women. In the Pahlavi tradition Afrasiab’s daughter who marries Siavash appears under a different name, Wispānfryā, and some scholars think Farangis is a later form of it.

And farr and orung brighter still shall shine: Orung (awrang) is a throne, and by extension royal majesty; the pair ‘farr and orung’ is a stock phrase for kingship. On the farr itself, see A4.1.

B9.36Piran Counsels Afrasiab

Piran asks Afrasiab for Farangis on Siavash’s behalf. The king hesitates, remembering a sage’s warning about rearing a lion cub and the astrologers’ prophecy that a child of the two lines will seize his crown. Piran argues that the child will bring peace, and Afrasiab consents.

A male lion cub is dearly taught: Afrasiab returns to the parable of the lion cub (see A9.6 and B9.29). Garsivaz will turn the same image against Siavash in B9.48.

They said: ‘From these two noble lines shall rise / A sovereign: Afrasiab’s fear is justified: the child of this marriage will be Kay Khosrow, who will destroy him. The Shahnameh is full of kings who try to outwit a prophecy and bring it about by their efforts, and Afrasiab is the poem’s great example.

On Iran and Turan his throne shall reign, / And both great realms from warfare shall refrain: Piran reads the prophecy hopefully, and he is half right. Kay Khosrow will indeed rule over Iran and Turan, but only after a long war of revenge, in which Piran himself will fall at the hands of Gudarz. It is one of the poem’s bitterest ironies that the marriage Piran arranges for peace sets that war in motion.

B9.37The Marriage of Siavash and Farangis

Piran and his wife Golshahr prepare a vast dowry of cloth, jewels, gold and servants. Afrasiab gives his daughter in marriage before witnesses, and Farangis is brought to Siavash by night. Seven nights of celebration follow.

Now Venus joins the Sun within this hall: A conjunction of Venus and the Sun is an astrologer’s image of perfect union: the Sun is the king’s planet, Venus (Nāhid or Zohreh) the planet of beauty and love. Golshahr’s compliment makes the wedding a happy event in the heavens as well as on earth.

B9.38Afrasiab Grants Siavash a Province

Afrasiab grants Siavash a vast province reaching to the Sea of Chin, with a crown, a throne and a written deed. A year later the prince tours his lands with Farangis, rests at Piran’s seat in Khutan, and chooses a site for a city.

To Khutan’s fertile fields they rode in line: Khutan is Khotan, the great oasis on the southern rim of the Tarim basin, famous in the Middle Ages for jade and musk. In the Shahnameh it is Piran’s own domain.

B9.39Siavash Founds Gangdezh

The poet pauses to reflect on death and his own sixty-six years, then describes Gangdezh: a fortress-city of unearthly beauty hidden inside a vast mountain beyond the Sea of Chin, which Siavash builds with great labor.

Now sixty-six full years have passed for me: One of the personal asides with which Ferdowsi dates his own work. If he was born around 940, as is usually thought, he was writing this passage in the first decade of the eleventh century, close to the end of his thirty years’ labor. Such asides give the Shahnameh the voice of an ageing man looking back.

Where are the crowned kings who ruled the earth: The ‘where are they now?’ lament is found across world literature, from the Latin ubi sunt tradition to the Old English Wanderer. Persian poets loved it, and Ferdowsi uses it to set the building of a marvelous city against the certainty that its builder will soon be gone.

No place like Gangdezh stands beneath the sky: Gangdezh (Kangdez, ‘the fortress of Kang’) is older than the Shahnameh. In the Pahlavi books it is a wondrous stronghold built by Siavash in the East. One account says it once moved about on the heads of Divs until Kay Khosrow fixed it to the earth. In Zoroastrian tradition it is also a place where immortal heroes wait for the end of time. Ferdowsi keeps its air of an earthly paradise, sealed off by mountains and a single pass. It should not be confused with Zahhak’s Gang Dezh-Hokht (A5.6).

