Nasibin (Nisibis)

In the Shahnameh, Nasibin is the price of peace. Shapur Zu'l-Aktaf, once sewn into an ass's hide by the Caesar, has captured the Caesar, routed his brother Yanus and burned his way into Rum. The Romans choose a new Caesar, Baranush, who sends a hundred nobles, bareheaded and laden with silver and gold, to ask for terms. Shapur demands a heavy tribute and Nasibin, and Baranush agrees: "Iran is yours, and Nasibin."

The citizens refuse. They will not have a king, they say, who does not hold the faith of Christ but follows Zardosht and the Zand and Avesta. Shapur sends an army; after a week of fighting the city asks for quarter, and he pardons it. Afterwards, the poem says, people called him "the victorious king".

Here the poem keeps a real event. Nisibis was Rome's great fortress on its eastern frontier, and Shapur II besieged it three times without success. In 363, after the emperor Julian was killed on his retreat from Persia, his successor Jovian made peace by handing Nisibis and other territory to Shapur; the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who was with the army, records that the citizens were made to leave. Among those who left was the poet and theologian Ephrem the Syrian. Under Persian rule the city later became home to a famous school of the Church of the East. Today it is Nusaybin, in south-eastern Turkey, facing Qamishli across the Syrian border.