Abstract
This article explores the Shāh-nāma’s recounting of the tragic myth of Prince Siyāvash and analyzes the implications of Siyāvash’s supranational ethical sense in an epic often closely associated with proto-nationalism and a concrete sense of Iranian identity. It proposes that Ferdowsi’s depiction of Siyāvash’s evolving sense of identity—one that contains elements of what we would associate today with supranationalism (or cosmopolitanism) and hybridity—creates a subtext that promotes ideals running counter to the proto-nationalist tendencies outwardly espoused by the epic. This subtext helped facilitate the long-held view of Siyāvash as a figure of great spiritual import whose plight has larger resonance than that merely of nation and homeland. The supranational aspects of the story likewise make it highly relevant for today, when exile, refugees, and the question of nationalism versus supranationalism abound in both literary and political discourse.
Introduction
One of the most poignant and ethically resonant accounts of the Shāh-nāma is that of the prince Siyāvash, who was forced to leave Iran because of an argument with his father, the foolish king Kay Kāvus, and eventually killed at the order of the Turanian king, Afrāsiyāb, whose protection he had sought. Indeed, Siyāvash’s image looms large in both religious practice and literature, where he symbolizes, as one scholar has noted, “the cosmic anguish and the inconsolable pity of the guileless and the pure, ravaged by the wicked” (Banani, 114–15).1 The story’s poignancy derives at least partly from the tension it reveals between loyalty to one’s king and country, especially a great country such as Iran, versus a greater loyalty to God, and the necessity of losing one’s home—and, ultimately, life—out of this greater loyalty. Underexplored in scholarship about the account, however, are the implications of what Davis has called (1992, 124) Siyāvash’s “supranational” ethical sense in an epic often closely associated with proto-nationalism and a concrete sense of Iranian identity. In this article, I propose that Ferdowsi’s depiction of Siyāvash’s evolving sense of identity—one that contains elements of what we would associate today with supranationalism (or cosmopolitanism) and hybridity—creates a subtext that promotes ideals running counter to the proto-nationalist tendencies outwardly espoused by the epic. This subtext, along with the prince’s pre-Islamic status as the center of a “once powerful religious cult,” helped facilitate the long-held view of Siyāvash as a figure of great spiritual import whose plight has larger resonance than that merely of nation and homeland (Yarshater 1979). The supranational aspects of the story likewise make it highly relevant for today, when exile, refugees, and the question of nationalism versus cosmopolitanism abound in both literary and political discourse.
Siyāvash and Iranian Identity
Indeed, politicians, pundits, and scholars alike today debate the question of nationalism versus supranationalism or cosmopolitanism, with some firmly averring that the world would be a better place if people identified primarily with their “nations”—those mysterious entities sometimes defined by common blood, language, land, ethnicity, among other factors—while others maintain just as forcefully that only when a majority of people see themselves first as members of the entire human race and second in terms of their more limited identities will wars decrease and civilization flourish (Appiah). Even though this (false) dichotomy seems to be a very contemporary one (just as nationalism and cosmopolitanism themselves are seen as a relatively recent phenomena), the questions and tensions surrounding these issues can be found in early forms in many pre-modern texts, including the Shāh-nāma.2 I will begin, then, by briefly examining questions of nationalism as they relate to the text.
As Davis has aptly noted (2012, 39), the Shāh-nāma has long been viewed as both a repository and a shaper of Iranian identity, as well as a promoter of a primordial form of Iranian nationalism. Frequently referred to as the “national epic” or “national saga” of Iran (idem 2004, xiii; Yarshater 1988, 4), it possesses an “almost iconic significance in discussions of Iranian identity”—a significance that tends to produce the impression that its constructions of Iranian identity are coherent and understandable (Davis 2012, 39). According to these initial and, as both Davis and I would argue, superficial impressions, the epic’s constructions of identity may not map precisely onto contemporary ideas of national identity, but they suggest a certain ethnicity, as well as ties to a particular piece of land (even if its boundaries are constantly changing) and to certain cultural ideals—and, of course, the superiority of Iranian identity to other ethnic identities, just as Iran itself is superior to other nations.
