Birth of Zal
At a Glance
- Central figures: Sam, champion of Iran and lord of Sistan; his son Zal, born with white hair; the Simurgh, the great bird of the Alborz mountains.
- Setting: Sistan and the Alborz mountains, in the age of the first kings of Iran, as told in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.
- The turn: Sam, horrified by his white-haired infant son, orders the child abandoned on the slopes of Mount Alborz, where the Simurgh finds and raises him.
- The outcome: Years later, Sam is shamed by a dream and rides to the Alborz to reclaim his son; the Simurgh returns Zal to his father, giving the young man a feather that will summon her aid in any hour of need.
- The legacy: Zal’s line becomes the house of Sistan’s champions - he will father Rostam, the greatest pahlavan of Iran, and the Simurgh’s feather will be called upon across generations of the Shahnameh.
Sam son of Nariman, lord of Sistan, pahlavan of Iran, had waited years for a son. His wife carried the child through a long pregnancy, and when the midwives brought the infant to the great hall, they did not look at Sam directly. The baby was strong, well-formed, heavy in the arms. His hair was white. Not the pale blond of northern peoples but the white of snow, of old age, of something no one in Sistan had seen on a newborn child.
Sam held the boy and said nothing. Then he gave the child back.
The White-Haired Child
Word spread through the court before the day was out. Sam’s son had the hair of an old man. The nobles whispered that the child was touched by Ahriman, that something demonic had entered Sam’s line. Sam himself could not look at the infant without revulsion. He was a man who had fought divs in the field, who carried the war-standard of the shahanshah, and the shame of this strange child ate through his pride like rust through iron.
On the third day, Sam gave the order. The child was to be taken from the house and left on the slopes of Mount Alborz, far from Sistan, far from any settlement. The servants wrapped the infant in cloth and carried him up the mountain paths until they reached a high ridge of bare rock above the treeline. They set the child down. He was crying. They turned and walked back the way they had come.
The sun moved across the sky. The infant lay on stone, exposed to wind and the circling of hawks. He should have died within hours - of cold, of thirst, of the animals that hunt the high passes. But the Simurgh heard him.
The Nest on Alborz
The Simurgh - the great bird, vast enough to carry an elephant in her talons, feathered in colors that shifted between copper and peacock-blue - nested at the summit of Alborz. She was older than any dynasty. She had seen the first kings rise and fall. When her shadow crossed the sun, men on the plains below thought a cloud had passed.
She descended to the ridge where the child lay and lifted him in her claws, gently, the way she would carry her own young. She bore him up to the nest.
The Simurgh’s chicks were feeding when she arrived. She set the white-haired infant among them. He was smaller than the youngest bird, but the Simurgh fed him as she fed her own - with care, with the meat of game she hunted across the mountain range. The child grew. He grew fast, as children in the Shahnameh tend to grow, and the mountain air made him strong. His hair stayed white, brilliant against the dark rock, but in every other way he became a young man of extraordinary beauty and power. The Simurgh named him Dastan, but in the world below he would be known as Zal.
He knew no human language at first. He knew the wind and the cries of birds and the sound of rivers far below. He climbed the crags around the nest barefoot. He did not know what he was or where he had come from. The Simurgh did not tell him - not yet.
Sam’s Dream
Years passed. Sam ruled in Sistan, fought the campaigns the shah required, and did not speak of the child he had abandoned. But the act sat in him like a stone in the throat.
One night Sam dreamed. He saw a rider coming from the direction of the Alborz, carrying a banner, and the rider’s face was the face of a young man with white hair and the bearing of a king. A voice in the dream said: Your son lives. He is raised by the Simurgh. Go to him, or carry the shame of what you did into the next world.
Sam woke in the dark. He dressed and called his horsemen before dawn. He told them they were riding to the Alborz. He did not explain why.
The journey from Sistan to the high passes of Alborz was long. Sam rode hard, sleeping little, eating in the saddle. When they reached the mountain’s lower slopes, he looked up and saw, impossibly high above them on a crag that no human could climb, the shape of the Simurgh’s nest. And on the rocks beside it, a figure - tall, lean, white-haired, watching them.
Sam dismounted and knelt on the ground. He called up to his son, though the wind took his voice. He called again. He wept - this man who had broken armies, who had lifted the heads of divs on the points of spears, knelt on gravel and wept for what he had done.
The Simurgh’s Gift
The Simurgh saw Sam on the slope below. She turned to Zal, who had grown into a man she could be proud of, and she spoke to him for the first time about his origins. She told him he was the son of Sam, the lord of Sistan. She told him he had been abandoned because of his hair. She told him his place was in the world of men, not in a nest on the summit of a mountain.
Zal did not want to leave. The Alborz was the only world he knew - the cold air, the sound of the Simurgh’s wings, the view of Iran spread out below like a carpet of green and brown and dust. But the Simurgh was clear. His fate lay elsewhere.
She gave him a feather from her breast. It was long, iridescent, warm to the touch.
When you are in danger, she told him, burn this feather. I will come.
Then the Simurgh carried Zal down the mountain and set him on the ground before his father. Sam looked at the young man standing in front of him - white-haired, sun-darkened, dressed in nothing but animal skins, holding a single feather - and he embraced him. He held his son against his chest and asked forgiveness, though he knew the word was not large enough for what he was asking.
The Return to Sistan
Sam brought Zal home. He dressed him in the robes of a prince of Sistan, presented him to the court, and declared him his heir. The nobles who had whispered about Ahriman years before now saw a young man whose white hair burned like silver in the torchlight, whose arms were corded from climbing stone, whose eyes were the eyes of someone who had been raised by something older and stranger than any king.
Zal learned the ways of men quickly. He learned court speech, horsemanship, the handling of weapons. He kept the Simurgh’s feather in a case of leather against his skin. He did not speak much about the mountain, but sometimes at night, when the wind came down from the north, he would stand on the roof of Sam’s hall and look toward the Alborz, where the air was thinner and the stars were closer and the nest still held the shape of his childhood.