The Shahnameh

by Hamid Dabashi

  Ferdowsi therefore wrote his Shahnameh during a victorious dynasty (the Samanids), leading to another victorious empire (the Ghaznavids), and his epic was canonized by all the subsequent empires at the prime moment of their victory when they commissioned the luxurious preparation of a new Shahnameh. The Shahnameh is moreover both teleological and linear and yet also episodic and contemplative at one and the same time. It contains both epic (centered around the chief hero, Rostam) and romance (in stories of Bizhan and Manizheh, Zal and Rudabeh, etc.). So it entirely disregards Quint’s binary and in fact against it posits an entirely different way of looking at the genre. The Shahnameh is neither this nor that, neither triumphalist nor defeatist, neither exclusively linear nor entirely episodic. Instead it has an abiding sense of archetypal awareness, rooted in the two crucial factors of its antiquity and its poetic eloquence and dramatic storytelling. It has both triumph and defeat, celebrates victories, teaches from defeat, but both these traits are squarely at the service of uplifting it into a realm of a metahistorical intuition of transcendence. It is triumphalist and defeatist at one and the same time. In victory it anticipates defeat, and in defeat it remembers victory. Therefore, it transcends them both. Its linearity goes through mythic, heroic, and historical phases, so it transfuses spatial and historical chronology, its episodic focal points (Rostam and Sohrab, Seyavash and Sudabeh, Bizhan and Manizheh, etc.) are archetypal not admonitory. This is the reason why its admonitions keep being repeated (which even its best translator, Dick Davis, alas considers boring and thus does not translate them for his “Western reader.”)23 Quint is able to ask some very good questions indeed, but his theory fails in understanding Ferdowsi’s epic, for it completely confuses his categories. There are implications therefore to be drawn from this comparison between the Shahnameh and the epics Quint studies. Quint is triumphalist in theorization and the Shahnameh cosmic in its narrative confidence.

  The most helpful chart that David Quint offers summarizing his theory is figure 1, “Virgil’s Actium,”24 where he divides the binary he has constructed between two columns of “West” and “East.” While “West” is identified with “One, Male, Control, and Cosmic Order,” “the East” is contrapuntally identified with “Many, Female, Loss of Control, and Chaos.” “The West” thus becomes identified with “Olympian Gods” as “the East” with “Monster Gods,” and “Egyptians, Indians, Arabs” panic at the sight of Apollo, Apollo is favorably disposed to “Mars, Dirae, Discordia, and Bellona.” “The West” is blessed with “Permanence and Reason,” “the East” with “Flux, Nature, and Loss of Identity,” and as such marked by “Suicide, and Death Wish”; “the West” with “Order,” “the East” with “Disorder”; “the West” with “One, the Imperial Unity out of many, conquering nations, and Empire without end,” as “the East” is marked by “many, with indigent Araxes, the Parthian hordes, and the End of Empire.” He prefaces this binary opposition by saying,

  The struggle between Augustus and Anthony pits the forces of the West against those of the East, continuing the pattern of epic confrontation that Virgil found in the Iliad. This pattern would be subsequently repeated in those Renaissance epics that portray an expansionist Europe conquering the people and territories of Asia, Africa, and the recently discovered New World: Ariosto’s knights vanquish an Islamic army collected from Spain, North Africa, Samarkand, India, and Cathay; Tasso’s paladins deliver Jerusalem from the Syrians, Egyptians, and Turks; Camões’ Portuguese seamen lay the foundation for a commercial empire in Mozambique, India and the Far East; Alonso de Ercilla’s Spanish conquistadors attempt to wipe out the resistance of the Araucanian Indians of Chile, Indians who speak surprisingly in the Latinate accents of Virgil’s Turnus and Mazentius.… Milton’s God wrests his “eternal empire” from the realm of Night, the darkest of dark continents, and Satan is described as a “sultan” whose palace in Pandemonium, built by diabolic art from the most precious materials in nature, far outdoes the wealth and splendor of an oriental despot, “where the gorgeous East with richest hands / Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.”25