Upon closer inspection, however, the coherence of Iranian identity in the Shāh-nāma disintegrates, just as the country’s boundaries continually shift. Any time you try to put your finger on them, they move elsewhere (Davis 2012, 40). Without delving at length into the question of whether the Shāh-nāma can indeed be regarded as a national epic—a matter that has been fully ventilated elsewhere3—I would agree here with Davis that although the Shāh-nāma definitely possesses and promotes elements of a coherent national identity that is related to ethnicity, it also resists that notion, especially in the first sections of the poem, where widespread mixing with other ethnicities occurs.4 While Davis has explored the complicated nature of identity chiefly by looking at the heroes Rostam and Kay Khosrow, an analysis of the story of Siyāvash yields equally rich benefits. As I will show, the prince moves from nationalistic to supranationalistic (or cosmopolitan) concerns—that is, from a seemingly coherent national identity opposed to “the Other” to one that transcends national identity altogether, with a good deal of hybridity thrown in along the way.
In the beginning of the story, Siyāvash’s identity (despite his mixed heritage, which will be discussed below) appears solidly Iranian, and he seems driven to repel threats aimed at piercing it. Raised by the great hero Rostam, the prince returns when grown to the court of his father, the king, where he is warmly welcomed by all and prepares to take up his role as scion of his noble lineage. His peace of mind is fatally disturbed, however, when his stepmother, Sudāba, the daughter of the king of Hāmāvarān, tries to seduce him, and then to secure his promise to marry her once his father has died. Understandably, Siyāvash wants nothing to do with her and rejects her—an act that brings her wrath down upon him and precipitates her accusation of attempted rape and the trial by fire that he is forced to undergo to prove his innocence. Beyond obeying the clear moral imperative to avoid consorting with his father’s wife, Siyāvash’s motive in rejecting Sudāba is also aimed at repudiating dangerous foreignness. The prince initially mistrusts his stepmother largely because she belongs to a different nationality, one traditionally opposed to the Iranians; he believes that, like her father, she is “full of wiles and hatred for the Persian people” (Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 220; 2004, 221). He even fears to marry one of her daughters because she belongs to the lineage of Iran’s enemies (idem 1987–2009, II, 220; 2004, 221). His staving off of her attempt at seduction thus constitutes a victory of maintaining Persian integrity (a test that, notably, his own father failed).
The next threat of “foreignness” occurs when Afrāsiyāb, the Turanian king and traditional enemy of Iran, attacks Iran’s borders. Siyāvash sees defeating Afrāsiyāb as an opportunity to free himself from a bad situation and at the same time to cover himself with military glory; it is, not uncoincidentally, also an occasion to drive off an intruder threatening Iranian integrity. Kay Kāvus agrees to the plan and sends Rostam to accompany his son. Siyāvash’s bravery and exemplary fighting land him preliminary victories against Afrāsiyāb; these, along with a truly terrifying nightmare, frighten the Turanian king so much that he sues for peace. Siyāvash and Rostam agree to cease fighting as long as Afrāsiyāb withdraws from the Iranian towns he currently occupies and sends one hundred of his warrior relatives as hostages. Afrāsiyāb reluctantly agrees, and Siyāvash sends Rostam to tell Kay Kāvus of the peace pact that has been concluded and succeeded in maintaining Iran’s sovereignty over its borders. The king, however, reacts with fury to the proposed reconciliation: “Now is no time for you to fall for [Afrāsiyāb’s] wiles,” he scolds, suspecting, mistakenly, that his enemy is acting in bad faith (idem 1987–2009, II, 267; 2004, 240). He insists that Siyāvash send the hostages to him (where they will be undoubtedly killed) and re-launch an attack on Afrāsiyāb.
