Balkh

Late in the heroic age, the Kayanian throne passes to Lohrasp, who rules from Balkh, called in the Shahnameh Balkh-e bami, "Balkh the radiant". His son Goshtasp succeeds him, and in Goshtasp's reign comes one of the great turns of the poem: Zardosht, Zoroaster, appears at court with a new faith, and the king accepts it. This part of the poem was not composed by Ferdowsi. It comes from the poet Daqiqi, who began a Shahnameh of his own and had written about a thousand couplets before he was murdered. Ferdowsi included them in his own work, with a frank comment on their quality.

Goshtasp's conversion brings war. Arjasp, king of Turan, refuses the new faith and attacks. While Goshtasp is away, Turanian forces fall on Balkh. The old king Lohrasp, who has retired to a life of prayer in the temple of Nowbahar, puts on armour once more and dies fighting at the gates. The priests in the fire temple are killed with him. The poem's grief at this is real, and it leads to the long campaign of Esfandiyar, Goshtasp's son, against Arjasp.

The city today

Balkh is real and ancient: the Bactra of the Greeks, called by Arab geographers the mother of cities. Zoroastrian tradition links it with Zoroaster's royal patron, and the historical Nowbahar was a great Buddhist monastery, whose hereditary administrators were the Barmakid family who later rose to power in Abbasid Baghdad. Rumi was born in or near Balkh in 1207. Today it is a small town in northern Afghanistan beside the vast earthen walls of the old city and the ninth-century Noh Gonbad mosque, a short drive from Mazar-i-Sharif.