Goshtasp in Rum and Katayun

At a feast in Pars, under a tree scattering blossom, Prince Goshtasp stands up with a cup of wine and asks his father for the crown. King Lohrasp, who gathered the wise men of the world at Balkh, refuses: he is too young. Goshtasp believes his father's heart leans towards the kin of Kay Kavus rather than his own sons. He rides off by night towards India; his brother Zarir brings him back from Kabul, but nothing changes, and soon Goshtasp slips away again, alone, on his father's black horse. He goes to Rum, the poem's name for the Roman west.

In Rum nobody wants him. Hishui, the keeper of the sea crossing, ferries him over for a few coins. In Caesar's city the court scribes turn him away because he looks more like a horseman than a clerk. Caesar's herdsman and camel-driver will not take him either, and when a smith called Burab lets him swing the hammer, he smashes the anvil with one blow and is sent off again. At last, hungry and wretched, he is taken in by a village headman of Fereydun's line.

Katayun's choice

Caesar has a custom: when a daughter is ready to marry, the nobles gather in his palace and she walks among them to choose. His eldest daughter, Katayun, dreams that the country is lit by sunlight, and that among a crowd of men she gives a posy to a stranger, tall as a cypress, sad and wise. At the first gathering she chooses no one; at the second, Goshtasp is there, sitting apart in a corner. Katayun sees him from far off, knows him from her dream, and sets a crown on his head. Caesar wants them both beheaded, until a bishop reminds him that he told his daughter to choose a husband, not a prince. So he gives her to the stranger with nothing: no treasure, no crown. When Goshtasp asks why she has chosen a man who can give her only hardship, she answers that if she is content with him, he need not go looking for crowns.

They live in the village on the price of one of her jewels, six thousand dinars, and Goshtasp spends his days hunting. Then two nobles of Rum ask for Caesar's younger daughters, and Caesar sets each a task. Mirin must kill a wolf in the forest of Fasqun, a beast as big as an elephant. Ahran must kill a dragon on Mount Saqila. Each, through Hishui, finds his way to the stranger. Goshtasp brings the wolf down with arrows and finishes it with Salm's old sword. For the dragon he has a long blade made, set with spikes like a snake's teeth, drives it into the creature's jaws, and splits its head. Each time he pulls out two of its teeth and keeps them, and each time the suitor takes the credit and the bride.

Farrokhzad

Katayun sends him to watch the polo in Caesar's arena. Goshtasp drives the ball out of sight, then takes up a bow, and Caesar asks who the horseman is. Goshtasp tells him: the stranger he drove out, the killer of the wolf and the dragon, with their teeth at home to prove it. Hishui confirms the story. Caesar asks his daughter's pardon and raises the stranger above everyone at court, though he still does not know who he is. Katayun can only tell him that her husband calls himself Farrokhzad.

Made Caesar's champion, Farrokhzad captures Elyas, lord of the Khazars. Proud now, Caesar sends an envoy, Qalus, to demand tribute from Iran. At Lohrasp's court Qalus describes the champion of Rum, and when Lohrasp asks whom he resembles, he answers: Zarir. Lohrasp understands. He sends Zarir west with an army, the crown and the banner of Kaveh. Zarir walks into Caesar's hall as an envoy, declares war, and says the man beside Caesar is a slave who ran away from the Shah. Then Goshtasp rides to the Iranian camp, where the army falls at his feet and Zarir crowns him. Caesar realises at last whom his daughter chose, and sends her after him with a fortune. At home Lohrasp gives him the throne.