What the king has failed to account for, however, is the great conscientiousness of his son. Horrified at his father’s response, Siyāvash cannot bring himself to break his pact with Afrāsiyāb and to sacrifice the hostages, whom he regards as human beings, capable of suffering (just as his son, years later, will regard his Turanian enemies). Here, we witness the first manifestation of what Davis has called Siyāvash’s “supranational” ethical sense, in which the young man’s identity as an Iranian, subject and prince falls away before his identity as a devotee of God (Davis 1992, 124). As Siyāvash states,
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Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 273; tr. Davis, 242
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Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 273; tr. Davis, 242Citation: Journal of Persianate Studies 15, 2 (2022) ; 10.1163/18747167-bja10007
Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 273; tr. Davis, 242Instead of obeying his father, he decides to go into exile, taking on an identity as a wanderer and a homeless man. From now on, he declares, God will be “my refuge, the earth will be my throne and the heavens my crown” (idem 1987–2009, II, 274; 2004, 242). Siyāvash’s language echoes Rostam’s in an earlier tale, when, in complaining to Kay Kāvus for his abuse, the champion avers that his helmet is his crown, and his horse Rakhsh, his throne, and declares that he is slave “to none but God alone” (idem 1987–2009, II, 150; 2004, 196); but the young prince’s declaration makes clear that he is relinquishing not only his claim to nobility and his relationship to the king, but Iran, his beloved homeland.5 A resolute national identity, softened by empathy for “the Other,” is superseded by an ascetic, transcendent supranationalism.6
This state of affairs is only temporary, however, for unlike Kay Kāvus, Afrāsiyāb sees at least some room for reconciling with one’s enemies and, upon hearing of Siyāvash’s plight, agrees to grant him a home in Turan. The king’s hope is that, as his eternally optimistic adviser, Pirān, suggests, the move will enable their “two countries … to rest from warfare, as the world’s creator would wish” (idem 1987–2009, II, 277; 2004, 243). As Siyāvash makes the journey from his homeland to Turan, and settles there, he develops a consciousness of what Rushdie has called (15) a “plural and partial” identity: that of a person who belongs partly to one culture, partly to another, and sometimes “fall[s] beneath two stools.” He also experiences the harrowing sensations common to many of the characters who populate exile literature, both premodern and contemporary.
The trip itself is filled with sadness as Siyāvash endures what Said has described (173) as “the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home.” The momentous crossing of the river that divides Iran from Turan is painfully evoked: “As the sun set, and the air grew dark and the world forbidding, Seyavash led his men toward the Oxus, his face obscured by tears …” (Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 282; 2004, 245). Greeted in Turan by Pirān, who reassures him that Afrāsiyāb will be as a father to him, Siyāvash becomes mournful, thinking of Iran, when they later pass through towns full of music and perfumed with musk:
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Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 283–84; tr. Davis,, 246
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Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 283–84; tr. Davis,, 246Citation: Journal of Persianate Studies 15, 2 (2022) ; 10.1163/18747167-bja10007
Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 283–84; tr. Davis,, 246Here, indeed, awakens the “essential sadness” of the exile and the pain of separation from the homeland bewailed by so many poets over the centuries (Said, 173).7 Pirān, however, advises the prince not to “dwell on the fact that you’ve left Iran; trust to Afrāsiyāb’s kindness and be in no hurry to leave us”; and in fact, after getting drunk while feasting with Afrāsiyāb that first night, Siyāvash even manages to forget about Iran (Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 285, 288; 2004, 246, 248). Yet as time goes on and he establishes a life in Turan similar to that he would have led in Iran, memories of his homeland return to haunt him, ultimately leading to what Said has so eloquently described as a contrapuntal existence:
Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that—to borrow a phrase from music—is contrapuntal … For an exile, habits of life, expression or activity in the new environment inevitably occur against the memory of these things in another environment. Thus both the new and the old environments are vivid, actual, occurring together contrapuntally [emphasis added].
Said, 186
Even as the exile is “offered a new set of affiliations and develops new loyalties,” then, his consciousness remains multiple, operating in two regions at once (ibid., 184, 186). Thus, when Pirān suggests that Siyāvash marry a daughter of Afrāsiyāb, the prince immediately hearkens nostalgically to his past, remembering relatives and friends to whom he was close in Iran and whose daughters, presumably, he would have preferred to marry:
If I’m not to reach Iran again, or see Kavus’s face again, or that of the great Rostam who brought me up, or Bahram’s or Zangeh’s, or the faces of any of our warriors, then I must choose a home here in Turan.8 Be as a father to me and arrange this marriage …
Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 298; tr. Davis,, 251
Siyāvash’s contrapuntal, hybrid awareness reaches its most graphic and positive expression in the frescoes that the prince eventually has painted upon the palace walls of Siyāvashgard, the city which he builds. These frescoes show both Iranian and Turanian heroes and warriors in a tribute to the prince’s dual loyalties and identities:
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(Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 314; tr. Davis,, 256–57)
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(Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 314; tr. Davis,, 256–57)Citation: Journal of Persianate Studies 15, 2 (2022) ; 10.1163/18747167-bja10007
(Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 314; tr. Davis,, 256–57)Not only are the frescoes a visible manifestation of the hybridity arising from the “urgent need [of exiles] to reconstitute their broken lives” (Said, 176)—that is, to acknowledge and remember the past while accepting the present, and to incorporate both identities into one’s sense of self—but they also act as a harbinger of reconciliation between warring factions, as the text itself acknowledges. Indeed, upon observing Siyāvashgard, the ever-optimistic Pirān believes that a lasting peace has been accomplished, reporting that “our two countries rest from war, returning to life like a man who has lain unconscious and revives again” (Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 318; 2004, 258). In this stage, the original rigid nationalism of the poem gives way to more complex identities that herald the possibility of amity and unity, and of recognition that, as Mahallati observes (926), “the ‘other’ may have great and virtuous men on their side, too”—itself a harbinger of supranationalism.
