Lake Chichast (Lake Urmia)

After losing Gang-behesht and Gang Dezh, Afrasiab hides in a cave on a mountain near Barda, which the poet says may be called the Hang of Afrasiab. The holy man Hum, of the line of Fereydun, hears him lamenting in the night, binds him and drags him out, but takes pity on his pleading and loosens the cord. Afrasiab dives into the lake of Chichast. Hum sends word to Kay Khosrow and Kay Kavus, who are praying at the fire of Azar Goshnasp, and proposes a trick: Garsivaz is sewn into a raw ox-hide, and his cries bring his brother swimming to the shore. Hum lassoes him, and Kay Khosrow kills him and Garsivaz on the bank.

The lake is far older than the poem. In the Avesta, Kavi Husravah prays beside Chaechasta, the deep lake of salt waters, for the power to kill Frangrasyan, and Haoma, the sacred plant made divine, asks to bind him. Middle Persian writers placed Chechast in Azerbaijan, and it has long been identified with Lake Urmia, the great salt lake of north-west Iran. The fire of Azar Goshnasp, traditionally at Takht-e Soleyman, lay in the same province. The Barda of the poem, now in the Republic of Azerbaijan, is far to the north; the poet's geography here is compressed.

Lake Urmia has shrunk dramatically in recent decades, through drought and the diversion of its rivers, and efforts to restore it continue. The point marks the lake.