The Shahnameh atlas · The heroic age
Bijan's pit
چاه بیژنThe pit in Turan where Bijan was imprisoned; location approximate
- Legendary: the location is approximate
- Bijan, Manizheh, Rostam, Afrasiab, Gorgin, Kay Khosrow, Giv
Bijan and Manizheh is the Shahnameh's great romance of the heroic age. Bijan, son of Giv, goes to the border with the treacherous Gorgin to clear a forest of wild boars. Gorgin, jealous, tells him of a meadow nearby where the daughter of Afrasiab holds spring festivities. Bijan goes to look, Manizheh sees him, and she has him drugged and carried to her palace, where they live in secret until her father finds out.
Afrasiab spares Bijan's life only at a counsellor's urging. Instead he has him chained in a deep pit and the mouth covered with a huge stone dragged from the forest, the stone of the demon Akvan. Manizheh, stripped of her rank, begs for bread and lowers it into the pit to keep him alive. In Iran, Kay Khosrow looks into his world-revealing cup and sees Bijan in his prison. Rostam travels to Turan disguised as a merchant. Manizheh comes to him for help, and he hides his ring in a roast bird for her to carry to the pit. That night Rostam lifts the stone alone and frees Bijan.
Manizheh, stripped of her rank, begs for bread and lowers it into the pit to keep him alive.
Where was it?
The poem sets the pit near Afrasiab's capital in Turan, which it never locates precisely. The point here is an approximate marker east of the Jayhun, not a real site. The story itself is one of the most loved in the poem, retold in miniature painting, opera and the naqqal storyteller's repertoire. The world-revealing cup that shows Bijan in the pit is Kay Khosrow's, though later poets gave it to Jamshid.
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.