Bizhan and Manizheh

The tale begins on a night as black as pitch. The poet cannot sleep. His beloved brings a candle, wine, fruit and a harp, and offers to read him a story from an old book if he will put it into verse. This is that story.

Envoys from Irman, on the border with Turan, come to Kay Khosrow's feast: wild boars with tusks like elephants have taken their forests and fields. Bizhan, son of Giv, volunteers against his father's wishes, and Gorgin, son of Milad, goes with him as guide. Gorgin will not help, so Bizhan kills the boars alone, and Gorgin, jealous and afraid of disgrace, lays a trap. Not far off, he says, Afrasiab's daughter Manizheh keeps her spring festival in a meadow full of girls.

Bizhan puts on his father's crown and the torque Kay Khosrow gave him and goes to look. Manizheh sees him from her tent and sends her nurse: is he Siyavash come back, or a pari (fairy)? They feast for three days. When she must go home she drugs his wine and carries him to her palace hidden in a litter, and he wakes in her arms in the house of Afrasiab.

A chamberlain tells the king. Garsivaz surrounds the palace; Bizhan draws the dagger he keeps in his boot, then gives it up on Garsivaz's oath. Afrasiab scorns his story of a fairy who carried him off and orders him hanged at the gate. Piran, passing by, talks the king round: put him in chains in a pit instead, as a warning to Iran. Bizhan is bound head to foot in iron and thrown head first into a pit, and elephants bring the stone of Akvan the div from a forest in Chin to cover its mouth. Manizheh is stripped of everything and driven out to him barefoot. She makes a hole big enough for her hand, and every day she begs bread from door to door and passes it down to him.

The cup and the merchant

Gorgin comes home alone with a lame story and is put in chains. At Nowruz, the new year, Kay Khosrow puts on a Rumi robe, prays, and takes up his cup, in which the seven climes and the heavens are reflected. Searching the climes, he finds Bizhan in the land of the Gorgsaran, chained in a pit and praying for death, with a girl of royal birth tending him. Only Rostam can save him.

Rostam begs pardon for Gorgin, then goes into Turan as a merchant, with seven champions dressed as traders and camels loaded with jewels and cloth. At Khotan he gives Piran a gold cup full of gems and opens a shop. Manizheh comes to ask for news of Giv and Gudarz. Rostam answers her roughly, then feeds her, and hides his ring in a roast bird wrapped in bread for her to carry to the pit. Bizhan reads the name Rostam on the turquoise seal and laughs so loudly that she hears it from above. He makes her swear to keep the secret, then sends her back to ask: are you the lord of Rakhsh? That night she lights a fire as big as a mountain to guide him.

The seven champions cannot shift the stone. Rostam asks God for strength, lifts it and hurls it into the forest of Chin, and the earth shakes. Bizhan calls up to him that his floor is iron and his sky is stone. Rostam will not draw him out until he forgives Gorgin. Then he lowers his lasso, breaks the chains, and that same night attacks Afrasiab's palace, shouting through the gate that the king slept on his throne while Bizhan lay in the pit. Afrasiab flees, and in the battle that follows his army is beaten. Kay Khosrow welcomes them home, loads Manizheh with gifts and tells Bizhan never to speak coldly to her. The Warners counted the tale as the second of the poem's great love stories, after Zal and Rudabeh.