B9.40Siavash Speaks with Piran of the Future

The astrologers tell Siavash that his foundation is ill-starred. Weeping, he tells Piran that he will be killed, though innocent, by a king misled by slander, and that his death will set Iran and Turan ablaze. Piran is shaken and reproaches himself.

Hear this from me: few days shall pass me by / Before a wakeful king decrees I die: Siavash’s prophecy sums up much of the rest of Volume I (B9.51–B14) and much of Volume II (II, C2–C4): his murder, the Iranian invasion of Turan, Afrasiab’s remorse and the long war of vengeance. Ferdowsi reveals the ending in advance, so that the reader watches the tragedy unfold, not wondering what will happen but dreading how.

Made even Pleiades seem lower down: The Pleiades (Parvin or Sorayyā) are the Persian poets’ favorite measure of height and of clustered brightness. Parvin is still a popular girl’s name, borne most famously by the poet Parvin E’tesami.

B9.41Piran Is Sent to the Provinces

After a week of feasting, Afrasiab orders Piran to lead an army towards Chin, Hind and the Sind to collect tribute and to march on the Khazar frontier. Piran takes his leave of Siavash and sets out.

Toward Khazar’s frontier send your array: The Khazars were a real Turkic people whose empire north of the Caucasus and the Caspian dominated the western steppe from the seventh century. Their ruling class famously adopted Judaism. By Ferdowsi’s day the empire had been broken by the Rus, but the name lived on in geography: the Caspian is still called the Sea of Khazar in Persian.

B9.42Siavash Founds Siavash-Gard

Afrasiab summons Siavash back to a new province. The prince travels with great wealth to Khorram-Bahar, lays out a city two farsangs square, fills it with palaces and gardens, and paints its halls with scenes of Kavus, Rostam and Afrasiab. It is named Siavash-Gard.

Men called it Siavash-Gard throughout the land: -gard (Middle Persian -gird) means ‘city, foundation’ and appears in many real Iranian place-names, such as Darabgerd and Dastgerd. Siavash-Gard is ‘Siavash’s city’, and its founder’s name is built into it as surely as its walls.

Within its halls he painted scenes of old: Painted palace walls were real in the world Ferdowsi describes. At Afrasiab, the old site of Samarkand, which still bears the Turanian king’s name, and at Panjikent in Tajikistan, archaeologists have uncovered Sogdian murals of feasts, hunts, battles and royal audiences from the centuries just before Islam.

B9.43Piran Visits Siavash-Gard

Returning from his campaign, Piran visits Siavash-Gard, marvels at the city and at Farangis, and feasts there for a week. At Afrasiab’s court he reports the tribute he has gathered and praises Siavash’s city in glowing terms, to the king’s delight.

The day of Ard was blessed beneath its light: In the Zoroastrian calendar each of the thirty days of the month bears the name of a divine being. Ard, the twenty-fifth, is named for Ashi, the goddess of fortune and reward, which makes it a fitting day to found a city. On such auspicious days, compare Khordad in A5.6.

Would think Ordibehesht had clothed its face: Ordibehesht is the second month of the Persian year (April–May), the height of spring. It takes its name from Asha Vahishta, the Zoroastrian divinity of ‘best truth’ and cosmic order, and in poetry it stands for a world in perfect bloom.

B9.44Afrasiab Sends Garsivaz to Siavash

Pleased by Piran’s report, Afrasiab sends his brother Garsivaz with a thousand riders and rich gifts to Siavash-Gard. Siavash rides out to welcome him, receives the gifts gladly and shows him the city.

Afrasiab told Garsivaz the whole: Garsivaz has an ancient pedigree. In the Avesta, Kay Khosrow (Haosravah) prays for strength to avenge Siavash (Syavarshan) on Frangrasyan (Afrasiab) and on Keresavazda, the Avestan form of Garsivaz’s name. His part in the murder was fixed long before Ferdowsi told it.

