Rustam Shoots Asfandiyar, from the Shahnama of Firdausi

Description

After his many victories on the battlefield, Asfandiyar grew proud and demanded that his father Shah Gushtasp abdicate in his favor. Asfandiyar’s resentment at having been wrongfully imprisoned made him distrustful of his father—for good reason. Gushtasp not only refused to cede the throne, but he assured his son’s death by giving him an impossible task: he commanded Asfandiyar to bring the hero Rustam to court in chains. Rustam tried to reason with Asfandiyar, to no avail. The two met on a field outside Rustam’s castle, where Asfandiyar foolishly goaded Rustam with insults.
Then Rustam quickly fitted to his bow
The tamarisk-shaft …;
He struck Asfandiyar full in the eyes,
And all the world grew dark before the chief;
The straight-stemmed Cypress [Asfandiyar] bent, intelligence
And Grace abandoned him. The pious prince
Fell prone, his bow of Chach dropped from his hands.
He clutched his black steed by the mane and crest;
The battlefield was reddened with his blood.
Said Rustam: “Thou hast brought this evil seed
To fruit! Thou art the man who said’st: ‘My form
Is brazen, and I dash high heaven to earth.’
Yet through one arrow hast thou turned from strife,
And fallen swooning on thy noble charger.”
Warner, V, 243–44
Before dying, Asfandiyar acknowledged that he had been killed by his own father’s machinations. He absolved Rustam of any guilt and entrusted to him his own son to raise.
The artist has shown two equestrian warriors face to face; each is splendidly arrayed, but we recognize Rustam by his familiar chain-mail armor and his now-white beard. The gestures of both figures are restrained and dignified, as appropriate for their high stature.
———
Maribeth Graybill, Senior Curator of Asian Art
Exhibited in "A Medieval Masterpiece from Baghdad: the Ann Arbor Shahnama"
August 14 through December 19, 2004