Arash’s extraordinary shot survives in several different forms. The Avesta, al-Biruni, brief Shahnameh references and modern poetry reveal a changing legend rather than one fixed account of a historical frontier.

Snow-covered Mount Damavand rising above a broad mountain range, with lower brown foothills in an aerial panorama
Mount Damavand, aerial photograph by Wurzelgnohm, 24 March 2016. The mountain is associated with the shot in some later versions; the mountains named in the Avestan passage have not been securely identified. Wurzelgnohm, 2016 · CC0 1.0 · Wikimedia Commons.

The oldest passage is a comparison, not a complete story

Yasht 8.6 compares the movement of Tishtrya towards the sea Vourukasha with the swift arrow of Erekhsha, the Avestan form of Arash’s name. It names the mountains Khshaotha and Hvanvant in Darmesteter’s translation. The following verse describes help from Ahura Mazda, the waters, plants and Mithra. The passage praises extraordinary speed and divine assistance; it does not narrate a siege, a negotiated frontier or the archer’s death. Those elements must be traced in other texts instead of inserted into the hymn. Tafażżoli notes that the locations of the Avestan mountains remain uncertain. [1] [2]

Al-Biruni’s account of the shot

In his discussion of the festival Tiragan, al-Biruni recounts an agreement between Afrasiab and Manuchehr: territory would be returned according to the range of an arrow. In Sachau’s translation, Isfandarmadh directs the preparation of the bow and arrow. Arash, called Arish there, displays his unwounded body and declares that the shot will cost him his life. After shooting he falls apart, while a divinely commanded wind carries the arrow from a mountain of Ruyan to a distant tree. The account belongs to the history of a narrated tradition, not a surveyed account of an actual border. [3]

Why the festival and geography require care

Al-Biruni places the shooting on the thirteenth day of Tir and records another account in which news of the arrow’s arrival came the following day. He also gives a separate explanation of the festival involving scribes and agricultural workers. His chapter therefore preserves alternatives even within one work. Other accounts locate the shot at Damavand, Amol, Sari or elsewhere and give different eastern endpoints. A modern retelling can choose one setting, but should name its source. The photograph illustrates Damavand’s later association without identifying it as the hymn’s securely located mountain. [2] [3] [8]

Arash is mentioned in the Shahnameh

Ferdowsi does not tell the familiar bow-shot story as a full episode. That does not make Arash entirely absent. The opening of the Arsacid section refers to nobles descended from Arash; a later exchange between Bahram Chubin and Khosrow also invokes the archer and his relationship to Manuchehr. Gazerani discusses those references in her study of the legend’s transmission. Claims of descent inside an epic are evidence for literary and political genealogy, rather than independent proof of biological ancestry. The key distinction is between mentioning a hero and narrating his complete adventure. [4] [5]

Did every version make Arash die?

No. In her comparison of twelve medieval accounts, Saghi Gazerani identifies only three that include his death; two of those also preserve a survival alternative. Her table makes the contrast visible across authors, locations and forms of supernatural help. She argues that competing dynastic claims and political uses helped shape the versions and the story’s omission from some compilations. That is a scholarly explanation, not an established biography of an actual archer. It also cautions against calling the death version the universal or necessarily earliest form merely because it became familiar in modern retellings. [5]

Modern poetry and performance

Siavash Kasra’i’s Arash-e Kamangir appeared in 1959. Kamyar Abedi discusses its reception as a modern Persian epic: some critics praised its hope and heroic language, while others questioned its relationship to classical epic style. The disagreement shows active literary reinterpretation. Stanford’s Iranian Studies programme documents a 2013 staged reading of Bahram Beyzaie’s Arash with Mojdeh Shamsaie and Mohsen Namjoo. Its presentation emphasises human action rather than passive dependence on a saviour. These named works provide firmer evidence of the legend’s continuing life than unsupported claims about universal popularity or an exclusively Kurdish origin. Its Avestan and Persian-language sources belong to a wider regional history that Kurdish readers can study without assigning one modern ethnicity to every version. [6] [7]

Sources and further reading

  1. Yasht 8.6–7, Tishtar Yasht, James Darmesteter’s English translation, Sacred Books of the East; primary hymn text hosted by the Avesta archive.
  2. Aḥmad Tafażżoli, “Āraš i. In Older Literature”, and William L. Hanaway Jr., “Āraš ii. In Modern Literature”, Encyclopaedia Iranica II, pp. 266–267; comparison of textual forms and uncertain place identifications.
  3. Al-Biruni, The Chronology of Ancient Nations, translated by C. Edward Sachau (1879), pp. 205–206; primary account of Arash and alternative explanations of Tiragan.
  4. Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, opening of the Arsacid section, Persian text on Ganjoor; primary verse referring to descent from Arash. Site-generated summaries and reader comments are not used as historical evidence.
  5. Saghi Gazerani, “Why Was the Story of Arash-i Kamangir Excluded from the Shahnameh?”, Iran Nameh 29(2) (Summer 2014), pp. 42–63, especially pp. 59–63 and comparison table; primary-source analysis.
  6. Kamyar Abedi, “Kasra’i, Siavash”, Encyclopaedia Iranica; 1959 publication, reception and literary criticism.
  7. Stanford Iranian Studies, “Celebrating Bahram Beyzaie’s 10 Year Anniversary at Stanford” (5 October 2020), Arash (2013) section; institutional account of its staged reading and performers.
  8. Wurzelgnohm, aerial panorama of Mount Damavand, 24 March 2016, Wikimedia Commons; CC0 1.0.