The death of Sohrab (Iranian painting) This story is probably an old Indo-European story that Persian people told even before they moved south into Iran about 2000 BC. It's probably related to the German story of Hildebrand and the Greek story of Achilles and Penthesileia, though sometimes Rustem is also a trickster like Odysseus, or like the Indian Krishna (you may want to compare [...]
Death of Iskandar (Alexander), from the Great Mongol Shahnameh (Iran, 1330s AD) In the 900s AD, Central Asia was the most civilized part of the world. The universities and libraries of Iran and Afghanistan were famous for a thousand miles in every direction. The Iranian Al-Tabari had recently finished writing his huge Islamic History. Here, in [...]
Rudaba lets down her hair Rudaba's name means "The River Water Girl". She was a character in the Persian epic Shahmaneh, written by the poet Ferdowsi about 1000 AD, at the height of Central Asian power (But the story must be much older than that). In the story, Rudaba's the daughter of the governor of Kabul, a Babylonian. [...]
