Kashmar

When King Goshtasp accepts Zoroaster's faith, the Shahnameh says, Zardosht brings a branch of cypress from paradise and plants it before the gate of Kashmar. Goshtasp builds a great fire temple there and a lofty hall around the tree, which grows tall and wide, and he sends word across the world that all should come to Kashmar to see it and take up the new faith. These verses are part of the thousand couplets by Daqiqi that Ferdowsi kept in his poem.

The cypress of Kashmar became a legend of its own. Medieval writers in Khorasan said it stood for many centuries, until in 861 the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil ordered it felled and carried to his new palace in Iraq. The story goes on that the caliph was murdered before the timbers arrived. It is told as history in some local chronicles, but much about it is uncertain.

The town today

Kashmar is a town in Razavi Khorasan, south of Nishapur, known for its saffron, grapes, raisins and carpets. The town was long known as Torshiz; its present name recalls the Kashmar of the epic. In the hills above it are remains that local people call the Atashkadeh, the fire temple, though their date and purpose are uncertain. The cypress, sarv, remains one of the most beloved images of Persian art and poetry, bent into the paisley of textiles and planted in every garden. In the Shahnameh, the first one grew here.