Ctesiphon (Tisfun)

Ctesiphon, on the Tigris, is the setting for much of the Shahnameh's historical age. It is here, in the poem, that Khosrow Anushirvan holds court with his wise minister Bozorgmehr. When an Indian king sends a chessboard and challenges the Iranians to work out the game, Bozorgmehr solves it. In reply he invents a game of his own, nard, backgammon, which the Indian sages cannot fathom. It is here too that the poem sets the splendour of Khosrow Parviz: his throne Taqdis, his musician Barbad, and his love for Shirin.

The end comes here as well. The poem's last pages follow the collapse of Sasanian power after Khosrow Parviz, a rapid succession of kings and queens, among them the queens Purandokht and Azarmidokht, and finally the Arab armies. After the defeat at Qadisiyyah, the young king Yazdegerd III abandons the capital and flees east.

The ruins today

Ctesiphon was a capital of the Parthians and then of the Sasanians, part of a cluster of cities that Arabic writers called al-Mada'in, "the cities". Arab forces took it in 637, and the treasures of the palace were carried off and divided, as the Arabic historians record. Its most famous building, the Taq Kasra, a vast brick vault traditionally attributed to Khosrow I Anushirvan, is one of the largest single-span brick arches ever built. Part of it collapsed in 1888, and it has been restored in recent years. The Persian poet Khaqani wrote a famous ode on its ruins in the twelfth century, and Iranians visiting Iraq still stop beneath it.