Bahman: The Avenger King of Iran
- Dala Sarkis
- Jun 2
- 11 min read
Introduction
Bahman is the king in whom one of the great cycles of vengeance in the Shahnameh comes to its close. The son of the tragic hero Esfandiyar and the grandson of King Goshtasp, Bahman succeeded to the throne of Iran and turned the power of the crown against the house of Rostam, the very house that had slain his father, in a long-delayed reckoning that brought ruin upon the line of the greatest of heroes.
His is a story heavy with the themes of legacy and revenge. Raised as a boy in the care of Rostam himself, the very hero who had killed his father, Bahman grew up amid a fragile reconciliation between rival houses, only to become, as king, the instrument of vengeance upon that house. In him the sorrow loosed by the killing of Esfandiyar ran on into the next generation, and the feud between the royal line and the house of the heroes reached its bitter end.
Belonging to the shared epic heritage of the Iranian peoples, a tradition the Kurds hold in common with the Persians and others of the Iranic world, Bahman is a significant king of the Shahnameh, standing at the close of the great heroic age and the threshold of the epic's final legendary dynasty. To know him is to follow the long arc of vengeance to its end, to see the house of Rostam brought low, and to glimpse the passing of the age of the great heroes into the age of the last legendary kings. His reign is a turning point in the great chronicle.
Contents
Who Was Bahman?
Bahman, known also as Kay Bahman and in the older tradition as Vohuman, is a legendary king of Iran in the Shahnameh, the son of the hero Esfandiyar and the grandson of King Goshtasp. He is best known for avenging his father's death by turning against the house of Rostam, invading their lands, slaying Rostam's son Faramarz, and imprisoning the aged Zal. He reigned long as king of Iran and was the father of the line that would produce the last kings of the legendary age, standing at the close of the great age of heroes.
Son of Esfandiyar
Bahman was the son of Esfandiyar, the invulnerable prince and champion of the faith, and the grandson of King Goshtasp, the royal patron of the prophet. He belonged thus to the royal Kayanian house at the height of its religious glory, heir to the line that had embraced the faith of Zoroaster. His grandmother was the queen Katayun, and he was the grandson, on his father's side, of the house that had established the new religion in Iran.
Bahman's place in the royal line carried with it a heavy inheritance, for his father Esfandiyar had met a tragic and famous death in single combat with the great hero Rostam, a death brought about by the scheming of Esfandiyar's own father Goshtasp, who had sent his son on the fatal mission to preserve his throne. As Esfandiyar's son and heir, Bahman inherited not only the claim to the crown but the memory of his father's killing, and it would fall to him, in time, to take vengeance for that death. The bond and the enmity between the royal house and the house of Rostam, sealed in the blood of Esfandiyar, would define the story of Bahman.
Key Takeaways
Bahman was a king of the Shahnameh, son of Esfandiyar and grandson of Goshtasp.
As a boy he was raised in the care of Rostam, his father's slayer.
On becoming king, he avenged his father against the house of Rostam.
He slew Rostam's son Faramarz and imprisoned the aged Zal.
He reigned long, in the tradition for some 112 years.
He was the father of Homay and the ancestor of the last legendary kings.
Quick Facts
Name: Bahman (Kay Bahman; older Vohuman)
Source: The Shahnameh and the Pahlavi tradition
Father: Esfandiyar, the invulnerable hero
Grandfather: Goshtasp, patron of Zoroaster
Raised by: Rostam, in the tradition
Famous for: Avenging his father against the house of Rostam
Slew: Faramarz, the son of Rostam
Imprisoned: Zal, later freed at Peshotan's plea
Reign: Long; in tradition some 112 years
Children: Homay and Darab, ancestors of the last kings
Raised in the House of Rostam
One of the most poignant elements of Bahman's story is its beginning. When his father Esfandiyar lay dying, slain by Rostam in their fated duel, he did not curse the hero who had felled him, but in a remarkable act of trust entrusted his young son Bahman to Rostam's care, that the great hero might raise and educate the boy. So it was that Bahman passed his childhood in the house of Rostam, in the land of Sistan, brought up by the very hero who had killed his father.
In the tradition, Rostam treated the young prince as his own, raising him in the manner of the champions and shielding him from the sorrow that lay between their houses. This fostering created a fragile reconciliation between the royal line and the house of the heroes, the slayer become the foster-father of the slain man's son. Yet the seeds of future vengeance lay buried beneath this peace, for Bahman was still the son of a father killed by the house that now raised him, and the memory of that killing would not sleep forever. The irony of the avenger raised in the house of his enemy is one of the deep and bitter strokes of the epic, and it gives the story of Bahman much of its tragic resonance.
