The Shahnameh atlas · The heroic age
The White Castle
دژ سپیدThe border fortress where Gordafarid fought Sohrab; location approximate
- Legendary: the location is approximate
- Sohrab, Gordafarid, Hojir, Gazhdaham
Dezh-e Sepid, the White Castle, is the frontier fortress that stands in Sohrab's way when he leads a Turanian army into Iran to find his father. Its first champion, the young warrior Hojir, rides out and is quickly beaten and taken prisoner. Then a second rider comes out of the gate, in armour, with a lance and a bow. It is Gordafarid, daughter of the castle's old commander Gazhdaham, and the Shahnameh describes her as a horsewoman and fighter the equal of any man.
She showers Sohrab with arrows, then fights him with the lance. He finally seizes her and pulls off her helmet, and her long hair falls loose. Astonished, he tells her that if Iran's women are like this, its men must be formidable. Gordafarid persuades him to let her go back to the castle to surrender it, then shuts the gate behind her and mocks him from the walls. That night the defenders escape by a secret passage, and when Sohrab breaks in the next morning the castle is empty.
Astonished, he tells her that if Iran's women are like this, its men must be formidable.
Where was it?
The poem places the castle on the border between Iran and Turan and gives no further clue. Commentators have looked for it in Khorasan, and the point here is an approximate marker in northern Khorasan, not an identification. Gordafarid has outgrown her few hundred couplets. She is one of the best-loved figures of the epic for modern Iranian readers, celebrated in plays, paintings and children's books,.
In Mythologyاسطوره
Rostam and Sohrab
A father and son who have never met face each other on the battlefield. It is the most heartbreaking episode in the Shahnameh, and Ferdowsi knows it.
More from the heroic ageشاهنامه
Mount Alborzالبرز کوه
On the heights of the Alborz the Simorgh raises Zal, the white-haired child his father abandoned. The poem's Alborz is a mountain at the edge of the world, traditionally identified with the range north of Tehran.
Kabulکابل
Kabul frames the life of Rostam. His mother Rudabeh is a princess of Kabul, and it is in the hunting grounds of a later king of Kabul that Rostam is betrayed and killed.
Zabulistanزابلستان
Zabulistan is the realm of the house of Sam: the court where Zal rules, Rostam is raised, and Esfandiyar comes to put Rostam in chains. Tradition places it in Sistan, around today's Zabol.
Kuh-e Khwajaکوه خواجه
A flat-topped black hill rising from the Hamun wetlands, crowned with the ruins of a Parthian and Sasanian palace that local people call Rostam's castle. It is the closest thing Rostam has to a home on the map.