 Sunset of Empire
Introduction to third volume of Shahnameh's translation
July 24, 2004
iranian.com
From introduction by Dick Davis, translator of Sunset
of Empire: Stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi Volume III (Mage,
2003). Also See Illustrations
from Sunset of Empire Read Interview
with Dick Davis
Fathers and Sons, our second
volume of stories from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, ended with the escape
to India of Sasan, the eponymous
ancestor of the future founder
of the Sasanian dynasty. The appearance of his name marks the moment at which
the poem begins to move from legend to history. Increasingly, from this point
on, many of at least the public figures whose lives are chronicled by Ferdowsi
have some correspondence (albeit at first often highly fanciful) to historical
characters.
Ferdowsi's record of Iran's pre-Islamic myths, legends, and history culminates
in the greatest watershed of the culture, the Arab invasion of the seventh
century, which both ended a series of empires and initiated a new, syncretic
civilization.
Ferdowsi places a similar watershed, the conquest by Sekandar (Alexander),
close to the center of his poem, and after this historical crisis nothing in
the Shahnameh is quite as it was before. The poem's geographical center shifts decisively
westward, culminating in the location of the Sasanian capital at Ctesiphon
in Mesopotamia,
and this shift is reflected in the nature of the enemies the country's kings
are forced to fight. If the ancient threat from central Asia is still present
(as in the invasion of Saveh Shah, the leader of both Chinese and central Asian
Turkish forces), new threats from the west (Greece, Rome, Byzantium) and the
southwest (the Arabs) assume decisive importance.
The nature of the stories also changes, and often they seem to be providing
a kind of mirror image of the world of myth and legend of the poem's opening
half.
In the first half of the poem, prominent fathers (Rostam, Kavus, Goshtasp)
are directly or indirectly responsible for their sons' deaths (Sohrab, Seyavash,
Esfandyar), but in the second half prominent sons (Khosrow Parviz, Shirui)
are
held to be directly or indirectly responsible for their fathers' deaths (Hormozd,
Khosrow Parviz). In the first half, the major champion is Rostam who, despite
increasing provocation, attempts to maintain loyalty to the royal families
of Iran and emphatically rejects the notion that he might ever be the king
of the
country. In the second half the major champion is Bahram Chubineh, who rebels
against both of his monarchs and attempts to seize the throne for himself.
Most striking perhaps is the way that the role of women, and particularly non-Persian
women, is redefined in the poem's second half. Virtually all of the significant
women in the poem's mythological and legendary sections are non-Persian in
origin (Sindokht, Rudabeh, Sudabeh, Farigis, Manizheh, Katayun) and, with the
signal
exception of Sudabeh, almost all of them are positively presented. Even Sudabeh,
the first time we meet her, is a positive figure like Rudabeh and Manizheh,
who defies her non-Persian father to be faithful to the Persian she loves.
The most
prominent female figure in the poem's second half is certainly Gordyeh, who
is not foreign but Iranian, and represents the traditional and deeply Iranian
virtue
of loyalty to ancient mores. When foreign women do appear in the second half
they are much less welcome than they had been in the legendary narratives.
In the poem's earlier sections most of the narratives' major heroes have
foreign mothers, but this doesn't prevent them from being seen
as great exemplars of
Persian virtues, and miscegenation is an accepted and generally welcomed
fact.
Indeed, perhaps the most positively presented king of the
whole poem, Kay Khosrow,
has only one Iranian grandparent; the other three are all central Asian Turks.
But miscegenation is regarded with deep suspicion in the poem's second half,
and that Hormozd has a Chinese mother and Shirui a Byzantine mother is seen
in
each case as a distinct negative. The preference here is for emphatic endogamy,
although Ferdowsi is clearly embarrassed by the pre-Islamic laws that encouraged
marriages within the immediate family, as is evident from his treatment of
the daughter-father/Homay-Bahman relationship, and the way that he glosses
over something
earlier historians unequivocally recorded, that Gordyeh was married to her
brother Bahram Chubineh.
