The Divs: Demons of Iranic Myth
- Dala Sarkis
- 8 hours ago
- 10 min read
Introduction
The Divs are the demons of the Iranic world, the monstrous, shadowy beings who embody chaos, deception and destruction, and who serve the great spirit of evil, Ahriman, in his endless war against the light. Mountain-huge and terrible, masters of sorcery and shapeshifting, they are the dark adversaries against whom the heroes of legend must prove themselves.
Their story holds one of the most remarkable turns in the history of religion: the Divs were once gods. In the most ancient Indo-Iranian past their name, daeva, meant a shining heavenly being, and it survives in India to this day as a word for god. But in the Iranian world a great reform cast them down, and the old gods became demons. From that inversion they passed into the national epic as the fearsome monsters that the champion Rostam battles in his famous Seven Labours.
And they never truly died. The Avestan daeva lives on across the Iranic languages, and in Kurdish it is the dew, the giant or ogre of countless folktales, the man-eating monster that the clever hero must outwit. To follow the Divs is to trace a single dark thread from the dawn of Iranic religion, through the grandeur of the epic, down to the stories still told in Kurdish villages.
Contents
What Are the Divs?
The Divs (in Persian div, in Avestan daeva) are the demons of Iranic mythology: supernatural beings of immense strength and malice who serve the spirit of evil against the order of the good creation. Originally the daevas were gods of the ancient Indo-Iranian religion, but the Zoroastrian reform demonized them, and they became the agents of the Lie and of chaos. In the epic tradition of the Shahnameh they appear as monstrous, sorcerous creatures, the most famous being the White Div of Mazandaran, slain by the hero Rostam.
Key Takeaways
The Divs are the demons of Iranic myth, the host of the evil spirit Ahriman.
Their name, the Avestan daeva, once meant a god, before Zoroaster's reform.
In the same root, the word for god survives in India as deva.
In the Shahnameh they are monstrous sorcerers battled by the heroes.
The White Div of Mazandaran is the most famous, slain by Rostam.
The Avestan daeva survives in Kurdish as dew, the giant of folktales.
Quick Facts
Name: Div (Persian); daeva (Avestan); dew across Iranian languages, including Kurdish
Type: Demons of Iranic myth, the host of Ahriman
Origin: The daevas, once worshipped as gods, demonized in Zoroaster's reform
Role: Agents of the Lie, of chaos, sorcery and destruction
Famous div: Div-e Sepid, the White Div of Mazandaran
Slain by: Rostam, in the climax of his Seven Labours
Trickster div: Akvan Div, who hurled Rostam into the sea
Tamed by: Tahmuras Divband, the king who bound the demons
Kurdish form: Dew, the giant or ogre of Kurdish folktales
Attestation: The Avesta and the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi
From Gods to Demons
The strangest fact about the Divs is that they began as gods. Their name comes from an ancient word, daeva, descended from a root meaning shining or heavenly, the same root that in India became deva, the ordinary word for a god, still used today. In the shared religion of the early Indo-Iranian peoples, the daevas were divine beings to be worshipped. But the reform associated with the prophet Zoroaster turned this upside down. He proclaimed one supreme God, and condemned the old daevas as false gods and demons, enemies of truth and order.
This was a profound theological revolution, and it produced a remarkable mirror-image between the two great branches of the family: in India the daevas (devas) remained the good gods, while in Iran they became the wicked demons set against Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, and his holy order of asha. A royal inscription of the Persian empire, more than two thousand years old, proudly records the destruction of a place of daeva-worship. The old gods had become the enemy, and the word div has meant demon ever since.
Servants of Ahriman
In the Zoroastrian vision of the cosmos, the Divs are the creatures and soldiers of Ahriman, the hostile spirit, in his assault upon the good creation of the Wise Lord. They are the agents of the druj, the Lie, the force of disorder, falsehood, sickness and death that works to spoil and corrupt the world. Where the holy powers bring truth, health and life, the Divs bring deceit, decay and ruin.
The greatest of them stand as dark mirrors of the good. Against the seven Amesha Spentas, the Bounteous Immortals who surround Ahura Mazda, the tradition sets a band of arch-demons, each the opponent of a virtue. Chief among them is Akoman, whose name means the Evil Mind, set against Vohu Manah, the Good Mind. In this scheme the Divs are not merely monsters but the very embodiments of the vices, the spiritual enemies that each soul must also fight within itself.
The Divs of the Shahnameh
When the abstract demons of religion entered the world of epic poetry, above all the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, they took on flesh and terror. There the Divs are vivid monsters: some as huge as mountains, some roughly human in shape but hideous, all possessed of supernatural strength and skilled in black sorcery, able to raise storms, shift their shapes, and vanish from sight. They are hard to kill by force alone, and sometimes, when subdued, they can be compelled to serve.
That last idea gives rise to one of the oldest tales. In the age of the first kings it is told that Tahmuras, an early ruler, conquered the Divs and rode upon the back of the chief of demons, earning the title Divband, the binder of demons. The captured Divs, to save their lives, taught him a precious secret: the art of writing, in many scripts. Even in their defeat, the demons are bound up with knowledge and danger, powers older than humankind that must be mastered rather than merely destroyed.
The White Div of Mazandaran
The most famous of all the Divs is Div-e Sepid, the White Div, the giant chieftain of the demons of Mazandaran, the wild and misty land in the north. He is a being of monstrous size and power, a master of sorcery and dark magic. When the king Kay Kavus rashly leads an army to conquer Mazandaran, the White Div unleashes his power against them, conjuring a terrible darkness and a storm of hail, boulders and uprooted trees that shatters the host.
