Siyavashgerd and Gang Dezh

Afrasiab welcomes Siyavash to Turan, marries him to his daughter Farangis and gives him lands to rule. In the Shahnameh, Siyavash first builds Gang Dezh in a far-off country: a city on a mountain plain with gardens, running water, game and flowers. It is so lovely that it seems to belong to paradise. He then founds a second city, Siyavashgerd, with palaces, squares and orchards, and lives there with Farangis in peace.

The peace does not last. Afrasiab's brother Garsivaz visits Siyavashgerd, grows jealous of its splendour, and turns the king against his son-in-law with lies. Siyavash is seized on the road and put to death, and a plant springs from the earth where his blood is spilt. Years later, when Kay Khosrow returns to avenge his father, Afrasiab retreats to Gang Dezh, and Kay Khosrow besieges and takes it, one of the great climaxes of the heroic age.

Where were they?

Neither city can be placed with certainty. Middle Persian Zoroastrian books also know Kangdez as a wondrous fortress built by Siyavash in the east, sometimes described as moving or floating, which suggests a place of myth rather than geography. Medieval writers tried to find Siyavashgerd in Central Asia, and Bukhara and other towns of Transoxiana kept their own Siyavash traditions. The point here, in the Ferghana region, is only an approximate marker for the far side of Turan. What the poem gives is not a location but a lament: the most beautiful cities in the epic are built by an exile and lost with him.