[In the essay below, Southgate maintains that Ferdowsi uses the story of Suhrāb to emphasize the inevitability of fate but stresses that the author's fatalistic view is not shared by all of his characters.]

In a recent study of Matthew Arnold's “Sohrab and Rustum,” Hasan Javadi observes that Arnold's version of the story is more fatalistic than Firdawsī's. Javadi admits that fate is not absent from Fardawsī, but declares that its force “is lessened by the Persian poet's concern to present the catastrophe partially as the result of cunningly motivated human action.” According to Javadi, “The treason of a man, the tyrant Afrasiab, deadly foe of Rustum, is actually responsible for the fight between father and son.”¹

Comparing the two treatments of the story, I find Firdawsī's version no less fatalistic than Arnold's. Indeed, proportionately, those of Firdawsī's lines which express fatalistic sentiments far exceed Arnold's. But Firdawsī's belief in fate and his tragic view of human life find expression in an epic poem which must include action; and in order to have characters who act, the poet has had to create a semblance of free will, and of a cause-and-effect relationship between the events. Beyond the surface action, however, the poet points to Providence as the true mover of the events. Fate takes its course, careless of mankind. Caught in the mesh of ambititon, enmity, and rivalries of great men, Suhrāb is led to meet his death at his father's hand. But the sound and fury signifies nothing. The innocent Suhrāb dies, leaving his father to bear his guilt and loss for the rest of his life, while the treacherous Afrāsiyāb and Hūmān go unpunished. Thus, the narrative itself serves as an objective correlative for the poet's belief in fate and his contention that man is unable to comprehend God's ways.

Absorbed in the intricate and complex action of “Rustam va Suhrāb,” the reader can easily miss its philosophy and moral. I believe that Firdawsī was aware of this danger, and, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, he tried to direct the audience in its response to the poem.

In the opening line of “Rustam va Suhrāb,” Firdawsī introduces the poem as a tragic tale and anticipates the audience's negative response to Rustam, who, in this episode of the Shāhnāmah, fails to maintain his heroic and moral stature:

It is a tale full of tears;
the tender heart will be angered against Rustam.(2)

This anger is to be expected of an audience who, ignorant of the working of Providence behind the events, holds the protagonists responsible for their deeds, and, as such, passes judgment upon them. Won by Suhrāb's youthful enthusiasm, his courage, and especially his magnanimity in his glorious death scene when he forgives those who caused his death, the audience recoils from Rustam, who, faced with an uncommonly strong adversary, resorts to treachery unworthy of a hero of his stature. But the poet warns against this reaction, and, in the opening section of “Rustam va Suhrāb”³ (from now on called the prologue) he directs the audience to see, beyond the surface story, Providence guiding the events in its inscrutable way. Events that seem to result from the characters' deliberate planning are in reality effected by Fate. The poem's tragic climax is an outcome of Fate rather than moral flaws in the characters.

The prologue contains the philosophic core of the poem. Here the poet sees man as placed in a callous universe, prey to destructive forces. But the poet's voice is calm as he reflects on life and death, on fate and fortune, and on the ultimately incomprehensible nature of these matters. The tone is that of a Boethius, led out of error by Lady Philoosophy, reflecting calmly, and accepting the order of things, Indeed, the prologue is imbued with conventional consolatory topoi. Having considered man's uncertain fate in this life, his inability to comprehend God's ways, and his helplessness before death, the poet urges the audience to turn their hearts away from the world, to think of salvation, and, in resignation to God's will, to accept His righteousness through faith.

The poet's fatalistic position and his didactic philosophy in the prologue find expression in the remaining sections of the poem and especially near its end. Similarly, the prologue's symbolic imagery foreshadows the tragic climax of the poem:

If, rising as if from nowhere, a hard gale
pluck the unripe orange to the ground,
should it be called righteous or unjust?
Is it to be praised or to be blamed?(4)

In these lines the poet poses a question to the audience which is angered against Rustam. The imagery emphasizes the poet's fatalistic outlook. The hard gale (Rustam), put into motion by forces not his own, is innocent of the destruction of the unripe orange (the young Suhrāb). The same fatalistic attitude is present in the imagery of the following lines in the prologue:

Once lit, it is no wonder if,
burning, the fire consume
that which is sound and whole—
the young shoot risen from the old root.
Death's breath is a fierce fire
that dreads neither the young, nor old.(5)

Demanding the kind of order he can comprehend, presumptuously making God after his own image and judging him by human standards, man finds God's ways unjust. Man cannot accept his own mortality. The poet, on the other hand, accepts the necessity of death, finds man's protest against death unreasonable, and his attempt to solve the riddle of death fruitless:

