The Version Told in English

This is the one episode of the Shahnameh that became famous in English, and it became famous in an altered form. A nineteenth-century poet who read no Persian worked from a synopsis in a history book and a French review, and wrote a version in which the mother reports a daughter rather than a son, the token is a mark pricked into the skin, the fight lasts a single day, and there is no medicine at all. Rostam is given a long speech explaining that he hides his name to protect his reputation. And Sohrab never throws him, never spares him. The mercy that the Persian makes the hinge of the whole tragedy is simply not in it.