  What in effect Quint is here theorizing, based on his detailed reading of an entire tradition of European epics, is a poetics and even a metaphysics of imperial conquest, through and by virtue of which Europe is destined to wipe out the entire world of its existing histories, worldliness, cultures, and communities of sensibilities and pacify them all for a European global conquest. Fortunately, Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh has no room in these racist ideologies of epic proportions. With all its dramatic detailing of mythic heroes and historical conquests, the Shahnameh is ultimately about human frailty, the very fragility of historical existence. In the Shahnameh we meet a poet with a full consciousness of human follies, not an ideologue for world conquest. In that respect, Ferdowsi is much closer to Shakespeare than to Homer or Virgil.

  Consider the story of Kaveh the Blacksmith, central to the political culture of the Shahnameh. Zahhak triumphs over Jamshid because of Jamshid’s hubris and arrogance, which ultimately cause his divine grace to abandon him. Zahhak rules with unsurpassed cruelty, killing young men and feeding their brains to his two serpents. Many of Kaveh’s sons were thus murdered and their brains fed to Zahhak’s serpents. It is against this cruelty that Kaveh revolts, topples Zahhak, and reinstalls Fereydun to the throne. The moral outrage of Kaveh is definitive to the entire course of the Shahnameh stories. The most significant ethical voice of the Shahnameh is Ferdowsi himself and the moral conclusions he draws from the various stories he tells. The moral edifice of the Shahnameh is not geared toward triumphant conquest or lamentations from defeat. It pivots toward a sense of reason and sanity against the cruelty of fate. In mapping out that spectrum, Ferdowsi has no political agenda, to promote or denounce the Persian monarchy; he is the defiant voice of what at the very outset of his epic he calls sokhan, reasonable, righteous, logical, and wise words. The entire Shahnameh might in fact be read as an epic celebration of this sokhan.

  Toward the end of his book, when he examines the Russian filmmaker Sergey Eisenstein’s work, Quint concludes by suggesting, “If we return to the ideological dichotomies of the shield of Aeneas—West victorious over East, Male over Female, Reason over Nature, the unified one over the disorganized Many, Permanence over Flux, Alexander Nevsky can be seen to reverse the entire Virgilian imperialist pattern.”26 The supposition of this reversal in effect corroborates the historic mission of the European imperial epic to conquer the world and make it safe for the manifest destiny of its European conquerors. Nothing could be further from the very soul of the Shahnameh. What in effect the Shahnameh does is precisely not to fit this imperialist epic narrative, though it was symbolically the epic definitive to many successive empires, and by refusing to fit in, with elegance and gentility it dismantles the whole project—dismantling not by opposing it, not by showing the binary to be false and violent, but by offering an entirely different world that the Virgilian epic condemns as confused and demonic, chaotic and monstrous, suicidal and afflicted with lamentations. Ferdowsi in his Shahnameh in effect laughs at this grotesque ignorance of the world it has to share with the Virgilian world. Reading through the Shahnameh is the most civilized, composed, graceful dismantling of this entire metaphysics of delusional fantasies that have sustained the myth of “the West” for so many successive imperial thuggeries. In the Virgilian epic, as Quint theorizes it, we see Parthians as hordes, and Egyptians, Indians, and Arabs as panicking in wild despair at the sight of Apollo. Not so in the Shahnameh, where even the Macedonian general Alexander is domesticated to its narrative and thereby civilized.27

  There is a reason that none of these European classical, medieval, or Renaissance epics survive from their immediate imperial contexts and disposable usefulness into the capitalist imperialism of the post–French Revolution, and as Franco Moretti argues in his Modern Epic a whole different set of fictions needed to emerge to correspond to the later stages of the European claim to global conquest. Th
e Shahnameh, on the other hand, aged gracefully and transitioned well into the tumultuous postcolonial nation building and tolerated the abuse of the Pahlavi monarchy as it endures the official neglect of the Islamic Republic to dwell where it ultimately belongs—with the fate of a people to whom it has been the source of solace and solidarity. So no, the world did not have to wait for Sergey Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky (1938) to dismantle that imperialist delusion. The world was already thriving, living, being, celebrating in alternative epics such as the Shahnameh, Mahabharata, and others with an entirely different genealogy of morals to the very fabric of their epic narratives.

