The Nursemaid of Rostam

Author: Abolqasem Ferdowsī

Time Period: 501 CE–1000 CE

Country or Culture: Middle East

Genre: Legend

PLOT SUMMARY

The ancient Persian hero Sam has an albino son called Zal. Frightened by the baby’s white hair, Sam abandons him in the mountains. Zal is rescued by the Simurgh (Simorgh), a large bird similar to a phoenix, who flies him back to her nest and raises him. When he grows up and is ready to leave, the Simurgh gives him three of her feathers, telling him that whenever he burns one of her feathers, she will come to his aid.

In Kabul, Zal falls in love with the king’s daughter, Rudabeh. Against considerable odds, their parents allow Zal and Rudabeh to marry. When Rudabeh is pregnant, her childbirth portends to be problematic. She feels that the baby she carries is as heavy as a bunch of stones or a lump of iron. Desperate, she tells Zal that although the baby is due, she cannot give birth to the burden within her. Later, she faints and causes panic in the palace.

In his agony over Rudabeh’s pregnancy and his fears that she will die in childbirth, Zal remembers the Simurgh’s promise. He burns part of one of her feathers. She appears to him immediately and, on seeing his tears, prophesies that the baby will be a great warrior. She then assumes the roles of midwife to the unborn child in Rudabeh’s womb, giving Zal practical instructions to save mother and child: he must get a sharp knife and a sorcerer familiar with magic spells, and then give Rudabeh wine to alleviate her fear. He should turn away while the sorcerer intones his spells and cuts open her belly to deliver the baby. After this, Zal must sew up her belly and rub a specially prepared herbal mixture on the wound. Most importantly, Zal must swipe the Simurgh’s feather over Rudabeh’s belly. This will heal her completely. After giving him these instructions, the Simurgh encourages Zal not to be afraid. She plucks one of her wing feather for Zal to use to heal Rudabeh, and flies away.

Awestruck, Zal does exactly what the Simurgh has told him to do. A sorcerer performs the cesarean section on Rudabeh just as prescribed by the Simurgh. His successful delivery reveals that the baby, a boy, is very big. All who see the baby are in awe of him.

One day after the birth, Rudabeh awakens. She talks to her mother, Sindokht, as the people rejoice at the baby’s birth and her recovery. Rudabeh exclaims that she escaped (rastam) the dangers of birth, and so the family names the boy Rostam.

Each day, the infant Rostam drinks all the milk provided by ten human wet nurses. As he grows up into a hero, the Simurgh will help Rostam twice more: once during his seven trials and again during his climactic battle with Prince Esfandyar, when she provides Rostam with the means to kill his opponent.

SIGNIFICANCE

The Persian poet and writer Abolqasem Ferdowsī (also known as Firdawsī or Abu al-Qasim Mansūr) was born in a village near Tus, Khurasan, a province in what is now Iran, in the mid-tenth century CE. In 1116 or 1117, a poet named Nezami-ye Aruzi visited Ferdowsī’s grave and gathered stories about Ferdowsī that were still being told in his village and that remain the only trustworthy source of biographical information about him. Based on Nezami’s account, Ferdowsī lived off income earned from the land he owned. Nezami does not specify the date of Ferdowsī’s death, but he is believed to have died between 1020 and 1026 CE.

In 977, Ferdowsī began to write what would become the national epic of Iran, the Shahnameh (Book of kings). When he finally finished the Shahnameh in 1010, it was nearly sixty thousand couplets long. Ferdowsī presented the epic to Mahmūd, sultan of Ghazni. Though Ferdowsī drew on older source material, including an earlier prose version of the Shahnameh, for his epic, he gave it its poetic shape and therefore has been considered the legend’s literary author by most scholars. The Shahnameh has been available in English translation since 1832.

The tales of the hero Rostam’s many achievements and exploits over the course of a five-hundred-year-long life have been among the most popular sections of Ferdowsī’s Shahnameh. Rostam’s miraculous birth, as portrayed in “The Nursemaid of Rostam,” represents a fitting beginning for a baby boy who will become an illustrious hero. Even while he was still in the womb, portents such as Rudabeh’s symptoms and the apparent weight of the baby are harbingers of his superhuman qualities. The Simurgh, when summoned via her magic feather, also foretells the coming of a hero. In Ferdowsī’s Persia, Rudabeh’s survival of a cesarean section would have been highly unlikely, if not miraculous, and further marks Rostam’s birth as exceptional, as does the Simurgh’s participation as a supernatural midwife. Indeed, Rudabeh names Rostam after her sense of escape from a certain doom. Once Rostam is born, he displays a superhuman appetite, requiring the milk of ten wet nurses in order to appease his hunger.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fee, Christopher. “The Persian Elephant-Bodied Hero.” Mythology in the Middle Ages. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2011. 194–95. Print.

Ferdowsī, Abolqasem. “The Birth of Rostam.” Rostam: Tales of Love and War from the Shahnameh. Trans. Dick Davis. New York: Penguin, 2007. 53–60. Print.

Omidsalar, Mahmoud. Poetics and Politics of Iran’s National Epic, the Shahnameh. New York: Palgrave, 2011. Print.

Rosenberg, Donna. “Rostam Has a Remarkable Birth and Youth.” Folklore, Myths and Legends: A World Perspective. New York: McGraw Hill, 1997. 110. Print.

Sewell, Jane Eliot. Cesarean Section—A Brief History. US National Lib. of Medicine, 10 July 2012. Web. 18 July 2013.

Shahbāzī, Ά. Shāpūr. Ferdowsī: A Critical Biography. Cambridge: Harvard U, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1991. Print.