The Tragedy of Sohráb and Rostám

Abolqasem Ferdowsi

The Tragedy of Sohráb and Rostám is from a long poem of some 100,000 lines called the Shâhnâme or "book of kings" that is the national epic of Persia and Iran. It occurs about one-third of the way through. Though relatively brief (it is only about 2,000 lines), it is generally regarded as a dramatic and poetic high-point of the whole.

Unlike the western epic tradition founded by Homer (which focuses on a single hero and usually a single "epic" struggle), the Shâhnâme stretches across millennia and has many heroes. The focus is on the court of the shah and the relationship of piety to loyalty and obedience. The monarch is the enduring institution that holds Iran together (as well as the Shâhnâme itself).

In the world of the Shâhnâme the shahs are credited with the development of human society. Before the first shah, humans lived like beasts, but the first divinely appointed ruler Jamshid provided humans with fire, tools, agriculture etc. and men were raised above the level of beasts. In other traditions these gifts come from the gods, but in Iran the shahs provide them.

The work was originally in Persian, but survives only in Arabic translations. After its conquest and conversion to Islam, Iran was ruled by Arabs until the Samanid dynasty (819-1005, an Iranian-Muslim dynasty), which fostered interest in the national epic of Iran. The old stories were gathered in prose form (as preserved by Arab historians), then turned into verse by Abolqasem Ferdowsi.

It begins with the creation of the world and the appearance of the first shah (not in medias res). Some of the stories go back to the time of such pre-Islamic Persian rulers as Cyrus and Darius, some 2500 years ago. About two-thirds of the Shâhnâme consists of heroic and romantic tales from the mythic past; only the last third deals with recognizably historic figures, like Alexander the Great.

Before the defeat of last shah of the Shâhnâme, Yazdegerd III in 652, the religion of Persia was Zoroastrianism. They held that the world was a site of conflict between two great powers, good and evil, or Ahura Mazda and Ahriman that was presided over by the supreme God, Yazdán, the creator and keeper of the world. As a good Muslim writing for a Muslim patron, Ferdowsi stripped away most of the vestiges of Zoroastrianism, though we still get an occasional sense of this dualism.

Yazdán the Pure, p. 1498, l. 112

Yazdán who controls destiny p. 1512, ll. 74-76

Ahriman, god of darkness p. 1508, l. 65

A. Rostám

The episode called The Tragedy of Sohráb and Rostám is part of the long feud between Iran and Turán, both of whom were descended from a common ancestor (named Faridun). By the time of the poet Ferdowsi, Turán had come to be equated with the Turkish regions of central Asia

Rostám is the most celebrated and complex folk-hero in Iranian culture, who saves the foolish Kay Kavús (and therefore Iran) many times. Before his appearance in the Shâhnâme, the attitude to the shah is always one of public acquiescence and loyalty, regardless of what private doubts there may be about the wisdom of the shah's policies. After Rostám's death (which doesn't happen in what we read), loyalty to the monarch becomes more of an ideal to be invoked when it is expedient to do so. His story is thus a complex tale that challenges traditional assumptions.

Though Rostám in many ways embodies the old ideals of service to the court of the shah as the savior of Iran, he is presented as different in kind from his ancestors: Rostám is fiery and quick-tempered, he is frequently drunk, he has an overweening pride, and he is impetuous-all of these qualities are simultaneously the source of his success as a hero and faults that put himself, his family and Iran at risk.

One critic argues that Rostám's maternal ancestry explains in part these tendencies: his mother was a descendant of the tyrannical shah Zahhak, who had the same qualities and nearly destroyed Iran.

For most of his career Rostám is able to serve Iran well: his ambition leads him to seek out every challenge, such as, here, the champion of the armies of Turán, Sohráb, who wishes to destroy Iran. At crucial moments, however, Rostám finds it difficult to submit to his shah, Kay Kavús, who is very dependent on Rostám's prowess.

When the courtier Giv drunkenly proposes a foray into Turán, Rostám agrees, but loses his horse and becomes vulnerable. He is forced to turn to the hospitality of the lord of Semengán, with whose daughter, Tahminé, he sleeps when he is drunk (p. 1484, l. 42). Unlike his weak shah Kavús, Rostám is able to extricate himself from these dangers, but he has left behind "a hostage to fortune" in the person of an unborn son, Sohráb.

In the Shâhnâme drunkenness by a hero seldom goes unpunished, so readers would be alert for retribution/consequences.

B. Sohráb

Tahminé is both noble and chaste, but like Shakespeare's Desdemona, she is captivated by tales of the hero's prowess. She vows that she will have no other mate if he refuses her and begs him to give her a son.

When Sohráb is born nine months later, he grows to manhood with astonishing speed: "When he was ten in all of Semengán / No one would dare meet him in the field" (p. 1486, ll. 11-12). His mother eventually tells him who his father is, and Sohráb is filled with the ambition to make Rostám ruler of Iran and himself shah of Turán. So he sets about raising an army to invade Iran.

Afrasiyáb, the shah of Turán, has also learned the secret of Sohráb's identity and schemes to use him to destroy his father. He instructs his generals to assist Sohráb but to prevent father and son from recognizing one another. p. 1487, ll. 22-24

In his first battle Sohráb easily defeats the woman warrior Gordafaríd, but she easily outwits him and eludes capture. This shows how innocent or naive Sohráb really is. p. 1491, ll. 75-76

C. Sohráb and Rostám

The complexity of the story turns on the fact that both its strands-the story about a father and son and about a ruler and subject-are combined in the end: the subject is also the greatest hero of the Shâhnâme, Rostám, yet he is shown to be insubordinate to his shah and the killer of his son: he is both innocent (he did not fully know what he was doing) and guilty (the death of Sohráb is the result of the excessive behavior entirely typical to Rostám). Kavús refuses to save Sohráb's life to ratify his position of power over Rostám.