  So one more time: Why would we say all of this about the Shahnameh? In what way do we relate to it as an imperial epic? The Shahnameh is an epic unlike the manner in which the Iliad, Odyssey, or Aeneid are epics for a very simple and compelling reason. Ferdowsi wrote the Shahnameh neither at the end nor at the beginning of any imperial formation but smack at the center of two successive intersections of world empires, empires that happen before him and empires that were unfolding beyond him. The problem therefore with the very normative idea of “World Literature” is that its theorists are decidedly located and rooted in a very limited (however rich and diverse) conception of literary productions like epic and sit royally on the throne of their theories asking epics outside their playing field to explain themselves. That imperial arrogance must be dismantled.

  FILICIDE, OEDIPAL, SOHRABANEH

  Afrasiab the king of Turan hears of Sohrab’s plan to invade Iran, takes advantage of the opportunity, and sends an army to help him in his campaign and charges two of his trusted advisers with the mission to make sure Rostam and Sohrab do not recognize each other, for if they did the fate of both the Turanian and Iranian monarchies would be sealed. They had to keep them hostile and to destroy them both and thereafter conquer Iran.

  Meanwhile Sohrab leads his army toward Iran, comes near a major fortress held by some leading generals of the Iranian empire. He charges against the fortress and is confronted by a valiant knight named Gordafarid (imagine her as Brienne of Tarth if you are a Game of Thrones fan), disguising herself as a man. They battle fiercely, and finally Sohrab is victorious and realizes his nemesis is an attractive woman. She seduces Sohrab to let her go. She runs back to the fortress. Overnight a message is sent to the Iranian monarch Key Kavous informing him of the invading army headed by this young valiant hero Sohrab. Key Kavous as usual sends Give, one of his trusted generals, to summon Rostam. Rostam is busy partying and frolicking and spends days and nights with Give drinking and enjoying himself, disregarding the king’s urgent request. They finally get to the court. Key Kavous is furious with him for being late. But Rostam tells him to be quiet for he is nothing without him and leaves the court in anger. Other heroes at the court go after him, bring him to the court, where the king apologizes and asks him to help out with this new menace to his empire. Rostam is clueless that his own valiant son is leading the enemy’s army. Sohrab, however, is desperate to find out who among the enemy’s knights is his father. But divine destiny and man’s folly and political treachery all come together for the father and son not to recognize each other.

  To make a long story short, Rostam and Sohrab face each other in battle over many days fighting forcefully, and at one fateful moment Rostam finally overcomes Sohrab, draws his dagger, and … at just about this instant, Ferdowsi pauses his narrative, takes a snapshot of the scene of Rostam sitting on his son’s chest and about to bring down his dagger and kill him, and, in a frozen second, wonders how come these two did not recognize each other.28 Fish in the sea, he says, and birds in the sky recognize their children and parents. What is man, “this quintessence of dust,” as Omar Khayyam and William Shakespeare will add generations later, that his greed and folly prevent him from recognizing his own parents and offspring? The deeply saddened poet then unfreezes the frame, and Rostam brings down his dagger and kills his own son.

