The Shahnameh atlas · The historical age
Nahrawan
نهروانThe canal near Tisfun where Khosrow Parviz and Bahram Chubin met; the point is approximate
- A real place the poem names · Mesopotamia in the Atlas
- Khosrow Parviz, Bahram Chubin, Hormozd
The Nahrawan was a great canal on the east side of the Tigris, near the Sasanian capital at Tisfun (Ctesiphon). In the Shahnameh it is where the rebel Bahram Chubin raises his dragon banner, and where the young Khosrow Parviz, newly crowned, rides out to meet him. The two men face each other with the water between their armies and argue for the throne. Khosrow reminds Bahram that he was nobody until an old man named him to the king. Bahram answers that the Sasanians have had their five hundred years, and that his helmet smells of the crown.
Talk fails. That night Bahram attacks, Khosrow's men drift away to the rebel, and the young king escapes over the bridge of Nahrawan to Tisfun, taking the bridge apart behind him. Within days he is on the road to Rum, and his blinded father Hormozd has been killed. Earlier in the poem, Bahram Gur rides out to the Nahrawan to welcome the Indian king Shangul.
The Nahrawan canal watered a wide district east of the Tigris from Sasanian into Abbasid times, and the area later gave its name to the battle of Nahrawan in 658, between the caliph Ali and the Kharijites. Historians also record that Khosrow II's army deserted to Bahram Chobin in 590, forcing the young king to flee to Byzantine territory. The canal has long since silted up, and the point on the map is approximate.
The tales told hereداستانها
Khosrow Parviz and Bahram Chubinخسرو پرویز و بهرام چوبینه
A victorious general claims the throne, and the young king must win it back
More from the historical ageشاهنامه
Babylonبابل
In the Shahnameh, Eskandar (Alexander) returns from his travels to Babylon, where omens foretell his death. He dies there, and his body is carried to Alexandria.
Estakhrاستخر
In the Shahnameh, Babak, the ruler of Estakhr, takes the shepherd Sasan into his service, dreams of his royal destiny and gives him his daughter. Their son is Ardashir, founder of the Sasanian dynasty.
Gur (Firuzabad)گور (فیروزآباد)
After his victory over Ardavan, Ardashir founds a city in Fars that the Shahnameh calls both Khurra-ye Ardashir, the Glory of Ardashir, and the city of Gur. Its perfectly circular ruins, with palaces and a fortress nearby, still survive near Firuzabad.
Kajaran, Haftvad's fortressکجاران
In one of the Shahnameh's strangest episodes, Ardashir fights Haftvad, a lord of the coast whose fortune comes from a magical worm found in an apple. Ardashir kills the worm with molten metal.