Mount Hamavan

Tus's second campaign against Turan goes wrong in a blizzard. Piran's sorcerer Bazur calls down snow and frost from a mountain top, and although Rohham cuts off his hand and the sky clears, the battle is lost. The Iranians retreat to Mount Hamavan, a bare rock where the horses eat thorns, and Piran surrounds them. Tus dreams of Siyavash on an ivory throne, telling him to hold on. Afrasiab sends the Khaqan of Chin, Kamus of Kashan, Shangul and Manshur to finish the siege, and Kay Khosrow sends Rostam.

Below the mountain the poem stages some of its best-known fights. Rostam, on foot, kills the archer Ashkabus with a single arrow. He lassoes the giant Kamus and pulls him from the saddle. In the great battle that follows he drags the Khaqan from his white elephant and sends him on foot to the river Shahd, and the eastern host breaks.

The poem places Hamavan only in Turan, beyond the Iranian border and not far from the river Shahd, and it cannot be matched with any real mountain with confidence. The Warners heard in these campaigns an echo of the Parthian civil wars of the first century AD. The point here, east of the Jayhun, is an approximate marker for the Turanian front, not a site.