B9.45The Birth of Forood

News arrives that Jarireh has borne Siavash a son, Forood, and she sends his saffron handprint on the letter. Siavash rejoices. Visiting Farangis in her splendor, Garsivaz is seized by envy and foresees the prince eclipsing everyone, but hides his feelings.

She bade them mark his hand with saffron dye, / And press it on the letter for his eye: A newborn’s handprint in saffron, sent as proof and blessing, is one of the poem’s most tender domestic details. Saffron, the costly yellow dye of Iran, was used for letters and marks of celebration.

They named him Forood from the hour of birth: Forood will grow up in a mountain fortress with his mother and meet a tragic end when an Iranian army, marching to avenge his father, passes by his stronghold. His story is told later in this volume.

Then Garsivaz felt heart and mind grow hot: Envy is the engine of this half of the story, as desire was of the first. Sudabeh’s passion drove Siavash out of Iran; Garsivaz’s jealousy will destroy him in Turan. Ferdowsi takes care to show us the moment it is born.

B9.46Siavash Shows His Skill at Polo

Siavash outplays Garsivaz at polo, lifts five coats of mail on his father’s spear and shoots arrows through four shields. Pressed to wrestle, he declines to fight Garsivaz and instead unhorses two champions, Gurvi and Damur, at once. Garsivaz departs humiliated and resentful.

Four shields of Gilan Siavash ordered then: The men of Gilan and neighboring Daylam, on the south-western shore of the Caspian, were famous infantry, known for their large shields and javelins. ‘Gilan shields’ is a Shahnameh byword for the stoutest shields there are.

We shall grasp belts like stallions set to strain: Wrestling on horseback by seizing the opponent’s belt and lifting him from the saddle is the classic trial of strength in the Shahnameh. Belt-wrestling is still a traditional sport across Iran and Central Asia.

At last Gurvi Zereh rose and spoke: Gurvi, shamed here in play, will be the man who cuts Siavash’s throat (B9.56). Ferdowsi plants the grudge carefully. Siavash’s tact in refusing to wrestle a prince of the blood does not save him; defeating Gurvi and Damur makes two more enemies.

B9.47Garsivaz Returns and Slanders Siavash

Envious of Afrasiab’s pleasure at Siavash’s letter, Garsivaz tells the king that Siavash is plotting with Kavus, Rum and Chin. Afrasiab hesitates, unwilling to wrong his son-in-law, but Garsivaz keeps pressing until the king sends him to summon Siavash to court.

They sat apart where none could hear them speak: Garsivaz is the Shahnameh’s great slanderer, and readers of Shakespeare often compare him to Iago: a trusted insider who works on a ruler’s fears with half-truths, feeds each side a different story and never strikes a blow himself. The next chapters show him deceiving both men at once.

If one should take a lion’s tender whelp, / And raise it gently: Garsivaz turns the parable Afrasiab himself quoted (B9.37) back on the king. The sugar and milk make the image more pointed still: the gentler the rearing, the more certain the betrayal.

B9.48Garsivaz Returns to Siavash

Garsivaz tells Siavash not to ride out to greet him, then weeps false tears and warns that Afrasiab has turned murderous, like the king who killed his own brother Aghriras. He urges Siavash to write instead of going to court, and to be ready to flee. Siavash trusts him.

Aghriras, royal-born, whom he then slew: Aghriras, Afrasiab’s good brother, was killed by Afrasiab earlier in this volume for sparing Iranian prisoners. He is Aghraeratha of the Avesta, whom Kay Khosrow is also sworn to avenge alongside Siavash. Garsivaz uses a true story to support a lie.

You sought javanmardi, truth, and right: Javānmardi, literally ‘young-manliness’, is the Persian ideal of chivalry: generosity, loyalty, protection of the weak and freedom from meanness. It later gave its name to the brotherhoods of the medieval Islamic world, and Siavash is one of its purest types in the poem.

His wakeful soul fell fast asleep instead: A sharp narrator’s comment. Siavash saw through his stepmother’s schemes and rode through fire unharmed, but he cannot imagine a lie told with tears. His goodness is his blind spot.

