Ahura Mazda and Ahriman
The Wise Lord and the Hostile Spirit: the oldest Iranian account of a world in which every person takes a side, and the moral heart of a faith still practised today.
Mythologyاسطوره
Demons bound in mountains, a bird that raises a prince, a border drawn by one arrow: the old stories of Iran, retold from the Shahnameh, the Avesta and the writers who kept them. Many of them still name children, festivals and places today.
All of Mythology
Kayumars and the first kings
In Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, history begins on a mountainside with a king in a leopard skin, and the gifts of civilisation are won one by one: fire, iron, tamed animals, writing.
Jamshid and his cup
The brilliant king who gave his people Nowruz, then lost everything to pride. Plus the famous world-revealing cup, which belonged to someone else first.
Zahhak and Kaveh the blacksmith
A king with serpents growing from his shoulders, and the blacksmith who raised his leather apron on a spear and brought him down.
Fereydun and his three sons
The king who freed Iran from Zahhak divided the world between his sons, and in doing so, Ferdowsi says, began the long feud between Iran and Turan.
The Simorgh
The great bird who raised an abandoned prince in her nest, delivered Rostam into the world, and later became Persian poetry's image of the divine.
Rostam, Rakhsh and the seven labours
Iran's greatest hero and his matchless horse take the short, deadly road to rescue a foolish king: a lion, a desert, a dragon, a witch and the White Div.
Rostam and Sohrab
A father and son who have never met face each other on the battlefield. It is the most heartbreaking episode in the Shahnameh, and Ferdowsi knows it.
Siyavash and the trial by fire
The innocent prince who rode through fire to prove his honour, kept his word at the cost of his life, and was mourned for centuries in Central Asia.
Arash the archer
To end a war, the border of Iran would be drawn wherever one arrow fell. Arash climbed a mountain and put everything he had into the shot.