The Avenging of Esfandiyar
The central deed of Bahman's reign was the avenging of his father. After he had come to the throne of Iran, Bahman turned at last against the house of Rostam to take vengeance for the death of Esfandiyar. By this time, in the tradition of the Shahnameh, Rostam himself was already dead, treacherously slain through the scheming of his own jealous half-brother, so that the great hero was beyond Bahman's reach. Frustrated of vengeance upon Rostam himself, Bahman turned his wrath upon Rostam's kin and his lands.
Leading a great army into Sistan, Bahman devastated the region, the homeland of the house of the heroes. He slew Rostam's valiant son Faramarz, and he took captive the aged Zal, Rostam's father, the ancient patriarch of the line, laying waste to the feudal lands of the house. The aged Zal he later released, in the tradition at the plea of his own uncle Peshotan, the wise and pious brother of Esfandiyar. Through this campaign, Bahman brought low the house of Rostam, the greatest of all the heroic families of Iran, in vengeance for his father's death, and the long feud between the royal line and the house of the heroes reached its grievous end.
King of Iran
Beyond the vengeance that defines his story, Bahman reigned long as king of Iran. In the tradition his reign was of great length, often given as some hundred and twelve years, and he is remembered as a powerful monarch who upheld the faith of the realm. As a king of the line of Goshtasp, he maintained the religion of Zoroaster that his house had established, and in some traditions he is portrayed as a pious and just ruler whose reign was a time of order, founding cities and governing the realm with strength.
Bahman's long reign marks an important moment in the structure of the epic, for it comes at the close of the great age of heroes and the beginning of the epic's final phase. With the house of Rostam brought low and the supreme champions of the past now gone, the world of the Shahnameh moves from the age of the towering heroes toward the age of the last legendary kings, whose reigns shade gradually into the borders of recorded history. Bahman, the avenger of his father and the long-reigning king, stands at this threshold, a powerful monarch whose reign closes one great age of the epic and opens the way to its last. In him the heroic age gives way to the age of the final kings.
Father of the Last Kings
Bahman was the father of the line that would carry the royal story of the Shahnameh toward its close. His children, in the tradition, included his daughter Homay, a famous queen who in some accounts ruled after him, and through his line came Darab and the kings who followed, the last monarchs of the legendary age before the epic passes into the times of recorded history. Bahman thus stands as a kind of bridge between the great heroic past and the final stretch of the epic's royal chronicle.
In this role as the ancestor of the last legendary kings, Bahman holds a structural importance beyond his own deeds. The age of the supreme heroes, of Rostam and his house, of the great wars with Turan, comes to its end in his reign; what follows is the age of the last kings, whose stories carry the epic toward its historical horizon. Bahman, the son of the tragic Esfandiyar and the avenger of his father, is the king in whom this great transition is embodied, the last great figure of the heroic cycle and the forefather of the kings who close the legendary age. His reign is a hinge of the epic, turning from the world of the heroes to the world of the final kings, and his line carries the story onward to its end.
Symbolism and Meaning
Bahman embodies above all the theme of vengeance and the long consequences of bloodshed, which run so deep through the Shahnameh. The killing of his father Esfandiyar by Rostam set loose a sorrow that did not end with the deaths of the two heroes but ran on into the next generation, culminating in Bahman's destruction of the house of Rostam. In him the epic shows how the shedding of blood begets further blood, and how the feuds of one generation are visited upon the next, the wheel of vengeance turning on and on.
His story carries also the bitter irony of the avenger raised by his enemy, the boy brought up in the house of his father's slayer who grows to bring that house to ruin. This gives Bahman a morally complex character: he is at once the dutiful son avenging his father and the destroyer of the noblest of heroic houses, the king who repays the fostering of his childhood with vengeance in his maturity. The traditions that show him relenting, or that judge his end harshly, reflect an unease with the justice of his vengeance, a sense that in destroying the house of Rostam he did a deed both filial and terrible. In Bahman, the epic offers a searching meditation on vengeance, legacy, and the long shadow of a great killing, and on the passing of the heroic age into the age of the last kings. His is a story of duty and ruin intertwined.
Bahman and the Kurds
Bahman belongs to the shared epic heritage of the Iranian peoples, the tradition of the Shahnameh that the Kurds hold in common with the Persians and other Iranic peoples. As an Iranic people deeply rooted in this cultural world, the Kurds are heirs to its great line of kings and to the long cycles of heroism and vengeance, including the reckoning between the royal house and the house of Rostam in which Bahman played the final part.
It is honest to say that Bahman, like the other kings of the Shahnameh, is part of this wider Iranic tradition rather than a specifically Kurdish figure; he is a king of the shared legendary past of the Iranian peoples as a whole. Yet the themes embodied in his story, the long consequences of bloodshed, the duty and the terror of vengeance, and the passing of one great age into another, are universal, and they have resonated across the whole Iranian cultural world, including among the Kurds who have long treasured the great epic. In the figure of Bahman, the shared heritage offers a meditation on vengeance and the turning of the ages, a portrait that belongs to all the peoples who have cherished the Book of Kings.