Of course, Pirān’s optimism is ill-founded, and rather than lasting peace, the fate that awaits Siyāvash, Afrāsiyāb, and most of the other Iranians and Turanians in the story is bloodshed and violence. Not insignificantly, the trigger for warfare is Siyāvash’s vexing hybridity, for the question of divided loyalties is the means by which Afrāsiyāb’s jealous brother, Garsivaz, poisons the king’s mind against his favored son-in-law. Siyāvash, Garsivaz falsely and treacherously warns,
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Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 328; tr. Davis,, 261
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Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 328; tr. Davis,, 261Citation: Journal of Persianate Studies 15, 2 (2022) ; 10.1163/18747167-bja10007
Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 328; tr. Davis,, 261Indeed, Garsivaz opines, welcoming a “stranger into your family” can only bring harm, besides defying the laws of nature: “No one has ever seen a lion and an elephant mate, or fire above while water flows below” (idem 1987–2009, II, 329, 331; 2004, 262, 263). The various attempts of Afrāsiyāb, Pirān, and Siyāvash to bring together their warring factions falter in the face of Garsivaz’s malignant nationalism, and the union and coexistence envisioned at Siyāvashgard give way to fierce hostility as Afrāsiyāb girds himself for battle against his once-beloved relative.
Rather than re-embracing his strictly Iranian identity, however—an impossibility given his broken relations with his father—Siyāvash once more confronts a condition of being a man without a country. Hybridity gives way to the supranationalism envisioned upon his initial exile from Iran, yet in an even more extreme, desperate form. As his wife, Farangis, tells him
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As when Siyāvash initially left Iran, God is once again his refuge, except now he has lost even the earth and the heavens. Nothing but death awaits him, and it arrives brutally at the hands of Afrāsiyāb’s henchmen.
According to the logic of the poem, however, ultimately a man—and, especially, a prince—must have a country and an identity. After Siyāvash is killed, Farangis gives birth to their son, Kay Khosrow, who eventually returns to Iran with his mother, where he is acclaimed the heir of Kay Kāvus. He ultimately mounts campaigns against Turan and Afrāsiyāb in revenge for his father’s death. Even though Siyāvash lives much of his life in exile, then, his seed is replanted in his homeland in the form of his son—a move depicted dramatically in the re-crossing of the Oxus. Thus, in the course of the story, Ferdowsi destabilizes matters by bringing Siyāvash—the rightful heir to the throne of Iran—out of the country and allowing him to experience a mixed identity, and then restabilizes them by installing Siyāvash’s son back in the country. Proper order is restored; Iranian identity recoheres.
Strangeness in the Home
But what sort of identity is it really? And what sort of identity has it been from the start? Feminist theorist Ahmed has argued persuasively (338) against linking travel and migration too closely to “the transgression and destabilization of identity,” noting that a strong sense of identity can be transgressed even prior to migration, or intensify after:
The association of home with familiarity which allows strangeness to be associated with migration (that is, to be located as beyond the walls of the home) is problematic. There is already strangeness and movement within the home itself.
Ahmed, 340
Indeed, Siyāvash experiences this “strangeness” while still in Iran in the form of Sudāba, the foreigner who wishes to seduce him; but even more significantly, it has always existed within himself in the shape of his own mixed heritage. He is, after all, the product of a mixed marriage—while his father was Kay Kāvus, his mother was a young Turanian noblewoman who was discovered on the border of Iran and Turan after she had run away from her abusive father.9 The journey he takes to Turan, then, can be seen as a psychological attempt to reconcile or make sense of the disparate, warring parts of his own self. His hybridity does not magically appear after he crosses the Oxus; it has always existed.