Justice may seem cruel to us, but only because we are ignorant of God's purpose.

1. Why must Sohráb die? As a son Sohráb's death seems wrong to us (particularly after Freud). When he comes to manhood, he demands to know his identity, and resolves to overthrow Kay Kavús and place his father on the throne. This makes him an enemy to the shah, despite his good qualities. The enemy of the shah is the enemy of Iran and of God.

The fundamental idea of the Shâhnâme or "book of kings" is that Iran will endure as long as it is ruled by divinely appointed monarchs. Why God chooses such a bad shah as Kay Kavús is another mystery known only to God. Strong element of fatalism....

2. Why must Rostám be the one to kill Sohráb? The idea of filicide is disturbing, especially when both father and son are admirable in so many ways. Rostám is one of the great heroes in the Shâhnâme and his son by rights ought to succeed him to continue the line of great warriors.

When father and son meet at last, they fight three times. The first day ends in a draw; the second day sees Sohráb throw Rostám, but Rostám tricking him into giving him a second chance; in the third fight, Rostám throws Sohráb and quickly stabs him.

Much of the interest in the west in The Tragedy of Sohráb and Rostám lies in the killing of a son by a father with his own hands: Rostám's ignorance of Sohráb's identity is what enables him to do so. But is it possible that Rostám recognizes Sohráb-or should?

When Sohráb is shown the distant Iranian camp, he asks where Rostám is (p. 1505, ll. 138-40). He repeatedly asks of his adversary if he is Rostám. [Sohráb is wearing a seal on his arm that Rostám had given to prove his paternity, but it is hidden under his armor.] This heightens the suspense but also conveys a terrible truth about psychological relationships within a family-the father destroying the son-set against the greatest challenge to a proper subject-monarch relationship: Rostám's famous phrase is that Kavús isn't worth a fistful of dirt (p. 1498, l. 110).

Ferdowsi makes quite plain his condemnation of Rostám throughout the whole Sohráb narrative. Just before the slaying of Sohráb, Ferdowsi will intervene to accuse Rostám of overweening pride and excess, and then later he will conclude with the judgment that: "It is a tale that's filled with tears and grief. / The gentle heart will rage against Rostám" (p. 1524, ll. 61-63).

But we are also drawn to Rostám, for there are two culpabilities here: before his shah and before his son-as well as before the order that transcends society, God. Rostám's fault in regard to his son is clouded by the fact that he does not seem to be aware that it is his son with whom he is in conflict. See p. 1515.

Sohráb is himself more than ready to forgive his father and attribute the blame to fate. It was inevitable or fated, he will say: "What's happened here is what was meant to be" (p. 1518, l. 78).

D. Heroes and Shahs

Our sense of Rostám's responsibility for his son's death is also mitigated by the character of Kavús, who is consistently portrayed as incompetent and foolish-especially when we learn Kavús has a drug that will save Sohráb's life but refuses to use it. Guilt passes surely to Kavús in the reader's eyes.

When fame of Sohráb's exploits reaches Iran and Kavús sends for Rostám, Rostám does not react very swiftly. In fact, he doesn't take the threat seriously. Were the new Turkish champion his son, he might be concerned, but the boy's mother has recently sent him a message saying Sohráb is still a stripling....

So Rostám ignores the command, feasts with the courtier Giv and gets drunk again, despite the shah's explicit insistence that they set out right away. This moral dereliction is punished by the shah's attempt to have him hung. Rostám's importance to Iran is indicated by the fact that the nobles then attempt to persuade the shah, rather than Rostám, to apologize (pp. 1498-99). Though the fault was Rostám's, Kavús's repeated foolishness has predisposed the reader in Rostám's favor. And a reconciliation does take place when Kavús apologizes directly to Rostám-and Rostám does not reciprocate (p. 1499, ll. 137-46). When Rostám rejects Kavús as his monarch, he says he will deal with God directly from now on:

How dare he order me! I'm not his slave.

I serve the World Creator, only him (p. 1497, ll. 43-44)

He tries, that is, to separate obedience to God from obedience to the shah, but he cannot- loyalty and piety are one and the same in the Shâhnâme. The idea of the absolute supremacy of the monarch is being tested here in an extreme fashion: the best of heroes and the worst of shahs. But God expects absolute obedience to his representative.

The rift between monarch and subject grows wider in the Shâhnâme, one of whose main themes will be the dilemma confronting subjects living under foolish and oppressive shahs. A number of the heroes in the poem must answer this question. Thus while the Shâhnâme celebrates the idea of kingship, it also repeatedly engages its readers in a kind of subversive political dialogue: "it is as much about the burden of service as the burden of kingship; the glory of fidelity as the glory of command, the despair of conscience in the subject as the exercise of absolute power." [Dick Davis, Epic and Sedition]

Ferdowsi obviously supports the idea of monarchy-he takes it for granted that the shah is essential because God chose this form of rule for human society (p. 1499. ll. 146-51). But, as an observer of human life, Ferdowsi saw that divine choice didn't always fall on those who were the best men. The list of bad shahs in the Shâhnâme is very long, while the list of good ones is too short.

E. Fatalism in The Tragedy of Sohráb and Rostám:

p. 1513, l. 110

p. 1517, l. 19-21

p. 1522, l. 67-80

pp. 1523-24, ll. 52-54