The Derafsh-e Kaveyani links Kawa’s apron-banner in the Shahnameh with accounts of the Sasanian royal standard. Its literary origin, historical descriptions and Kurdish reinterpretations require different evidence.

Safavid manuscript painting of Kawa holding a pole with an orange apron-banner beside Fereydun binding Zahhak, surrounded by Persian verse
Kawa’s apron-banner in a mid-seventeenth-century Safavid painting of Zahhak being bound by Fereydun. Unknown artist; public domain. This is a later depiction of an epic scene, not a surviving Sasanian flag. [4] Image: unknown Safavid artist · Public domain.

The protest begins with a refused declaration

In the Shahnameh’s Zahhak episode, Kawa enters the court to protest the seizure of his son for the king’s serpents. Zahhak returns the boy and asks the smith to endorse a declaration praising his rule. Kawa refuses, tears up the document and leaves with his son. [1] The banner emerges from this public rejection of the court’s claim to justice. Treating the episode only as a battle story loses the importance of the smith’s refusal to certify oppression as good government.

An apron becomes a royal banner

Outside the palace, Kawa puts the leather used in his work on a spear and gathers supporters. He leads them to Fereydun, who decorates it with fine cloth, gold and jewels; red, yellow and violet hang from it in the Persian passage. Later kings add further ornaments. [1] This happens before Fereydun departs on the campaign described next. The poem supplies a story about how a worker’s object becomes a royal emblem, rather than an eyewitness inventory of an ancient flag.

Name and the limits of ancient evidence

Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh explains that the name can be understood through Kawa or the kay/kavi tradition of kingship. He notes no direct mention of this standard in the Avesta or Achaemenid and Parthian sources. Proposed identification in the damaged Alexander Mosaic is an interpretation; Xenophon instead describes an Achaemenid golden-eagle standard. [2] The banner’s association with Sasanian kingship should therefore not be expanded into a securely documented, identical flag used by every earlier Iranian dynasty.

Accounts of a captured Sasanian standard

Khaleghi-Motlagh reviews reports connecting the standard’s capture with Qadisiyya, around 637 CE. They describe jewels and valuable skin, but disagree about materials and value; its burning after removal of the jewels is reported in the later tradition. [2] These accounts preserve a powerful memory of conquest. They do not provide a single, independently verified specification for reconstructing every colour, proportion and emblem of the physical object.

Kurdish readings changed with their authors

Ercan Gümüş’s 2022 study compares the Shahnameh, Sharafnama and modern uses of the Kawa–Zahhak narrative. He discusses Kurdiyê Bidlisî’s proposal of 31 August as a national holiday, Esîrî’s 1928 Newroz poem in Zarî Kirmancîyê, and Goran’s reading of Kawa through labour and anti-imperialism. [3] These examples offer more precise history than saying that all Kurds have always interpreted one ancient flag identically. The story’s Kurdish importance lies partly in this active literary and political reuse, while the apron-banner also belongs to the wider Persian-language epic tradition.

Sources and further reading

  1. Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Zahhak, section 7: Kawa, the Kaviani banner and the bull-headed mace; primary Persian text, Ganjoor.
  2. Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh, Derafš-e Kāvīān, Encyclopaedia Iranica VII/3 (1994), pp.315–316: textual evidence and later historical accounts.
  3. Ercan Gümüş, Zalim Dahhak ve Demirci Kava Efsanesi’nden Hareketle Mitoloji ve Tarih İlişkisine Dair Bir Değerlendirme, Nûbihar Akademî 18 (2022), pp.47–80, especially 50–53 and 74–75.
  4. Unknown Safavid artist, Zahhak bound by Fereydun with Kawa holding the apron-banner, mid-seventeenth century; public-domain painting, Wikimedia Commons.