This hybridity is only amplified in his son, Kay Khosrow, the “paradigmatically perfect Iranian king of the prehistorical sections” of the Shāh-nāma, who yet is, technically, only one-quarter Iranian, three-quarters Turanian (Davis 2012, 41). As Davis writes (ibid., 42–43) of Kay Khosrow’s and Rostam’s family trees, “the non-Iranian is not something that one simply defines oneself over against; it is also something that has been folded into one’s own identity before one is even born and is part and parcel of it.” The poem, then, resists or problematizes the idea of a coherent Iranian identity even as it seems to promote it—a contradiction that I will explore further in the next paragraphs.
I will begin with the more conservative approach, by looking at some of the ways in which the poem not only advocates for seemingly consistent “national” identities, but for keeping them undiluted by avoiding exogamy and other forms of mixing.10 As already noted, Sudāba, Siyāvash’s stepmother and would-be seducer, is mistrusted chiefly because she is the daughter of the king of Hāmāvarān, and therefore “full of wiles and hatred for the Persian people” (Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 220; 2004, 221). Such concerns, as Davis has observed, intensify in the second half of the epic. The fact that the king Hormozd “has a Chinese/Central Asian mother and Shirui, a Byzantine mother, is seen in each case as a distinct negative”; the first is described as “descended from Turks” and therefore unworthy of the throne; the other is depicted as “of evil lineage,” a clear reference to his mother (Davis 2012, 48). In the final episode of the poem, the Sasanian commander Rostam b. Farrokh-Hormozd laments the results of the Arab conquest of Iran, which he foresees will bring about terrible mixing, not only of people but of languages: “Persians, Turks, and Arabs, side by side / will live together, mingled far and wide— / the three will blur, as if they were the same; / their languages will be a trivial game” (Ferdowsi 1987–2009, VIII, 419; 2004, 836). He laments repeatedly that lineage will have no worth (idem 1987–2009, VIII, 418; 2004, 836).
Fear of mixing appears among other peoples as well.11 Afrāsiyāb’s initial reluctance to marry Siyāvash to his daughter is based on a fear that their lineages are like fire and water, and that mingling them can bring no good—a notion also subscribed to by his brother, Garsivaz, who as we have seen argued, “No one has ever seen a lion and an elephant mate, or fire above while water flows below” (Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 300, 331; 2004, 252, 263).12
Yet there is also an acknowledgement almost from the epic’s outset of the positive effects of miscegenation. When the hero Zāl wishes to marry the Indian woman Rudāba, her father, Mehrāb, is furious: like Afrāsiyāb, he sees only doom resulting from this attempted blending of lineages, fearing that Zāl’s family will revolt at being allied with these descendants of Zahhāk.13 But Mehrāb’s wife, Sindokht, tries to calm him down by observing that Feraydun, one of the earliest kings, gained power by marrying his sons to the daughters of the king of Yemen—
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Ferdowsi 1987–2009, I, 219; tr. Davis,, 86
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Ferdowsi 1987–2009, I, 219; tr. Davis,, 86Citation: Journal of Persianate Studies 15, 2 (2022) ; 10.1163/18747167-bja10007
Ferdowsi 1987–2009, I, 219; tr. Davis,, 86Her words constitute a point-by-point refutation of what the evil Garsivaz had espoused (see above), and their truth is borne out in the product of Zāl and Rudāba’s union: Rostam, Iran’s greatest champion.
The fact that (as Davis has noted) two other of the epic’s greatest characters, Siyāvash and Kay Khosrow, are products of mixed marriages is also a testament to exogamy’s benefits. In fact, exogamy is in some ways celebrated by the epic, especially in its first half, with foreign brides such as Sindokht, Rudāba, Farangis, Manizha, and Katayun being “positively presented despite their foreign origins and the evil associations of some of their ancestors or living relatives” (Davis 2012, 43). Of course, these marriage alliances—always between an Iranian man and a non-Iranian woman—“are being presented as metaphors for, and manifestations of, suzerainty and conquest” (ibid., 43). Since the foreign bride’s own ethnicity is “subservient, and inferior, to that of her husband,” her husband’s Iranian ethnicity will dominate hers, both in their marriage and in their offspring—a symbol of Iran’s imperialism (ibid., 43). Conversely, the epic frowns upon the opposite dynamic in which an Iranian woman marries a non-Iranian man (and, one can assume, the man’s ethnicity will likewise dominate according to patrilineal understandings common to pre-modern times) (ibid., 43). Yet, as Davis perspicaciously writes,
Such imperial claims and metaphors may well occupy the conceptual foreground of the marriage alliances celebrated in the poem, but the presence of so many foreign wives, and then, inevitably, of so many foreign mothers, produces an almost unavoidable subtext. It is the foreign that, quite literally, gives birth to the poem’s heroes. Rostam, Sohrab, Seyavash, Esfandyar all have foreign mothers, as does Kay Khosrow, the legendary king we are most unequivocally invited to admire. And when we examine this list we see something even more surprising: if the foreigner gives birth to these heroes, it is the Iranian—their own as it were—who either directly destroys them or more obliquely ensures their destruction…. We are left with a peculiar paradox: The foreign gives life to the poem’s heroes and national representatives, and the Iranian deprives them of life or harries them until they are driven out of life by other forces. This is a very strange fact for a poem that supposedly celebrates notions of Iranian identity over against the foreign identities with which it is in conflict.