B9.49Siavash’s Letter to Afrasiab

On Garsivaz’s advice, Siavash writes courteously to Afrasiab, excusing himself because Farangis is ill. Garsivaz rides to the king in three days and reports that Siavash scorned the royal summons, refused to read the letter, and is gathering armies from Rum and Chin.

Nor read the letter you had sent with me: The whole chapter turns on two letters, one courteous and one never read, and on the man who carries them. Garsivaz’s lie is shaped to match what Afrasiab already fears, and he takes care to reach the king in three days, before any other report can overtake him.

B9.50Afrasiab Marches against Siavash

Enraged, Afrasiab marches from Gang. Siavash tells Farangis that he is disgraced and trapped. She tears her hair and cheeks, and warns him that there is nowhere to flee, but he still trusts that Garsivaz will calm the king.

The compass-center is the share I drew: The image is taken from the geometer’s compass: Siavash is the fixed point at the center, unable to move while the circle is drawn around him. Persian poets often used the compass point for a man hemmed in on every side.

Then Farangis in grief tore at her hair, / And gashed her cheeks: Tearing the hair, scratching the cheeks and throwing dust on the head are the ritual gestures of mourning throughout the Shahnameh. Farangis begins to mourn before anyone has died, which tells the reader she understands more than her husband.

B9.51Siavash Is Troubled by a Dream

Siavash wakes screaming from a dream of a river, a burning mountain, ranks of spearmen and Afrasiab fanning flames around Siavash-Gard. Farangis tries to comfort him. A scout reports the king’s approach, Garsivaz sends a false warning, and Farangis begs Siavash to flee.

Thus fire and water hemmed me in from flight: The dream recalls the ordeal of Siavash’s youth, when he rode through fire to prove his innocence. Then the fire could not touch him; now fire and water close together on every side. Dreams in the Shahnameh are never idle, and this one is exact.

Beneath the Khan of Rum he meets his doom: Farangis’s comforting reading of the dream turns it against Garsivaz. Her prophecy of his death is right in substance, if not in its details: in II, C4.44 Garsivaz is captured by the Iranians and put to death at Kay Khosrow’s command.

B9.52Siavash’s Farewell to Farangis

Siavash tells Farangis his fate: he will be beheaded, she will be saved by Piran and bear a son, Kay Khosrow, who will one day avenge him. He frees his black horse Behzad for his son, hamstrings his other horses, burns his treasure, and leaves.

Name him Kay Khosrow when he comes to light: Kay Khosrow is Kavi Haosravah of the Avesta, ‘of good fame’, the hero-king who unites the Aryan lands and defeats Frangrasyan (Afrasiab). In Zoroastrian tradition he is one of the immortals who will return at the end of time, and the Shahnameh, too, will give him an extraordinary departure from the world.

Night-colored Behzad, swifter than the gale: Behzad (‘well-born’) will carry Kay Khosrow out of Turan in the next story. Siavash’s own Avestan name, Syavarshan, is usually explained as ‘possessing dark stallions’, so the prince’s farewell to his black horse carries an old echo.

He hamstrung every other steed of fame, / Then set the stables and the reeds aflame: Siavash leaves nothing for his enemies. The scene will be repeated later in this volume by Jarireh, the mother of Forood, who burns her treasure and destroys the horses before she dies beside her son.

B9.53Siavash Is Taken by Afrasiab

Siavash rides towards Iran but meets Afrasiab’s army. He refuses to fight his king, and the Turanians kill his thousand Iranians. Wounded by arrows, he is bound by Gurvi. Pilsam urges Afrasiab to wait for Piran, but Garsivaz, Damur and Gurvi urge death, and the king wavers.

But Siavash kept faith with solemn vow: Siavash is bound by the treaty he made and by his duty to the king who sheltered him and gave him his daughter. He will not break faith even to save his life. It is the same rigid loyalty that made him defy his father rather than break his word to the Turanian hostages, and it is what makes him the poem’s pattern of the innocent victim.

