The Shahnameh atlas · The heroic age
Afrasiab's hunting ground
نخچیرگاه افراسیابThe Turanian king's preserve near Sarakhs, where seven champions went hunting; location approximate
- Legendary: the location is approximate · Razavi Khorasan in the Atlas
- Rostam, Afrasiab, Giv, Gorazeh, Alkus, Zavareh
Afrasiab's hunting ground is the setting of the hunt of the seven champions. After a feast at Navand, Giv proposes, in his cups, a hunt in the Turanian king's own preserve, and Rostam agrees. The poem places it on the river Shahd, with sand on one side, water on another, Sarakhs on the third and the desert ahead. The Iranians fill the plain with their tents and hunt and drink for a week, until the game lies in heaps and the lions have fled.
It is also a frontier. Afrasiab hears of them and crosses the river by a bridge with thirty thousand men, hoping to take the seven champions and so straiten the world for Kay Kavus. Giv rides to hold the bridge and finds him already across. In the fight that follows Rostam kills the Turanian champion Alkus, cuts down most of Piran's men, and throws a lasso that falls on Afrasiab's helmet; the king ducks his head and escapes.
Sarakhs is a real town, on the river the Iranians call the Harirud and the Turkmen the Tejen, where Iran and Turkmenistan meet today, and it was long a station on the road between Khorasan and Merv. The river Shahd has not been identified with any certainty. The point, beside Sarakhs, is approximate and marks the poem's frontier hunting ground rather than a known site.
The tales told hereداستانها
The hunt of the seven championsرزم هفت گردان
Rostam and his friends go hunting in Afrasiab's own preserve, and he comes after them
More from the heroic ageشاهنامه
Mount Alborzالبرز کوه
On the heights of the Alborz the Simorgh raises Zal, the white-haired child his father abandoned. The poem's Alborz is a mountain at the edge of the world, traditionally identified with the range north of Tehran.
Kabulکابل
Kabul frames the life of Rostam. His mother Rudabeh is a princess of Kabul, and it is in the hunting grounds of a later king of Kabul that Rostam is betrayed and killed.
Zabulistanزابلستان
Zabulistan is the realm of the house of Sam: the court where Zal rules, Rostam is raised, and Esfandiyar comes to put Rostam in chains. Tradition places it in Sistan, around today's Zabol.
Kuh-e Khwajaکوه خواجه
A flat-topped black hill rising from the Hamun wetlands, crowned with the ruins of a Parthian and Sasanian palace that local people call Rostam's castle. It is the closest thing Rostam has to a home on the map.