Kay Kavus in Hamavaran

After Mazandaran, Kavus tours his empire: Turan and Chin, Makran and Zereh, then Barbarestan, where his army wins a battle and the elders submit. He spends a month in Nimruz as Rostam's guest. Then comes news of a revolt: a nobleman has raised a banner in Egypt and Sham, and the tazis (Arabs) have thrown off their allegiance. Kavus builds a fleet, crosses the sea and lands between three kingdoms, with Egypt on his left, Barbar on his right and Hamavaran ahead. They join against him and are beaten, and the king of Hamavaran sues for peace and promises tribute.

Someone tells Kavus that the king has a daughter, Sudabeh, taller than a cypress, with hair like a lasso and lips like sugar, fit only for a king. Kavus sends an envoy. Her father is heartbroken: Kavus wants the two things he loves most, his treasure and his only child, and he cannot refuse. But when he asks Sudabeh, she says there is no better match than the king of the world. She is married to Kavus and sent to him with three hundred maids and a thousand camels and horses laden with brocade and gold.

A week later her father invites his son-in-law to his city of Shaheh. Sudabeh sees through him. They will seize you without a pretext, she tells Kavus, and all this talk is because of me. Kavus does not believe her. In Shaheh they feast him for a week, and the king of Hamavaran waits on him like a servant. Then, when the army of Barbar has arrived, trumpets sound in the night, and Kavus is taken with Giv, Gudarz and Tus. They are sent to a fortress on a mountain that rises from the sea, so high that the sky seems to sit in its lap, under a guard of a thousand.

Sudabeh's choice

Veiled women come with a litter to bring Sudabeh home. She tears her royal clothes and her musky hair and scratches her cheeks till they bleed. Real men, she tells them, would have bound him on the day of battle, when his robe was mail and his throne a horse, not set an ambush under a golden throne. She calls the messengers dogs. She will not be parted from Kavus, she says, even if he lies in the grave; if he must wear chains, let them cut off her head. Her father, furious, sends her to the fortress, where she shares her husband's prison and nurses him.

With no king in Iran, invaders come from every side. Afrasiab fights the Arabs for three months and drives them out, and Iranians flee to Zabolestan to beg Rostam for help. He writes to the king of Hamavaran, who answers that a cell is waiting for Rostam too. So Rostam sails with an army and lays waste the coast, and the king calls on Egypt and Barbar. Before the battle Rostam warns Kavus secretly that if he fights, the king may pay for it. Kavus tells him not to fear for him: give shining Rakhsh his head. Rostam lassoes the king of Sham out of the saddle like a polo ball, Gorazeh takes the king of Barbar with forty of his men, and the king of Hamavaran gives up Kavus, his companions and his treasure. Sudabeh rides out beside her husband in a golden litter.

Kavus summons troops from Rum and the Arab horsemen, orders Afrasiab out of Iran, and defeats him; Afrasiab promises his daughter and a kingdom to anyone who can unseat 'the Sagzi Rostam', the man from Sistan, and no one does. Kavus returns to Pars, sends governors to Merv, Nishapur, Balkh and Herat, makes Rostam jahan pahlavan, champion of the world, and sets the divs to build him palaces on Alborz: stables cut in stone, halls of crystal, armouries of silver and a golden hall where it was always spring.