Then Pilsam, Piran’s younger brother, rose: Pilsam is the voice of prudence here, and his list of the Iranian champions who will come for revenge is a list of what is to come. Later in this volume he will meet one of them, Rostam, in battle and be killed.

B9.54Farangis Pleads before Afrasiab

Farangis comes on foot, bloodied and in mourning, to beg her father to spare Siavash, warning him of the vengeance of Kavus, Rostam and the Iranian heroes. Seeing her husband bound, she laments and curses Garsivaz. Afrasiab has her locked in a hidden chamber.

A bloodied zunnar round her waist she wore: The zonnār was the cord or girdle that non-Muslims, including Christians and Zoroastrians, were required to wear in the medieval Islamic world. In Persian poetry it stands for the unbeliever’s belt. Here it is a mourning girdle, a sign that Farangis has renounced the world of the court.

You know how Zahhak’s pride was overthrown: Farangis argues from history, as the Shahnameh’s wise speakers do: tyranny fell with Zahhak (A5.9), and the murder of Iraj was repaid when Manuchehr killed Salm and Tur. Afrasiab, a descendant of Tur, should know better than anyone that blood in this poem is always avenged.

B9.55Siavash Falls by Gurvi’s Hand

Gurvi drags Siavash to the archery ground and cuts his throat over a golden basin, and a plant springs from the blood poured on barren earth. Darkness covers the world. Afrasiab orders Farangis beaten to kill her unborn child, the nobles protest, and Pilsam rides to warn Piran.

A golden basin waited on the sand: Afrasiab ordered the blood caught and poured on barren ground so that nothing would grow from it. Behind the order lies an old fear that the spilled blood of a king cries out for vengeance. The scene is staged like a sacrifice: the prince is turned ‘as shepherds turn a sheep’, and the attempt to silence his blood fails at once.

They call it Blood of Siavash to this day: Persian still calls the red resin known in English as dragon’s blood khun-e siāvashān, ‘blood of Siavash’, and several plants bear his name. The legend of the plant grew alongside a real mourning tradition for Siavash in Iran and Central Asia (see B9.61).

A black wind rose, and dust obscured the sky: Nature itself mourns the innocent prince, as it mourned Siamak (A1.2). Readers of the Gospels will remember the darkness at the Crucifixion, and many modern Iranian readers have seen in Siavash a figure like the martyred Imam Hosein: the blameless prince killed by an unjust ruler and mourned ever after.

I turn to left and right, yet all is blind: Ferdowsi steps into his own story to confess bewilderment at a world where the wicked prosper and the good die young. The complaint is never answered, and the Shahnameh is honest enough to leave it so.

B9.56Piran Shields Farangis

Warned by his brothers, Piran rides for two days and nights and arrives as Farangis is being dragged to her death. He halts the guards, rebukes Afrasiab for following a Div’s counsel, and wins her life, promising to bring the child to the king. He takes her to Khutan.

I will bring the child and leave its fate to you: Piran’s promise is a gamble: he saves the mother by handing the king power over the child. The bargain holds the rest of the story in suspense, and Piran will spend years keeping both his word to Afrasiab and his love for Siavash’s son.

Why has the Div’s counsel then won your mind: In the Shahnameh evil counsel is often traced to Ahriman and his Divs working through human mouths. Piran does not name Garsivaz; he blames the Devil, which lets him say hard things to a king without accusing the king’s brother.

B9.57The Birth of Kay Khosrow

Siavash appears to Piran in a dream to announce his son’s birth. Kay Khosrow is born, as sturdy as a year-old child. Piran vows to protect him and tells Afrasiab, who, remorseful, orders the boy sent to shepherds and kept ignorant of his birth.

A candle kindled from the solar beam: The candle lit from the sun is an image of the farr passing from father to son (on the farr, see A4.1). Siavash, dead, keeps watch over his line, and the dream’s light answers the darkness that fell at his murder.

