Amuriyeh (Amorium)

In the Shahnameh, Amuriyeh is the seat of Filqus, king of Rum. When Darab marches west, Filqus gathers his army at Amuriyeh, loses two battles in three days, and shuts himself up in the city with what is left of his men. From there he sends an envoy with gifts to ask for peace, admitting that if Darab came to take Amuriyeh his pride would make him fight. Darab's price is a yearly tribute of golden eggs and Filqus's daughter, Nahid. She leaves for Pars, is sent home, and bears Eskandar, whom Filqus brings up as his own heir. Later in the poem Eskandar summons his mother from Amuriyeh, and in the age of Anushirvan an army of Rum marches from Amuriyeh to Halab.

Amorium was a real city of Phrygia in central Anatolia. It became one of the great cities of the Byzantine empire, and the dynasty that ruled from Constantinople between 820 and 867 came from there. In 838 the Abbasid caliph al-Mutasim captured and sacked it, a victory celebrated in a famous Arabic ode by Abu Tammam. Its ruins lie near the village of Hisarkoy, in Afyonkarahisar province in Turkey, where archaeologists have been excavating for decades.

To place Filqus at Amorium in the time of Darab is an anachronism, but a natural one: for Persian and Arabic readers of Ferdowsi's day, Ammuriyya was a byword for a great city of Rum.