  The story of Rostam and Sohrab offers us a crucial occasion to reflect on the nature of the father-son relationship in the Shahnameh. The story initially happens in a liminal space, neither in Iran nor in Turan. Rostam goes to a remissive space, Samangan, located somewhere between the two opposing empires. His soon-to-be wife and mother of his valiant son Sohrab, Tahmineh, is from this remissive space, a liminal location where the parameters of the two opposing camps can be remapped. Rostam’s losing his Rakhsh is a premonition of suspending his manhood and masculinity, both of which Tahmineh will soon restore by returning his horse before giving him a son. Upon his return to Iran and soon after Sohrab’s invasion, Rostam’s reluctance to come to the king’s court and his rushed anger to leave that court are all signs of his fear of the encounter with Sohrab and the prospect of his own mortality—for the mere mention of his son reminds him of his lost horse/manhood. Sohrab’s onslaught is threatening not just the Iranian empire but the place of his father as a kingmaker. Sohrab in effect wants to overcome and replace his father. Sohrab’s encounter with Gordafarid is the substitutional moment of his lifelong accompaniment of his mother, Tahmineh. That encounter at one and the same time emasculates Sohrab and restores his manhood. Sohrab’s towering ambition is turning his father into a useless king and replacing him as the looming hero of the two empires, which is precisely what troubles the patriarchal order. His dalliance with Gordafarid is a moment of generational alliance against the father figures of the empire, as her disguise marks the transgender eroticism that amplifies the erotic violence of their first encounter. The story of Rostam and Sohrab might therefore be read as the Oedipal in reverse, a “Sohrabaneh” in full gear, the story of a father who kills his own son to prevent him from replacing him as a kingmaker. Sohrab is the product of a night of desire, and his murder marks the paramount example of filicide. But Sohrab too seeks his father “to kill” and replace him as the kingmaker and thus to foreclose the father figure he had never seen, to fold the figure of the father that has cast a long but useless shadow between him and his mother all his life.

  Stories like Zahhak’s being instrumental in killing his father or Rostam’s unknowingly killing his son are central and transfigurative in the making of the Shahnameh as an epic. What sustains the course of the epic are these repeated patterns of generational encounters between aging fathers and their ambitious sons. Ferdowsi is not to persuade you of one thing or another, of fathers over sons, or sons over fathers. He just uses these stories to wonder about the nature of human folly. His poetic voice is paramount over and above the stories he shares. If Zahhak’s mother is suspected of vicious compliance in the murder of her husband, like Gertrude in Hamlet, Sohrab’s mother, Tahmineh, is the picture of chastity whose single night of pleasure with Rostam is predicated on a proper marital vow, after which she remains a loyal wife and a devout mother. But in both cases the ambitious sons compete for the love of their respective mothers by seeking to overcome the towering figures of their respective fathers. The triangulation of the mother-son-father in these and other such cases sustains the synergy of the epic from the familial to the imperial. This makes the Shahnameh an epic of human frailty as the conditia sine qua non of history.

  TWO

  FERDOWSI THE POET

  Konun Ey sokhan-gu-ye bidar-maghz:

  Yeki dastani biyaray naghz!

  Now you shrewd storyteller:

  Come and tell us a lovely story!

  Iranian knights were one day out hunting and having fun. They came across a beautiful woman lost in the woods. Unable to decide which one should have the young woman, they take her to their king, Key Kavous, to decide for them. The king keeps the young woman for himself, and soon a son is born from their casual union. They name the boy Seyavash and soon give him to Rostam to raise and train as a valiant prince. Under the care of Rostam, Seyavash grows up to become a noble warrior. It is now time for the young prince to go back to his father’s court and prove his worth. Seyavash returns to Key Kavous’s court, and everyone is mesmerized by his valia
nce, elegance, and beauty of body and soul—women of the royal court in particular, and even more particularly his own stepmother, Sudabeh, who falls madly in love with him, burning with a consuming erotic desire for the young prince. Sudabeh summons Seyavash to her court, tries to seduce him, promises him her total loyalty and an assurance of his father’s throne. But Seyavash refuses her repeated advances. She finally gets infuriated with Seyavash and goes to her husband, Seyavash’s royal father, King Key Kavous, and accuses the young Seyavash of unwanted sexual advances toward her, which she says has resulted in her aborting a child of the king’s she was carrying. Seyavash declares his innocence and in order to prove it volunteers to ride with his horse through a blazing fire. The king agrees. Seyavash rides through the fire and emerges safely, proving his innocence. Disappointed by the treacheries at his father’s court, Seyavash decides to leave his royal realm altogether and rides to the border of Iran and Turan, heartbroken at the treacheries of his fate.