If death is just, why call it unjust?
Why such a clamor over what is just?
This shall remain a mystery to your soul.
Through this curtain you must not go.
All arrive at the voracious gate,
and the gate reopens to none.(6)

The poet finds consolation in the possibility of a better lot in the next world:

Departing you may find a better place
when you come to rest in the other world.(7)

He bids the audience to accept God's ways:

Imbue your heart with the fire of faith.
Question not his ways, for you are but a slave.(8)

And, employing consolatory topoi, he ends the prologue, urging the reader to reject the world and think of his salvation:

The young shall not set his heart upon mirth,
for death does not come solely from age.
When death spurs hard the courser of Fate,
you must not tarry, but depart in haste. …
Devote yourself to worship and prayer,
and be ever mindful of the Last Day.
You cannot fathom the mystery of God's ways,
unless your soul is of the devil's company.
Let this be your goal that you end your days
in resignation to the divine will.(9)

The prologue with its imagery, fatalistic philosophy, and consolatory topoi foreshadows the content of the rest of the poem, and its thematic movement (from action—implied in symbolic imagery—to philosophical meditation and consolation) is roughly paralleled by the rest of the poem.

A summary of the plot will demonstrate how the poem's intricate and suspenseful action can divert attention from its philosophy and moral. In “Rustam va Suhrāb,” on the human level the action results from the conflicting intentions of Tahmīnah and Zhandahrazm, Suhrāb's mother and uncle, who want to unite Suhrāb with his father, and Afrāsiyāb, the shāh of Turan, who schemes to prevent this union. The poet's task in making Rustam's failure to recognize his son credible is a hard one. Rustam, it seems, does not even associate the name Suhrāb with his son born of his union with Tahmīnah, his wife of one night. Although the poet does not explicitly state this, it seems that Tahmīnah has intentionally kept Rustam in the dark about Suhrāb's progress, for fear of losing her son. When Suhrāb demands to know the identity of his father, she says:

If your father learns that you have thus
surpassed all the mighty warriors,
he will at once call you unto him,
wounding your mother's heart with pain.(10)

She also has kept Suhrāb's parentage secret to protect him from Afrāsiyāb, Rustam's enemy. When Suhrāb declares his intention to find his father, defeat Kāvūs, the shāh of Iran, and make Rustam king in his place, Tahmīnah advises him to conceal his parentage from Afrāsiyāb. However, the latter, who knows Suhrāb is Rustam's son, provides the youth with a great army headed by Hūmān. Knowing that confronting Suhrāb, Kāvūs will seek Rustam's aid, Afrāsiyāb rightly concludes that if father and son face each other in battle, whichever is killed, he himself will prosper. He instructs Hūmān to hide Rustam's identity from Suhrāb. Tahmīnah, on the other hand, requests Suhrāb's uncle, Zhandahrazm, who knows Rustam, to accompany her son on his expedition and make his father known to him.

Crossing the border of Iran, Suhrāb defeats Hujīr, the keeper of a fortress, and takes his prisoner. Later, when Suhrāb's host faces Kāvūs shāh's army, in one of his most vivid passages, Firdawsī paints a detailed picture of the marvelous splendor of Kāvūs shāh's camping ground. Suhrāb looks from a hill top. Colorful tents, splendid standards with fabulous coats of arms, gorgeously bedecked with gems, dazzle the eye. Suhrāb points out each Iranian nobleman to Hujīr and asks his name, hoping to learn which one is Rustam. Hujīr, having tasted Suhrāb's prowess and seeking to protect Rustam, conceals Rustam's identity. The only man who knows both Rustam and Suhrāb and could effect their union is Zhandahrazm. Ironically, he is killed by Rustam, who at night visits Suhrāb's camp in disguise.

Thus, father and son face each other in combat. Moved by his adversary's youth, Rustam addresses Suhrāb:

Pity for you moves my heart.
I do not want to pluck your life.
With such shoulder and neck, you surpass the Turks,
and none is your equal in Iran.(11)

To these words Suhrāb responds with affection. He asks his adversary to tell him truly who he is:

I suspect you to be the great Rustam,
from the seed of the renowned Nayram.(12)

But Rustam conceals his identity, and the poet does not explain why he does so. Ignorant of the unnaturalness of their act, father and son fight to the point of exhaustion:

Then they stood apart, one from the other,
the father in anguish, the son full of pain.
(Oh world! your deeds are inscrutable;
you break, and you make whole.)
In neither of the two could love stir,
Reason was absent, so love hid her face.
The beasts know their young:
the fish in the sea, the zebra in the field.
But man, blinded by wrath and greed,
Cannot tell his son from his foe.(13)