Davis, 2012, 43–44
Thus women do play a role in representing and transmitting their lineages and ethnicities, even if these lineages and ethnicities may nominally seem to be superseded by those of their husbands. Siyāvash worries about marrying one of Sudāba’s daughters precisely because her lineage might prevail—a sign that Iranian identity, even when passed on by a father, is not as dominant and dominating as the epic may sometimes suggest, and that “suzerainty and conquest” is not a full or final representation of what is occurring in these marriages. Even though anxiety is often associated with such mixing, the outcome, as we have seen, can be good.
Finally, though perhaps most elusively, the epic acknowledges that mixing is irrelevant because many of these groups stem from the same ancestor. Readers of the Shāh-nāma will recall that Tur and Iraj, the ancestral rulers of Turan and Iran, were brothers, having each received their patrimony from their father, the aforementioned Feraydun.14 It was only Tur’s decision to make war on Iraj that led to lasting conflict between the countries, as both Afrāsiyāb and Garsivaz acknowledge (Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 255, 328, 335; 2004, 235, 261, 264). Given the shared ancestry of their countries and peoples, characters occasionally suggest that the present division between their identities is not ultimately meaningful.15
Indeed, this notion emerges at a crucial point in Kay Khosrow’s reign. After having ruled for sixty years, he decides to relinquish his crown and throne and to enter heaven, uniting with God, while still alive. He subsequently leaves everyone behind, climbs a mountain, and vanishes from sight—a move that, naturally, appalls Iran’s warriors. When the king has given notice of his decision, Zāl criticizes him by reminding him that he is descended from Afrāsiyāb on his mother’s side and grew up in Turan—an implication that his foreign (i.e., tainted) blood is prompting his poor choices. Kay Khosrow responds by acknowledging that his maternal grandfather was indeed Afrāsiyāb, but notes that the Turanian king’s “forebear was Feraydun” (Ferdowsi 1987–2009, IV, 345–46; 2004, 356). Furthermore, he adds that there is no shame in such ancestry. Kay Khosrow’s message here, even if a fleeting one, seems to be a rejection of the prevailing notions that fire and water cannot mix—or even that they are fire and water.16
Transcending Nationalism
Indeed, I would like to suggest that the idea of a transcendence of nationalism emerges as an admirable concept within the epic, even if it is seen as a state that cannot be maintained. Siyāvash clearly represents one of the moral centers of the poem (if not the moral center). His ability to see the humanity in his enemies, and his willingness to prioritize his loyalty to God above his claims to family, crown, throne, and country propel him to a different stature than that of the heroes who came before him, who—even if they were not greedy and ambitious—clung to worldly things. The sacrifice he made is echoed in that later made by his son, Kay Khosrow, who, as we have seen, relinquished his crown and throne in order to unite with God. For both men, the divesting of these trappings allows their most virtuous selves to appear.
The kingly order restored by the establishment of Kay Khosrow in Iran is, then, a different order than that which existed before. It bears within it the seeds of a more spiritual outlook, one less attached to lineage and to the outward trappings of kingship—less attached, in fact, to Iran itself. Kay Khosrow’s mixed lineage and his sojourn outside of Iran engender the circumstances for this new outlook to flourish. Like his father, he sees his enemies as human beings deserving of kindness and compassion (Mahallati, 912, 920); like his father, he is willing to sacrifice attachment to lesser things for greater ones, even if he must suffer along the way.