He seemed a child already one year grown: Heroes in the Shahnameh grow unnaturally fast. Sohrab too looked like a one-year-old at a month. The motif marks the child at once as extraordinary.

That from the line of Tur and Qobad’s seed: Kay Khosrow unites the two branches of Fereydoon’s family that have been at war since Tur killed Iraj: through Siavash he is heir of the Kayanian kings of Iran, and through Farangis he is Afrasiab’s grandson and of the line of Tur. That is why Piran says Tur himself would wish to see him, and why his reign can close the ancient feud.

B9.58Piran Sends Kay Khosrow to the Shepherds

Piran gives the infant to shepherds on Mount Ghola. At seven Kay Khosrow makes his own bow; by ten he hunts lions and leopards. The alarmed shepherd tells Piran, who rides to meet the boy, embraces him, and brings him home to raise in secret.

Piran called shepherds down from Ghola’s height: The royal child raised by herdsmen to escape a king who fears him has a famous parallel. Herodotus tells how Astyages, king of the Medes, warned by a dream against his daughter’s son, ordered the baby killed. The infant Cyrus was raised by a herdsman instead and revealed himself at ten by his kingly bearing. Like Astyages, Afrasiab is the child’s maternal grandfather, and many scholars think the two stories share an old Iranian pattern.

He made himself a bow of simple wood, / And strung it fast with gut as best he could: Royal nature shows through a shepherd’s upbringing, a favorite theme of the Shahnameh, which holds that gohar, inborn worth, cannot be hidden. Piran says so himself a few lines later.

B9.59Kay Khosrow Comes before Afrasiab

Afrasiab, uneasy, asks to see the boy. Piran makes him swear not to harm Kay Khosrow, then coaches the youth to play the fool. Kay Khosrow answers every question with nonsense, Afrasiab laughs, judges him harmless, and sends him to his mother in Siavash-Gard.

Your grandfather Zadeshm swore, God on high: Zadeshm is the father of Pashang and so Afrasiab’s grandfather, in the line that runs back to Tur. Piran binds the king with his ancestors’ example, because an oath sworn in the name of God and one’s forefathers is the most solemn bond the poem knows.

Speak without sense and turn all words to sport: The prince who plays the fool to survive a murderous king is an ancient story type. Compare the Roman Brutus, who feigned dullness under Tarquin, and the Danish Amleth of Saxo Grammaticus, ancestor of Hamlet, who hid his wits from the uncle who had killed his father.

Khosrow replied: “A raging lion, fierce and grim, / No fighting dog can ever master him.”: Kay Khosrow’s ‘nonsense’ is not quite nonsense. Asked about his home and parents, he speaks of a lion no dog can master; asked about revenge, he speaks of a stream running its course. The answers carry a hidden edge that the laughing king misses, and the reader does not.

B9.60Kay Khosrow Comes to Siavash-Gard

Piran loads Kay Khosrow with treasure and sends him with Farangis to Siavash-Gard, where the people greet the heir with blessings. A green tree bearing Siavash’s likeness has grown from his blood. The poet reflects on the faithless world and turns to the coming vengeance.

From earth that drank his noble blood below, / A green tree rose toward clouds in living show: Real rites grew up around Siavash. Narshakhi’s tenth-century History of Bukhara says that Siavash was buried in the citadel of Bukhara and that on every Nowruz, before sunrise, the Magians sacrificed a cock at his tomb. The same book mentions laments for his killing, sung by minstrels throughout the region. Mourning ceremonies for Siavash survived in Fars into modern times, and gave their name to Simin Daneshvar’s novel Savushun (1969), the most widely read Persian novel of its generation.

In Dey it stood as though the earth would bloom: Dey is the tenth month of the Persian year, in the depth of winter (December–January). A tree that stays green in Dey is a sign that Siavash’s cause is not dead. The month opens just after Yalda, the longest night, which Iranians still celebrate as the rebirth of the sun.