Darab and the daughter of Filqus

Darab begins his reign by telling his nobles that no one in the world has a stranger story: he never sought the throne, God set the crown on his head, and the only return he can make is justice. Envoys come from India and Rum with gifts. One day, riding out to see his herds of horses, he climbs into the hills and finds a vast, deep lake. He sends for skilled men from Rum and India to open it and lead its water by channels across the land, and where the water has been freed he orders a city built. When its wall is complete they name it Darabgerd. He lights a fire on the mountain top, worshippers of fire gather to it, and craftsmen of every kind come to adorn the city.

An Arab army of a hundred thousand rides against him under Shoayb, of the line of Qotayb. They fight for three days; on the fourth the Arabs turn back, Shoayb lies dead on the field, and Darab sends an officer to collect tribute from the desert. Then he marches on Rum, whose king is Filqus. Filqus loses two battles in three days, shuts himself up in his city of Amuriyeh, and sends an envoy with gifts to ask for peace.

Nahid

Darab's nobles remind him that Filqus has a daughter, tall as a cypress, the jewel among the beauties of Rum. Darab asks for her as part of the peace. Filqus is delighted to have the king as his son-in-law. He agrees to a yearly tribute of a hundred thousand eggs of gold, each of forty mithqals with a jewel inside, and sends his daughter Nahid to Pars with bishops and monks, sixty maids carrying golden cups, and three hundred camel-loads of carpets and hangings.

One night, lying beside her, Darab is put off by her breath and turns away. A physician finds a cure, a herb that burns the mouth, which in Rum is called iskandar. He rubs it on her palate, her eyes stream, and the smell is gone. But the king's heart has cooled, and he sends her back to her father. She is with child and tells no one. Nine months later she bears a son as bright as the sun and calls him Eskandar, after the herb that cured her. Filqus, ashamed to admit that Darab had sent his daughter away, tells everyone that the boy is his own, a Caesar of his seed. The same night a mare in his stable foals a white colt, and he raises the boy and the colt side by side. Eskandar grows up wise and princely, and Filqus makes him his heir.

In Iran, Darab marries another wife, who bears him a son a little younger than Eskandar. They name him Dara. After twelve years on the throne Darab falls ill, tells his nobles to obey Dara, and dies. The poem has set up what follows: the two half-brothers, one raised in Rum and one in Pars, will meet as enemies, and in the Shahnameh's telling, Alexander's conquest of Iran becomes a quarrel inside the royal family.