Debates and Misconceptions
Whom exactly did Bahman kill in his vengeance? The accounts differ. In the Shahnameh, because Rostam had already died by his half-brother's treachery before Bahman's campaign, Bahman slays only Rostam's son Faramarz and imprisons the aged Zal, whom he later frees. But some later historians say that Bahman slew Rostam himself, along with Faramarz, Zal, and Rostam's brother Zavara, while other accounts name only some of these. These divergences are natural in a tradition told and retold over centuries; the version of the Shahnameh, in which Rostam is already dead and Bahman's vengeance falls upon Faramarz and Zal, is the most widely known.
Was Bahman a hero or a villain? He is a morally ambiguous figure. As the son avenging his father Esfandiyar, his vengeance has a certain filial justice; yet in destroying the noble house of Rostam, the greatest of heroic families, and in turning against the house that had raised him, he commits a deed many feel to be excessive and ungrateful. Some traditions show him relenting and rebuilding what he had destroyed, or judge his end harshly, reflecting an unease with his vengeance. He is best understood not simply as hero or villain but as a complex figure caught in the long cycle of vengeance, both dutiful and terrible.
Is the story of Bahman history? Bahman belongs to the legendary tradition of the Shahnameh, standing near the close of its legendary age, where the line of kings begins to shade toward the borders of recorded history. He himself, however, and the deeds attributed to him belong to legend rather than documented history, even as later tradition sometimes sought to connect the last legendary kings with figures of the historical past. His story is best appreciated as legend, rich in meaning concerning vengeance and the turning of the ages, rather than as a record of real events.
Related Topics
Esfandiyar: the father of Bahman, slain by Rostam
Goshtasp: the grandfather of Bahman, patron of the prophet
Rostam: the hero who slew Esfandiyar and raised Bahman
Faramarz: the son of Rostam, slain by Bahman in vengeance
Zal: the aged patriarch of Rostam's house, imprisoned by Bahman
Katayun: the queen, grandmother of Bahman
Zoroaster: the prophet of the faith upheld by Bahman's house
The Shahnameh: the epic Book of Kings in which Bahman appears
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Bahman in the Shahnameh?
Bahman, also called Kay Bahman, was a legendary king of Iran in the Shahnameh, the son of the hero Esfandiyar and the grandson of King Goshtasp. He is best known for avenging his father's death by turning against the house of Rostam, invading their lands, slaying Rostam's son Faramarz, and imprisoning the aged Zal. He reigned long as king and was the father of the line that produced the last kings of the legendary age.
Why did Bahman attack the house of Rostam?
Bahman attacked the house of Rostam to avenge his father Esfandiyar, who had been slain by Rostam in their famous duel. By the time Bahman became king and launched his campaign, Rostam himself had already died through his half-brother's treachery, so Bahman's vengeance fell upon Rostam's kin: he slew Rostam's son Faramarz, imprisoned the aged Zal, and laid waste to the family's lands in Sistan, bringing the great heroic house to ruin.
Was Bahman really raised by Rostam?
Yes, in the tradition. When Esfandiyar lay dying, slain by Rostam, he entrusted his young son Bahman to Rostam's care, and the great hero raised the boy as his own in Sistan, in the manner of the champions. This created a fragile reconciliation between the rival houses, which makes it all the more poignant and bitter that Bahman, as king, later turned against and destroyed the very house that had raised him, in vengeance for his father's death.
How long did Bahman reign?
In the tradition, Bahman's reign was of great length. Most of the sources, including the Bundahishn and many Arabic and Persian histories, give the length of his reign as some hundred and twelve years, though some say a hundred and twenty and others eighty. Such great reign-lengths are characteristic of the legendary kings of the Shahnameh, and Bahman is remembered as a long-reigning and powerful monarch who upheld the faith of his house.
Who were Bahman's children?
In the tradition, Bahman's children included his daughter Homay, a famous queen who in some accounts ruled after him, and his son Darab, through whom the royal line continued. Some sources credit him with further children. Through his line came the last kings of the legendary age, so that Bahman stands as an ancestor of the final monarchs of the Shahnameh's legendary history, a bridge between the heroic past and the epic's closing reigns.
Is the story of Bahman history?
Bahman belongs to the legendary tradition of the Shahnameh, standing near the close of its legendary age, where the line of kings begins to shade toward the borders of recorded history. He and the deeds attributed to him belong to legend rather than documented history, even as later tradition sometimes sought to connect the last legendary kings with figures of the historical past. His story is best appreciated as legend, rich in meaning concerning vengeance and the turning of the ages.
References and Further Reading
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