Kajaran, Haftvad's fortress

Before Ardashir's power is secure, the Shahnameh has him face an unusual enemy. In the town of Kajaran, on the shore of the Persian Sea, lives a poor man named Haftvad, who has seven sons and a daughter. One day, spinning cotton with her friends, the daughter finds a small worm inside an apple and keeps it in her spindle case. From that day she spins twice as much as before. The family feeds the worm, and as it grows, so does their fortune.

Haftvad becomes rich and powerful, builds a mighty fortress on a mountain and keeps the worm in a great tank inside it. The worm swells to the size of an elephant. Ardashir's first attack fails. Then, disguised as a merchant with a few companions and chests of gifts, he gets inside the fortress, makes the guards drunk and pours molten lead or brass down the worm's throat. The creature bursts, and Ardashir's army storms the castle.

Where was it?

The same story appears in the Karnamag of Ardashir, a Middle Persian romance about the founder of the dynasty, which shows that Ferdowsi drew on Sasanian legend here. Scholars have read the worm as a memory of a local cult or a rival power on the coast that Ardashir subdued. The poem places Kajaran on the coast of Pars; no site has been identified, and the point here, on the Persian Gulf coast, is approximate. It is a fairy tale set inside the historical age, and the poem tells it with relish.