The argument that when reason is ruled by passion the law of nature fails to operate is more accurately applicable to Rustam, for Suhrāb is moved by a son's natural affection for his father. Before the second combat Suhrāb speaks to Hūmān about Rustam:

His breast, his shoulders, and his neck resemble mine—
as if the omniscient measured us both the same. …
I find manifest the signs my mother gave.
My heart too is somewhat stirred by love.
I suspect him to be Rustam himself,
for there are not many warriors like him.
God forbid that I fight my father,
and shamelessly combat him face to face.(14)

Rustam has none of these misgivings:

… Rustam like a fierce lion
arrayed himself in Babr-i bayān.
His head full of wrath, his heart seeking revenge,
proudly he marched to the field.(15)

Suhrāb tries to dissuade Rustam from war:

As if together they had spent the night in mirth,
he said to Rustam, his lips full of laughter,
“How was your night, and how your morning?
Why have you set your heart upon war?
Drop this war-club and this sword of wrath,
and put to silence the harp of discord.
Let us sit together and make merry.
Let wine erase sadness from our looks.
Let us swear before the mighty God,
repent from war, and make peace. …
Oft I have sought to learn your name.
Say who you are, for others do not reveal.(16) …
Are you not the renowned Rustam,
the Son of Dastān and the mighty Sām?”(17)

Rustam replies:

O thou seeking for fame. …
This was not our tale yesterday.
We swore to meet again in war.
By fine words I shan't be deceived.(18)

As the poet anticipates in the prologue, the audience comes to resent Rustam for obstinately thwarting Suhrāb's peace overtures. Later, the great hero of the Shāhnāmah, overpowered by Suhrāb in a wrestling combat, dissuades him from killing him by claiming that among the Persians it is not the custom to take advantage of the first fall.¹⁹ The next day, however, overpowering Suhrāb, he knows no such custom:

Lightly he drew the keen blade,
and pierced the breast of the brave youth.(20)

Firdawsī uses the story of Suhrāb to illustrate the inevitability of fate. The poet's fatalistic attitude, however, is not fully shared by his characters. They act on the basis of the belief that they can cause and control the events. For example, Tahmūnah, Suhrāb's mother, in her long lament blames herself for not accompanying Suhrāb on his expedition; a step which, she believes, would have averted the tragedy.²¹ Characters consider themselves and others responsible for what occurs. Thus, Rustam upbraids Hūmān for deceiving Suhrāb, and seeks to avenge Suhrāb's death on Hujīr who also misled his son. Later, holding himself responsible for Suhrāb's death, he seeks to take his own life. The contention that man is responsible for his deeds and must be punished for his wrongdoings cannot exist without a belief in free will. In the poem, however, side by side with this outlook, the characters express a fatalistic attitude toward life. For example, when the young Suhrāb, confident and proud, launches on his ambitious plan to conquer Iran and give its kingship to Rustam, he takes no heed of fate. But, wounded mortally, he holds fate responsible for his downfall and says to Rustam:

Fortune gave you the sword to end my life. …
You are innocent, for it was this Hump-backed,
who raised me high, and of a sudden slew me.(22)

Later, having learned that Rustam is his father, he says:

It was the destined decree of the stars,
that I should die at my father's hand.(23)

Other characters also express a belief in fate. Speaking of the forthcoming war against Suhrāb, Rustam says:

Such a task is not formidable,
unless Good Fortune is slumbering.(24)

To Suhrāb he says:

Let us fight, the end shall be none else
but was intended and decreed by God.(25)

How is the characters' apparent belief in fate to be reconciled with their pursuit of the active life? An examination of the characters' fatalistic utterances in context will reveal that they generally resort to a fatalistic attitude in hardship, as a means to console themselves or others. Their fatalistic lines are commonplaces of folk philosophy rather than expressions of a true belief in fate. Thus, when having mortally wounded his son, Rustam intends to take his own life, old Gūdarz begs him to hold his hand, for nothing he can do will change what is to be:

If it is destined that he shall live,
he will remain, and you with him.
But if he is to part from this world,
observe well, for who is immortal?
We are all but death's quarry,
the crowned, and the helmeted head.(26)

Likewise, to alleviate Rustam's sense of guilt, Kāvūs remarks:

Fortune aroused him with his host,
that he might meet his death at your hand.(27)

Unlike his characters, the poet's belief in predestination revealed in the prologue and at crucial points in the rest of the poem carries the weight of a consistent philosophy. Uninvolved in the action, the poet views the events from his Olympian seat. Regarded from this height, man ceases to be the self-propelled actor. Commenting on Suhrāb's fruitless efforts to identify his father, the poet remarks:

In vain you try to master and change the world,
for the Ruler set its course long ago.
Destiny had determined otherwise;
one cannot but do as it decrees.
Setting your heart on this transient world,
you shan't reap aught but poison and pain.(28)

When Rustam prays to God to increase his strength that he may defeat Suhrāb, the poet comments:

He sought victory and grandeur,
not knowing his lot from the sun and moon:
How Good Fortune was to leave his side,
and snatch the crown from his head.(29)

He begins the section on Suhrāb's death with these words:

Once more they tied the horses firmly,
Evil Fortune circling overhead.(30)

And, finally, when Suhrāb falls, the poet comments:

The brave youth's back was bent,
His time was at hand, his strength failed.(31)

Like its prologue, the poem abounds in consolatory topoi. Fearing death, Rustam instructs his brother to console his father, Dastān:

Tell him. …
Rustam's time has ended.
It was the decree of the pure God,
that he meet his death at a youth's hand.(32)
Console my mother's heart and say
God had alloted me this fate.
She shall not mourn my death eternally, …
for none remains for ever in this world.
If you remain on earth a thousand years,
You still shall meet death, this common end.
Observe Jamshīd, the mighty sovereign,
and Tahmūres, the slayer of giants.
There was no king like them in the world,
but they at last went to their Maker.
The world they owned passed to other hands.
I too must follow that road. …
Young or old we belong to death;
none remains in this world for ever.(33)

Consolatory passages occur frequently near the end of the poem, especially in the section that follows Suhrāb's death, in the words of the noblemen who try to console the bereaved Rustam. The poet's own comments at the end of the poem recall his words in the prologue. Once more he declares God's ways to be inscrutable:

Locked is the secret and locked it shall remain.
Do not search in vain for the key.
None knows how to open the gate.
Waste not your life in this quest.(34)

As in the prologue, he emphasizes the transitory nature of worldly felicity:

This is the way of Fortune:
In one hand holding a crown, in the other a noose.
The ruler rejoicing in his crown and throne,
is suddenly snatched, encircled in the noose.
Why must you set your love upon the world,
since you must join in the march of death?(35)

And, finally, like Rustam who

In the end made patience his way. …(36)

the audience is instructed to resign itself to the divine will. Thus, in its philosophy the poem reaches the same conclusion as the prologue; and, it is possible that Firdawsī, fearing that the plot would divert attention from the poem's philosophy and moral, wrote the prologue after the completion of “Rustam va Suhrāb” and added it to the poem in order to insure the right response from his audience.

Notes

1. “Matthew Arnold's ‘Sohrab and Rustam’ and Its Persian Original,” Review of National Literatures, II, No. 1 (Spring, 1971), 69.

2. Unless indicated otherwise, references to “Rustam va Suhrāb” are to: Firdawsī, Shāhnāmah, Vol. II (Tehran: Yahūdā Burūkhīm, n.d.). Hereafter, Burūkhīm. Translations mine.

3. Burūkhīm, 11. 1-21.

4. Ibid., 11. 3-4.

5. Ibid., 11. 10-13.

6. Ibid., 11. 5-7.

7. Ibid., 1. 8.

8. Ibid., 1. 17.

9. Ibid., 11. 13-14, 18-20.

10. Ibid., 11. 158-59.

11. Ibid., 11. 904-5.

12. Ibid., 1. 909.

13. Ibid., 11. 923-27.

14. Ibid., 11. 1057, 1959-61.

15. My source for these lines (not found in the Burūkhīm edition) is: Hakīm Abū al-Qāsim Firdawsī, Shāhnāmah (Tehran: Amīr Kabī, 1963), p. 115. Lines are not numbered in this edition.

16. These two lines are found in MS C only. See the Burūkhīm edition, II, 498, n. 9.

17. Burūkhīm, 11. 1068-72, 1077.

18. Ibid., 11. 1078-79.

19. Ibid., 11. 1099-1105.

20. Ibid., 1. 1152.

21. Ibid., 1. 1425-27.

22. Ibid., 11. 1157-58.

23. Ibid., 1, 1211.

24. Ibid., 1. 479.

25. Ibid., 1. 1081.

26. Ibid., 11. 1254-56.

27. Ibid., 1. 1339.

28. Ibid., 11. 788-90.

29. Ibid., 11. 1124-25.

30. Ibid., 1. 1145.

31. Ibid., 1. 1150.

32. Found in MS C only. See the Burūkhīm edition, II, 496, n. 3.

33. Burūkhīm, 11. 1035-36, 1041-44, 1047.

34. Ibid., 11. 1455-56.

35. Ibid., 11. 1324-26.

36. Ibid., 1. 1329.