Ardshír, having become King of kings, marries the daughter of Ardawán, who attempts to poison him and is saved by Ardshír's minister. Shápúr is born and recognised by his father Ardshír. Ardshír consults Kaid about the future. Kaid's reply. The adventure of Shápúr with the daughter of Mihrak. The birth of Urmuzd, who is acknowledged by Ardshír as his grandson. Account of Ardshír's administration. He counsels Shápúr and dies. The poet ends the reign with praises of Mahmúd.

§ 1. The forty years and two months assigned by Firdausí to the reign of Ardshír (Artaxerxes I., A.D. 226-241) is much too long. Tabarí makes it, from the fall of Ardawán, fourteen years or, according to some of his authorities, ten months longer.*

No doubt Ardshír was a king, with his seat of government at Párs, from soon after the death of his father Pápak.*

Probably he served, and won his spurs, in Ardawán's war against the Romans which was ended by the peace of Nisibis in A.D. 217. Nine event­ful years followed and he became King of kings in A.D. 226. Firdausí, according to the text of C, makes him seventy-eight, according to the text of P sixty-eight, at the time of his death.*

There had been a city of Baghdád in Babylonian times, but the Arab city of that name was not founded till the days of the Khalífa Al Mansúr in A.D. 762. The city here meant is Bih-Ardshír, the Seleucia newly founded by Ardshír.*

We have two accounts of the assumption of the title “King of kings” by Ardshír. For the other see p. 273. From Firdausí's wording it might be held that the former was the popular, the latter the official, ascription of the title. For its import in connexion with Ardshír see p. 197. Cf. too p. 199.

§§ 2, 3. Firdausí's account agrees partly with the Kárnámak and partly with the Arabic versions, showing clearly that the former was not his direct authority. According to K two of Ardawán's sons had fled to Kábul and thence incited Ardawán's daughter, whose name is given as Zijának, to poison Ardshír, her husband. One day accordingly, on his return from the chase, she presents to him a cup of roast meal and milk with which she has mingled the poison. As he was about to drink, the sacred Fire, Frúbá, descended on the cup and it fell from his hand. A cat and dog ate the spilt food and died on the spot. Ardshír at once ordered the high priest (the chief múbid) to have Zijának put to death. Instead of so doing, however, he concealed her in his own house, where she gave birth to a son whom she called Shápúr, i.e. son of the king, and brought him up till he was seven years old. The story of the self-mutilation by the high priest is omitted.*

One day Ardshír went to the chase and followed a female onager, whereupon the male came towards Ardshír and exposed himself to death in her stead. Ardshír spared him and rode after the colt, whereat the female onager came up and offered herself to be slain in her young one's place. Ardshír, reflecting on his own conduct to his wife, whom he knew to have been with child at the time when he ordered her to execution, wept. The high priest seized the opportunity to tell Ardshír the real state of the case, and Shápúr is presented to him. Ardshír in great joy bounteously rewards the high priest and founds the city of Rás-Shápúr and a sacred Fire in commemoration of the occasion.*

According to Tabarí, when Ardshír had obtained the sovereignty he de­stroyed utterly, in accordance to an oath sworn by his grandsire, the elder Sásán, the royal race of the Arsacids*

with the exception of one girl, Ardawán's daughter, whom he found in the royal palace. She was very beautiful, and, as she gave herself out to be merely the handmaid of one of Ardawán's wives, he married her. Later on, thinking herself secure, as she was with child by him, she told him who she was. On this he ordered his minister, an aged man, to put her to death,*

and then follows the rest of the story as told in the Sháhnáma. All these accounts make Shápúr much too young. According to Tabarí he was present at the battle of Hurmuzdagán and slew with his own hand Ardawán's secretary.*

Tabarí thus appears to contradict himself, but the reader should bear in mind that it is the custom of Oriental historians to give several versions, derived from different sources, of the same event or person, not to digest such versions, as a Western writer would do, into a single narrative.

