Al-Hira

Bahram Gur is the Shahnameh's most charming king: a hunter, lover, musician and wit. His father Yazdegerd, whom the poem calls harsh, sends the infant prince away to be raised by Monzer, an Arab king, and his son No'man. Bahram grows up among the Arabs, learns to ride, hunt and shoot, and is educated in letters by teachers Monzer finds for him. The poem is warm about this upbringing, and Monzer becomes almost a second father.

When Yazdegerd dies, the Iranian nobles choose another king. Bahram returns with Monzer's army behind him, and a bargain is struck: the crown will be placed between two hungry lions, and whoever takes it from them will be king. Bahram walks up to the lions, kills them with his mace and takes the crown. His reign in the poem is full of hunting stories, visits to villages in disguise and feasts, and, in Ferdowsi's version, he dies peacefully in his sleep.

The city today

Historians identify Monzer with al-Mundhir of the Lakhmid dynasty, the Arab kings who ruled from al-Hira as allies of the Sasanians, and the historical Bahram V, who reigned from 420 to 438, was indeed raised at their court and helped to the throne by them. Al-Hira, near modern Kufa and Najaf in southern Iraq, was a centre of Arab Christianity and poetry before Islam, and later Persian poets, above all Nezami, made its palace of Khavarnaq famous. Little remains above ground, and the point here is approximate.