Bukhara

Bukhara appears in the Shahnameh among the cities of Turan and Sogdiana, the country beyond the Jayhun where Afrasiab's power lies. But the city's deepest link to the epic is a local one. The History of Bukhara by Narshakhi, written in Arabic in the 940s and later translated into Persian, records that Siyavash, son of Kay Kavus, built the city's citadel, and that his grave lay by one of its gates.

Narshakhi adds that the Magians, the Zoroastrians, of Bukhara held his memory sacred, and that every year at Nowruz, before sunrise, people brought a cockerel to sacrifice at the spot. He also mentions songs of mourning for Siyavash sung by the people of Bukhara, laments that scholars connect with ancient rites of the dying hero across Central Asia. These are local traditions, older than Ferdowsi. They show that the story of the innocent prince was alive here long before it was written down in the poem.

The city today

Bukhara, now in Uzbekistan, was the capital of the Samanids in the ninth and tenth centuries, the dynasty whose court revived Persian as a language of literature and sponsored poets such as Rudaki. Without that revival, there would have been no prose Book of Kings in Tus and no Shahnameh. The old city, with its citadel, the Ark, the Samanid mausoleum and the Kalyan minaret, is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and Tajik, a form of Persian, is still widely spoken in its streets.