A similar account of the rewards bestowed by the grateful Ardshír on his faithful minister is given by Dínawarí and in some versions of the Persian translation of Tabarí, but there is no evidence that the statement that Ardshír had his minister's head engraved and stamped on the coinage is historically correct. It is true that another head besides Ardshír's appears on his earliest and some of his latest coins, but the heads are those of Pápak and and of Shápúr respectively.*

The Jund-i-Shápúr of F appears to be the equivalent of the Rás-Shápúr of K.*

§§ 4-6. This is both in K and in the Arabic versions. In F the wise Indian king of the days of Sikandar—Kaid, the Kait of K— reappears, takes the place held by the astrologers in Tabarí, and, in K, declares that only two races can hold sway in Írán—that of Ardshír and that of Mibrak.*

F more poetically puts it that the Sháh can only find peace by the union of his family with that of Mihrak. On this Ardshír, aware that one daughter of Mihrak had escaped the previous massacre, tries in vain to find her. It seems worth suggesting that, in the primitive form of the legend, Ardawán, Mihrak, and Máhdik were one and the same personality. Mihrak is Mithrak in K, a very Parthian name, and Mádik or Máhdik is the king of the Kurds. Máhdik merely means “the Mede” and thus symbolises the Parthian power which, according to Íránian tradition, had its headquarters in Media Magna. In this view Ardshír's expeditions against the Kurds and Mihrak would be mere variants of his advance into, and conquest of, Media after the decisive battle of Hurmuzdagán when doubtlessly he put to death all that he could find of his late rival's family. That he wittingly spared any of them, male or female, is most unlikely, and a legend given in Tabarí*

had to be invented to explain how it came about that he married Ardawán's daughter, the story of this marriage being a later device, as here in Shápúr's case, to connect the Sásánians with their predecessors. It is worth noting too that in the Arabic historian Hamza the daughter of Mihrak is called Kurdzád, i.e. “the child of the Kurds.”*

This explains the words of Kait's prophecy in K and, what is hard to understand otherwise, why such great importance should be attached to Mihrak and his family in the various versions of the legends unless we regard them as all originating from a single historical incident in Ardshír Pápakán's career. F's insight in varying the form of Kaid's prophecy brings out the historical truth that Írán could be restored to internal peace only by the voluntary union of the old and new political dispensations.

The scene at the well between Shápúr and the daughter of Mihrak is not found in the Arabic versions. In Tabarí the girl takes refuge with shepherds and provides Shápúr with water one day when he is hunting. He falls in love with her and takes her in marriage, after which she tells him of her parentage. The Arabic versions, both in this case and that of Ardshír, represent the marriage into the enemy's family as having been made through ignorance.*

The recognition scene on the polo-ground, which we have had already in connexion with Shápúr,*

here occurs, as in K, in its proper place. F adds the touch of Ardshír's unexpected return from the chase and consequent discovery. In Tabarí it is brought about by a sudden visit paid to his son's palace by Ardshír who thus encounters Urmuzd.*

At this point K, after giving a brief and exaggerated account of the reign of Urmuzd, comes to an end.

§§ 7, 8, 10. In addition to K there was once in existence a Pahlaví work known as the “Ahdnámak” or “Andarznámak” i.e. “Book of the Exhortations” sc. of Ardshír. In all probability its contents much resembled the subject-matter found in these sections.*

Tabarí states that Ardshír himself crowned his son Shápúr,*

and the incident seems to be recorded in a bas-relief of Ardshír's at Takht-i-Bústán and in some of his later coins.*

Mas'údí says that Ardshír became a religious recluse.*

The duration of the Sásánian dynasty was 425 years—A.D. 226-651. Cf. with Ardshír's prophecy the account of Mas'údí on p. 251, and for the length of his reign p. 254. Tabarí*

credits him with the foundation of eight cities.