Zal and Rudabeh

Zal, now ruling Zabolestan, makes a royal progress and comes to Kabul. Its king, Mehrab, a tall and wise man who pays tribute to Sam, rides out to him with gifts. Mehrab descends from Zahhak, the serpent-shouldered tyrant, and is not of Zal's faith, so when he invites Zal to his palace Zal declines: Sam and the king would never approve. But a courtier has already described Mehrab's daughter Rudabeh, with her musky lasso of hair and cheeks like pomegranate blossom, and Zal cannot rest.

At home, Mehrab praises the young champion to his wife Sindokht. His only fault, he says, is his white hair, and even that suits him. Rudabeh overhears and falls in love with a man she has never seen. She tells her five maids. They are shocked: would she take a man raised by a bird, whom his own father threw away? She flares up. She wants neither the Caesar of Rum nor the emperor of Chin, only Zal. Call him old or young, he is her soul.

In spring the maids go picking roses by the river, opposite Zal's camp. Zal shoots a waterbird and sends his page across for it, and the talk that follows goes exactly as the maids intend. That night Rudabeh stands on the palace roof. When Zal arrives on foot she unbinds her hair and lets it fall to him: 'Take hold of these black tresses; they grew for you.' He refuses. It would be wrong to hurt her for his own sake. He takes a lasso from his page, catches it on a battlement and climbs. They sit together till dawn and swear to marry no one else.

Everyone against them

Zal's mobeds (priests and counsellors) fall silent when he asks their advice. Sam, on campaign against the Gorgsaran, reads his son's letter and wonders what can come of a bird-reared boy and a div's child, until his astrologers foretell a grandson who will be a champion without equal. Sindokht catches a go-between and gets the truth out of Rudabeh. Mehrab reaches for his sword to kill his daughter, and Sindokht holds him back. King Manuchehr, afraid that Zahhak's seed will rise again, orders Sam to burn Kabul and Mehrab's palace.

Zal goes to his father and speaks plainly. Sam abandoned him at birth, and Zal has kept faith with him since; now Sam comes to destroy his house. 'Saw me in half if you like, but do not speak to me of Kabul.' Sam admits the wrong and writes to the king. Meanwhile Sindokht rides to Sam's camp with a train of gifts, tells him she is of Zahhak's kin, and asks him to spare the innocent people of Kabul. Sam finds her wise, gives his pledge, and consents to the marriage.

At court, Manuchehr's astrologers too foresee a great hero, and the mobeds test Zal with riddles: twelve cypresses with thirty branches each; two horses, one black and one white, that never catch each other; a reaper who cuts the dry grass and the green. Zal reads them all as the months and their days, night and day, and death: time is the reaper, he says, and we are the grass. Then he shoots an arrow through a tree, drives a javelin through three shields, and plucks a rider from the saddle by his belt. Manuchehr consents.

The wedding is held in Kabul, the couple are enthroned together, and the feasting lasts for weeks. Then they go home to Sistan, and Sam hands his kingdom to Zal and rides off to war. From this marriage of the house of Sam and the house of Zahhak, Rostam will be born.