One notable woman who has gone down in Persian legend as foreign in origin,
and whose story appears in the present volume, is Shirin. Unlike Nezami (the
twelfth-century
author of the better known romance version of her tale), Ferdowsi doesn't
explicitly tell us that she is not a Persian, but given the suspicion of
foreign consorts
in the poem's second half, the unexplained scandal that surrounds her in
his version of her tale, and the fact that her presence at court needs strenuous
justification from her husband and king, Khosrow Parviz, perhaps point to
this.
This unexplained scandal is also an example of how not only the content of
the tales changes in the poem's second half, but also Ferdowsi's method of
telling
them.
In general, when reading the poem's earlier narratives, we have
a clear idea of the ethical issues involved, and of where our sympathies
are supposed
to lie. We know that Seyavash is ethically superior to both Kavus and Sudabeh;
that Piran Viseh acts from more morally admirable motives than does his
king, Afrasyab; and that Goshtasp is at fault when he sends Esfandyar
to bring
Rostam to his court in chains. This moral clarity is often much harder
to find in
Ferdowsi's portraits of the central characters of his poem's later sections,
many of whom
are presented in a highly ambiguous and ethically unresolved fashion.
Are
we to approve or disapprove of Shirin? When we first meet her she is
an abandoned woman and a figure of pathos; she elicits our sympathy.
She is accused of
some
unspecified moral impurity and the charge is never really denied, merely
evaded; we suspend judgment. She secretly murders her husband's favorite
wife and assumes
her position in the harem; we disapprove. She rejects her odious stepson,
Shirui, and has a splendid speech of self-defense and a moving death
scene;
we approve,
and this seems to be the final impression we are meant to bring away
from her tale. But the figure she is most similar to from the poem's
first half
is the
generally evil Sudabeh. Like Sudabeh she is a fairly ruthless and (probably)
foreign royal consort who combines a dubious ethical reputation with
an absolute hold on the king's affections, and at one point she
seems
to be about to
become erotically involved with her stepson. With this comparison in
mind we are again
tempted to disapprove.
This moral ambiguity is not confined to Ferdowsi's portraits of female
characters. Another prime example is that of the reformer Mazdak. We
read that he is
knowledgeable and that his words are wise, and when there is a famine
the analogies he makes
to the king concerning the populace's sufferings seem cogent and laudable.
But the man who defeats him in argument is sponsored by Nushin-Ravan
(Anushirvan), who is presented as one of the most admirable monarchs
in the poem, and
Ferdowsi explicitly tells us at the end of Mazdak's tale that a wise
man would not
act as he did. At the opening of his tale we seem meant to admire him;
at the end
we are virtually told to despise him.
Perhaps the poem's most extreme
instance of apparent authorial moral ambiguity, in the portrayal of
a character,
occurs in the account of Sekandar (Alexander), who is presented as
both a barbarous
conqueror and an ethically motivated searcher for enlightenment.
The reasons for this complexity, and ways in which it affects our experience
of reading the tales, can be considered as separate, if related, issues.
A major cause of some of the tales' ambiguities seems clear: Ferdowsi
had much
fuller
sources for many of the quasi-historical narratives than he had for
the legendary material, and some of these sources seem to have been
quite
radically contradictory
of one another. The fact that he did not, apparently, attempt to resolve
these contradictions seems significant. His method sometimes seems
analogous to that
adopted by a number of medieval Islamic historians (e.g., Tabari) who,
when their sources offered differing versions of the same events, put
down both
versions,
and then added, "But God knows best." Ferdowsi doesn't say this, and
he doesn't explicitly tell us that he is recording different versions, but he
(apparently) simply splices them together and leaves the contradictions intact
in the one narrative.
What is perhaps especially interesting is that in the pre-Sekandar
portion of the poem we can sometimes see him choosing one version
over another in the few instances when we know that he had more
than one account available
for a tale. For example, there were two versions as to why Rostam
and Goshtasp quarreled. One was that Rostam despised Goshtasp's
family as upstart, and Goshtasp
resented this, the other was that Rostam vehemently denounced Goshtasp's
adoption of the new religion of Zoroastrianism. The first version,
which Ferdowsi follows,
is found in Tabari's History; the second is in Dinawari's History,
as well as in a number of works written after Ferdowsi's Shahnameh,
e.g., the anonymous
History of Sistan. This second version is wholly ignored by Ferdowsi.