Given these qualities, it is not surprising that both Siyāvash and Kay Khosrow came to be regarded as spiritual figures whose meanings resonated much more profoundly than that of mere princes or kings.17 As Davis has noted (1992, 110–11), Siyāvash’s “quasi-religious nature” led him to be compared to Hosayn, Hallāj, and Jesus, among other figures.18 Meanwhile, the Illumination (Eshrāqi) School of the Persian philosopher Shehāb al-Din Sohravardi (1154–91) depicted Kay Khosrow as a manifestation “of divine light,” a mystical hero whose journey served as an exemplar for more ordinary folk (Razavi, 16; Renard, 30). His disappearance into the mountain represented the transition from regular to mystical existence that is the goal of all beings (Renard, 30–31.) His detachment from country and national identity as portrayed in the Shāh-nāma no doubt facilitated his adoption as an exemplar of mysticism. Both Siyāvash and Kay Khosrow, then, exemplify a theme that runs quietly and subversively through the epic—the idea that as great a country as is Iran, its virtues are ultimately illusory. The spiritual realm is greater and realer still—the abode, as Kay Khosrow calls it, “of the blessed … where the just eternally abide” (Ferdowsi 1987–2009, IV, 328–29; 2004, 348–49).
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Asa Eger, Brooke Kreitinger, and Saïd Amir Arjomand for their valuable comments on this article, which was written in tribute to her late mentor, Professor Heshmat Moayyad.
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For Siyāvash in religious practice, see Yarshater 1979; in literature, Dāneshvar.
For discussions of the (false) dichotomy of cosmopolitanism and nationalism, see Robbins, 1–3; Cheah, 21–22. For examples of pre-modern texts addressing cosmopolitanism, see Appiah, 13.
See Ashraf and Gnoli; Hayes, 369–93; Zia-Ebrahimi, 29–31.
This matter is, perhaps, particularly significant given the fact that Iran likely did not exist as a “political, religious and ethnic concept” until the Sasanian era, which is not treated until the latter part of the epic (Gnoli, 175).
See Davis 1992, 117.
I do not mean to suggest that Siyāvash, here, is consciously donning the cloak of the cosmopolitan, or “citizen of the world,” as it was conceived of by the ancient Greeks. He bears greater resemblance to the refugee or exile who seeks a corner of the world in which to rest. But the loyalties to God and to his principles that supersede his loyalties to country and king propel him in a cosmopolitan direction, whether or not he is aware of it.
See also Sharma, 33, 51–53, 47–48.
This reluctance is initially shared, incidentally, by Afrāsiyāb, who fears the mixing of two disparate lineages, as will be discussed later.
She is, in fact, descended from Garsivaz; see Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 205; 2004, 216.
As Davis writes (2012, 47), “the glories of having the correct gowhar and nezhād are constantly referred to throughout the Shahnameh.” However, another scholar argues that these terms do not refer to ethnic, racial, or national identity in the epic, but rather strictly to kinship; see Hayes, 370.
Nationalism is often noted for “its roots in fear and hatred of the Other, its affinities with racism” (Anderson, 141). Notably, Anderson disputes this idea.
See also Hirji, 197–213, as well as Davis 1992, 119, for discussions of the symbolic themes of fire and water in the story.
As they do. In fact, Sām himself uses the same language that is later to be employed by Afrāsiyāb, wondering what will be the impact of mingling fire and water; see Ferdowsi 1987–2009, I, 209; 2004, 82.
In fact, Siyavash’s mother herself traces her ancestry on her father’s side to Feraydun; see Ferdowsi 1987–2009, II, 205; 2004, 216.
This point becomes even more significant in an ironical sense when one considers that Iran, as noted earlier, probably did not fully exist as a “political, religious and ethnic concept” until the Sasanian era (Gnoli, 175). From this perspective, Ferdowsi’s evocations of the early conflict between “Iran” and “Turan” are themselves anachronistic.
Indeed, Kay Khosrow at various points casts equal aspersions upon his Iranian and Turanian ancestors, both of whom were susceptible to evil; see Ferdowsi 1987–2009, IV, 327, 329, 346; 2004, 347, 348, 356.
As Davis writes, Siyāvash’s spirituality is “a quality he shares with only one other hero in the poem, his own son, Khosrow” (1992, 118).
Of course, the prince’s quasi-religious nature existed even before the Shāh-nāma was written. A cult was dedicated to Siyāvash in pre-Islamic times in Transoxiana, and some of the mourning rituals that later surrounded Husayn are seen as having roots in the “pre-Islamic … rites of the martyrdom of [Siyāvash].” EIr, s.v. “Siyawush.”