Zardosht and the war with Arjasp

The poet is dreaming. In Ferdowsi's dream he holds a cup of wine, and the poet Daqiqi appears beside it and tells him that he had written a thousand couplets about Goshtasp and Arjasp before his life ran out, and asks that they reach the king. Ferdowsi keeps them. This part of the Shahnameh is Daqiqi's, set into Ferdowsi's poem.

Lohrasp gives up the throne and shuts himself in the Nowbahar, the temple at Balkh, to pray for thirty years. Katayun bears Goshtasp two sons, Esfandiyar and Pashutan. Only Arjasp, lord of Turan, will not bow to him, and Iran still pays him tribute every year. Then, the poem says, a tree grows in Goshtasp's palace, a tree whose leaves are counsel and whose fruit is wisdom, and its name is Zardosht. He tells the king that he is a prophet and brings a new faith from God. Goshtasp accepts it, and so do Zarir, the old king at Balkh and the nobles, who tie on the sacred cord, the kusti.

The cypress of Kashmar

Goshtasp sends priests across the world and founds fire temples, the first of them the fire of Mehr-Borzin. At Kashmar a cypress that came from paradise is planted before the door of the fire temple, and on it is written that Goshtasp has accepted the good religion. (Ganjoor's text gives the planting to the king; the text the Warners translated gives it to Zardosht.) The tree grows so wide that a lasso will not go round it. Goshtasp builds a palace of gold around it, forty cubits high and forty wide, paints Jamshid and Fereydun on its walls and lives there. Then he sends word through the world: nothing equals the cypress of Kashmar; God sent it to him from paradise; let everyone walk to it on foot and take up the faith.

The war

Zardosht tells Goshtasp that the faith does not allow him to pay tribute to Turan, and the king stops paying. Arjasp, warned by a div, writes calling Zardosht an old sorcerer and threatening Iran with fire and slavery if Goshtasp keeps the faith. Zarir writes the reply, and both armies march. On the Jayhun Goshtasp asks his minister Jamasp, a reader of the stars, how the battle will go. Jamasp foretells it name by name: the princes who will fall, Zarir struck down from ambush by the sorcerer Bidarafsh, Esfandiyar avenging him, Arjasp in flight. Goshtasp drops his mace and falls senseless from his throne.

It happens as Jamasp said. Goshtasp watches from a mountain as his sons fall one after another. When the banner of Kaveh drops from an elephant's back, Jamasp's son Girami lifts it from the dust; the Turks cut off one hand, and he holds the banner in his teeth and fights on with his mace until they kill him. After two weeks Zarir rides into the Turanian host like fire through grass. Arjasp offers his daughter to anyone who will stop him, and Bidarafsh, afraid to face him, circles round and throws a poisoned javelin from cover. Zarir falls, and Bidarafsh strips him and carries off his horse and crown.

Goshtasp offers his own daughter, Homay, to whoever will avenge Zarir, and no one moves. Esfandiyar takes up the banner, and his father promises, before the army, that when they return he will give him the crown as Lohrasp gave it to him. Zarir's son Bastur finds his father's body; Jamasp stops the grieving king from riding out himself and sends Bastur instead. Esfandiyar kills Bidarafsh with one stroke and brings back Zarir's horse, his armour and the sorcerer's head. Arjasp flees into the desert, and Esfandiyar spares the Turks who throw down their bows. The poem counts thirty thousand Iranian dead and a hundred thousand of the enemy.

Goshtasp hands the business of Iran to Esfandiyar, though not yet the throne, and sends him through Rum and India with the faith; the poem says idols were burned on the mountains and fires lit in their place. Daqiqi's verses end soon after. Taking up the story again, Ferdowsi thanks him for showing the way but calls his verse weak, and goes on in his own voice.