Here, for one of the legendary tales, we see him choosing one account
over another, but
in the historical sections of his poem his method seems to be more
one of splicing than of choice and exclusion.
The contradictions are not only moral, but often factual. Sometimes
these seem significant (Sasan has two differing lineages), often
they seem
simply incidental.
Who, for example, is responsible for the blinding of King Hormozd?
A prophecy says his wife will do it; we are told that members of
a mob
stirred up
by Gostahm do it, unbeknownst to Hormozd's son, Khosrow Parviz. Khosrow
Parviz
is later
accused of either having done it personally or of having instigated
it. Ferdowsi apparently favors the second version (the mob), but
he still
includes the
other two in his text.
When we compare the stories included in this third volume to those
in the poem's legendary portion we see the truth of A. J. P. Taylor's
aphorism, "History
gets thicker as it approaches recent times -- more people, more events, and more
books written about them." One senses Ferdowsi dealing with these accumulating
people, events, and books in his presentation of the historical narratives, which
are thick with detail in a way that is quite absent from most of the earlier
tales. If this multiplicity of detail can occasionally lead to contradictions,
and sometimes to outright anachronisms (as in Sekandar's Christianity), it can
also, paradoxically, give the tales a quotidian realism that is largely absent
from the legendary material, as well as providing for sudden and arresting shifts
of tone.
Furthermore, the intensity of a number of the psychological portraits
in this section (e.g., that of Bahram Chubineh) depends largely
on the telling accumulation of such details. This concern with
the quotidian brings another
advantage; it is in the Sasanian section of the poem that we most
often glimpse daily life outside of the court and the realm of
the heroic. The occasional vivid
vignettes of rural life that we encounter in the reigns of the
later Sasanian monarchs contribute a kind of stylized realism that
can be charming or sobering,
depending on the circumstances recounted. In the same way, much
of the humor of the poem also occurs in the Sasanian section, again
frequently in moments
located outside of the court.
A new problem is that when Ferdowsi's
sources lack detailed accounts, he must nevertheless give some
version of what he believes
to have happened. His apologetic and relatively perfunctory account
of the Ashkanians (Parthians) was clearly caused by the fact that
the Sasanians had fairly efficiently
obliterated them from the historical record. Interestingly enough,
this is something that Bahram Chubineh threatens to do to the Sasanians
themselves. When the government
of the Islamic Republic expunged from public life all positive
references to the Pahlavis, even changing all the street names
in the major cities, they were
following ancient precedent.
From the opening of the poem the Persian courts are characterized
as centers of both justice and pleasure. The ideal king will administer
justice, which
includes protecting the frontiers of the country against invasion,
and his court will
also represent a kind of earthly paradise whose pleasures include
feasting,
wine-drinking, the giving and receiving of gifts, hunting, and
the celebration of the major
festivals of the Zoroastrian year. The worst sins, for both the
king and his subjects, are greed and excessive ambition. Erotic
pleasure
is hardly
dwelt
on in the poem's legendary section, although it is understood that
this too is a
constituent of the court's function as an earthly paradise.
In the stories that make up the present volume -- those from the "historical" section
of the poem -- erotic pleasure is sometimes brought into the foreground in a
way that it had not been in the earlier tales, and the simultaneous association
of both justice and pleasure in the person of the ideal king becomes more problematic.
The three most positively presented kings of the post-Sekandar section of the
poem are Ardeshir (the founder of the Sasanian dynasty), Bahram Gur, and Nushin-Ravan
(Anushirvan the Just).
Ardeshir is presented as a vigorous reformer who rewrites
his country's legal code, energetically puts down internal dissension,
and secures the country's borders against invasion. Nushin-Ravan
is a man who inherits an
empire and strives to administer it justly and according to ancient
precepts, while remaining open to wisdom from other sources, especially
India. The main
difference between them and the more admirable legendary monarchs
whom they succeed is the centralization of their administrative
and cultural control. The sense
of various centers of power (e.g., Sistan) only tangentially under
the central government's authority, which is everywhere present
in the legendary material,
has largely disappeared from the narratives. Nevertheless, both
these kings are re-embodiments, in Sasanian terms, of ideals that
have been explicit throughout
the poem's legendary section.
