The Arvand (Tigris)

After Kaveh the blacksmith raises his leather banner, Fereydun marches against Zahhak. In the Shahnameh his road leads west to a great river, the Arvand. Ferdowsi pauses to gloss the name for his readers: if you do not know the old tongue, he says in effect, call the Arvand by its Arabic name, the Dejla, which is the Tigris. It is one of the moments where the poet ties the mythical age to a map his audience knew.

Fereydun asks the river guard for boats. The guard answers that the king has ordered that no one may cross without a sealed pass. Fereydun does not argue. He tightens his belt, urges his horse into the flood, and his companions follow, the horses swimming neck-deep until they reach the far bank. Beyond the river lies the city where Zahhak keeps his palace.

The river today

The Tigris rises in the mountains of eastern Anatolia and flows through Mosul and Baghdad before joining the Euphrates in southern Iraq. The poem does not say where along its course Fereydun crossed, so the point here is placed near Baghdad only as a marker. In modern Iran, the name Arvand Rud is used for the Shatt al-Arab, the joint channel of the Tigris and Euphrates that forms part of the border between Iran and Iraq. Ferdowsi's Arvand is the Tigris itself, the river of Ctesiphon, which reappears in the historical age of the poem as the river of the Sasanian capital.