COLLECTION
Stories connected by a shared idea.
In the Avesta the pairikā is a demoness who flies between earth and sky until the star Tishtrya binds her; in Persian poetry the parī is the measure of all beauty. Europe met her through Galland's Arabian Nights and Thomas Moore's Peri at the gate of Eden, and her name sounds like "fairy", though the English word does not come from it.
Read story 10 min readRostam left an armlet for the child he might have, and rode home. Years later his son Sohrab marched into Iran to find him, and the two met in single combat without knowing each other.
Read story 11 min readTo free a blinded king from the demons of Mazandaran, Rostam rode the short road alone and met a lion, a desert, a dragon, a witch and the White Div on the way. He is the greatest hero of the Persian epic, yet the Avesta never names him.
Read story 11 min readFalsely accused by his stepmother, Prince Siyavash rode through a mountain of fire and came out unharmed, then chose exile over breaking his word and was killed in the land of his father's enemy. Ferdowsi did not invent him: the Avesta already remembers his murder, and Bukhara had songs of mourning for him.
Read story 12 min readA blacksmith whose sons were fed to a tyrant's serpents tore up the king's testimonial and raised his leather apron on a spear. The Persian kings' great banner was named after him, yet the historians who describe it speak of panther skins and jewels, not an apron.
Read story 9 min readShe raised an abandoned child in her nest on the Alborz, saved his wife and newborn son with her advice, and showed that son the branch that would kill a prince. Behind the Simurgh of Ferdowsi's epic stands an older bird of the Avesta, perched on a tree that holds the seeds of every plant.
Read story 11 min readIn the Avesta he is a dragon with three heads; in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh he is a king whose shoulders sprout two black serpents that must be fed every night. When Fereydun brings him down at last, an angel stops the final blow, and Zahhak is left in chains inside Mount Damavand.
Read story 11 min readAt the beginning, says a hymn of Zarathustra, two spirits made their choice: one chose the truth, the other the lie. Later books tell how the evil one broke into the world, and how it will end in a river of molten metal and a world made new.
Read story 11 min readUnder Yima, says the Avesta, no one grew old or died; the day Jamshid rose into the sky on his throne, says the Shahnameh, was the first New Year. Then he called himself the maker of the world and lost his glory, and in the epic the famous cup of Jamshid is not his at all.
Read story 11 min readMithra has a thousand ears and ten thousand eyes, and he rises over the mountains before the sun to see who breaks their word. Zoroastrians still honour him, but the Roman Mithras who killed a bull, and the claim that he was born on 25 December, are another story.
Read story 10 min read
