The Shahnameh atlas · The heroic age
Darabgerd
دارابگردThe city of Darab, the foundling king
- A real place the poem names · Fars in the Atlas
- Homay, Darab, Dara, Bahman
The Kayanian age ends with a cluster of stories about Bahman, son of Esfandiyar, his daughter Homay, and her son Darab. Homay, ruling as queen, does not want to give up her throne to her infant son. She has him placed in a box with jewels and set adrift on a river. A washerman and his wife find the box, raise the boy as their own, and name him Darab, a name the poem links with ab, the water where he was found. He grows up a born soldier, wins fame in Homay's wars against Rum, and is finally recognised by his mother, who gives him the crown.
As king, Darab builds a city and names it after himself: Darabgerd. His son Dara will be the last king before Alexander, who in the Shahnameh is Darab's son too, born to a Greek princess and so half-brother to Dara. This is the poem's way of making Alexander's conquest a family story within the line of Iranian kings.
He grows up a born soldier, wins fame in Homay's wars against Rum, and is finally recognised by his mother, who gives him the crown.
The ruins today
The ruins of Darabgerd lie a few kilometres south-west of the modern town of Darab in eastern Fars. The old city is enclosed in a rough circle of earthen walls nearly two kilometres across, with a moat, and a rock in the centre once carried a citadel. Medieval writers credited a king called Dara or Darab with founding it; historians are less sure, and the circular walls themselves may be later than once thought. Nearby is a Sasanian rock relief, and the area was a centre of Sasanian Fars. The site has been proposed for UNESCO listing.
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.