Bahram Gur, of whom Ferdowsi seems emphatically to approve introduces
a relatively new element into the poem, which is the emphasis on
pleasure, especially
the pleasure of erotic adventure, as the primary, and apparently
often sole, activity
of a monarch. Bahram Gur is presented as an ideal monarch who is
largely preoccupied with sensual, private pleasure, but who is
nevertheless just, and widely loved
by his subjects, even if his vizier is worried about what he sees
as
the
king's excessive attachment to women.
Two stories -- one beginning
in comedy and ending
in tragedy, the other wholly comic, which are placed back to back
in his reign -- also elaborate on another pleasure that had been
taken
for granted
in the
earlier sections of the poem, and this is drinking wine. The first
story ends with wine being forbidden, and the second with this
prohibition being abrogated
as long as one does not drink to excess. It seems more than a coincidence
that the outcome of the stories concerning wine in Bahram's reign
reverses orthodox
interpretation of the Qoranic texts on wine, according to which
the prohibition
abrogates the implied permission to drink in moderation.
 At the
end of the poem, when Rostam the son of Hormozd prophesies the
disasters
that
will come
to Iran
as a result of the Arab invasion, Bahram Gur's reign is singled
out as emblematic of all that the Arabs will destroy, and we realize
that the
emphasis on sensual
pleasure and its attendant luxuries in his reign was deliberately
presented as an alternative to the civilization brought by the
Moslem
Arab conquerors,
which
is characterized, by Rostam at least, in wholly negative and dour
terms.
But despite Rostam's unequivocally bleak prophecy, the final episodes
of the poem are profoundly ambiguous. Hormozd and Khosrow Parviz
are complex,
weak
kings who seem to have inherited Bahram Gur's attachment to pleasure
but have none
of his panache or instinct for largess, and are unable to command
the affection and loyalty of their subjects. They are followed
by a virtual
rabble.
The
sense of an empire destroyed as much by the weakness, extravagance,
and squalid infighting
of its rulers as by outside invasion pervades the poem's closing
pages. Although the poet is emphatic in his lament for the civilization
that
was destroyed
by the invasion, his depiction of the negotiations between the
Arabs and the Persians
seems at times weighted in the Arabs' moral favor. It is difficult
to read the scene in which the laconic and almost naked Arab
envoy Sho'beh
confronts
the
arrogant Persian commanders, resplendent in their golden armor,
as anything but an indictment of the Persians.
 Despite the undeniable
epic grandeur
of its best-known
passages, the Shahnameh is never a simple poem, and the
moral complexities it explores throughout its immense length come
to a magnificent
and
unresolved climax
in its last pages. If Ferdowsi's final claim is one of pride in
his work, an emotion that seems almost as strongly present is that
of
bewilderment. As he
frequently remarks whenever he has to record the untimely death
of a
character he admires, he cannot understand what the heavens are
about, and this sense
of a repeatedly frustrated interrogation of God's purposes reaches
its apogee in
the poem's closing scenes.
See Illustrations
from Sunset of Empire
Read Interview
with Dick Davis
About
Dick Davis is Professor and Chair of the Near Eastern Languages
and Cultures Department at Ohio State University [>>> Homepage >>> Features
in iranian.com]. His particular
interest is medieval Persian poetry, but he is also concerned with
the history
and problems of verse translation. His published works include translations
of the Manteq Altair of Attar (1984, with Afkham Darbandi);
an edition of Fitzgerald's translations of Khayyam (1990), The
Legend of Seyavash of Ferdowsi (1992), and Epic
and Sedition: A Study of Ferdowsi's 'Shahnameh' (1992); translations
of medieval Persian epigams, Borrowed
Ware (1996): and a comic novel by Iraj Pezeshkzad entitled My
Uncle Napoleon (1996). His most recent publications are "Panthea's
Children: Hellenistic Novels and Medieval Persian Romances" (2002),
and three volumes of translations from the Shahnameh (1998,
2000, 2003)
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