Born in Sorrow

The Shahnameh — Ferdowsi's eleventh-century poem, and the longest single-author epic in Persian — spends more lines on Rostam than on any king it crowns. It opens with a birth that nearly kills his mother. Rudabeh cannot deliver; Zal burns a feather the Simurgh left him, the bird comes, and on its instruction a wine-dulled cut is made in her side and the child is lifted out. Ferdowsi has Rudabeh say that she is delivered, rastam, and takes the name from her word. He then grows at a speed the verse does not pause to explain.