In the ruin of the battle the White Div takes the king and his greatest warriors captive, strikes them blind, and casts them into a deep dungeon. The proud expedition has become a disaster, and the king of Iran lies helpless in the dark, in the power of the lord of demons. There is only one champion who can undo it, and the call goes out for the mightiest hero of the age.
Rostam and the Seven Labours
The hero is Rostam. His father Zal, judging himself too old, sends the young Rostam to the rescue, and rather than take the long safe road, Rostam chooses the short and perilous one, beset with supernatural dangers. These trials are the celebrated Haft Khan, the Seven Labours: he and his faithful horse Rakhsh overcome a lion, a waterless desert, a dragon, and a treacherous sorceress, defeat the demon-commander Arzhang, and capture a div named Olad who guides him to the enemy's lair.
At the last comes the greatest test. Rostam descends into the cavern of the White Div and fights the giant in a desperate, bloody struggle, and at length he slays him. From the demon's body he takes the heart and blood, which, by the magic of the tale, restore the sight of the blinded king and his warriors. In the most famous image of all, Rostam cuts off the White Div's head and wears it as a helmet, the trophy of the hero who broke the power of the demons and freed his sovereign.
Akvan the Trickster
Not every Div fights with brute force. In the reign of the just king Kay Khosrow, a strange and beautiful wild ass with a black stripe along its back begins savaging the royal herds, and the king, sensing sorcery, sends Rostam to deal with it. The creature is the demon Akvan, a shapeshifter who can become a storm or vanish into air. For three days Rostam chases him in vain, for whenever he is cornered Akvan disappears.
At last the weary hero falls asleep, and Akvan, cutting away the very earth beneath him, lifts him sleeping into the sky. He wakes Rostam and mockingly offers him a choice: to be flung onto the mountains or into the sea. Rostam, knowing that the demon's mind is perverse and will do the opposite of whatever is asked, begs to be cast upon the mountains. So Akvan throws him into the sea, exactly as Rostam intended; the hero swims to shore, recovers his horse, and returns to lasso and behead the demon. The tale is a small masterpiece, for the demon's name itself echoes Akoman, the Evil Mind, and the story shows clear-eyed reason triumphing over twisted malice.
Symbolism
The Divs give a face to everything the Iranic imagination feared and rejected. They are the Lie against the truth, chaos against order, sickness against health, the dark wild against the cultivated land, often dwelling in the storm-wracked mountains and the misty north beyond the borders of the civilised world. To fight a Div is to fight disorder itself, and every hero who slays one re-enacts in miniature the great cosmic struggle of good against evil.
Their stories also carry a subtler wisdom. The demons are rarely beaten by strength alone: Tahmuras must master them, and Rostam defeats Akvan not with his arm but with his wits. The message is that evil is cunning and must be met with intelligence as well as courage, and that the worst demons, those that bear the names of the vices, are the ones each person must also overcome within. In the Divs, the outer monster and the inner fault are one.
The Dew in Kurdish Folklore
The Divs are part of the shared Iranic heritage of which the Kurds are heirs, and nowhere is this clearer than in language. The ancient Avestan daeva lives on directly in Kurdish as the dew, meaning a giant, ogre or monster, just as it survives as div in Persian and as dew in other Iranian tongues, and was borrowed even into Armenian and Georgian. The word the prophet used for the old demons is still spoken in Kurdistan today.
And not only the word but the creature. In Kurdish folktales the dew is the towering, often man-eating giant who lurks in caves and mountains, hoards treasure or captives, and is overcome not by force but by the cleverness of the hero, exactly the pattern of Rostam outwitting Akvan. As always with this heritage, the Divs are not uniquely Kurdish; they are the common inheritance of the whole Iranic family. But in the dew of Kurdish storytelling, the most ancient demons of the Iranic world live on in a form the Kurds can rightly call their own.
Debates and Misconceptions
Were the Divs always evil? No, and this is the heart of their story. The daevas were once gods, divine beings of the old Indo-Iranian religion, and it was the Zoroastrian reform that recast them as demons. The same word that means demon in Iran still means god in India. The Divs are not an eternal category of monster but the casualties of a great religious revolution.
Are the Divs the same as jinn? In the Islamic centuries the two were often blurred together, and divs took on some of the colour of the jinn of Arabian belief. But they are distinct in origin: the div is the demonized daeva of the Iranic world, while the jinn belong to a separate Arabian tradition. They came to share folklore, but they are not the same beings.
Are the Divs Persian or Kurdish? Like the rest of this heritage, they belong to all the Iranic peoples in common. Their fullest literary form is in the Persian Shahnameh and the Zoroastrian scriptures, yet the demon itself, the dew, is alive in Kurdish folklore and language as much as in any other. They are best understood as a shared treasure, and a shared terror, of a whole family of peoples.
Related Topics
Ahriman: the spirit of evil whose host the Divs are
Rostam: the great hero and slayer of the White Div
Kay Khosrow: the just king in whose reign Akvan was destroyed
Zahhak: the serpent-tyrant, another creature of evil in the epic
The Shahnameh: the Book of Kings, where the Divs loom large
Ahura Mazda: the Wise Lord, against whose order the Divs strive
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the Divs?
The Divs are the demons of Iranic mythology, supernatural beings of great strength and malice who serve the evil spirit Ahriman against the good creation. They appear as monstrous sorcerers in the Shahnameh and as the giants of later folklore.
Were the Divs originally demons?
No. Their name, the Avestan daeva, originally meant a god, and the daevas were worshipped in the ancient Indo-Iranian religion. Zoroaster's reform demonized them, so that the same word that means demon in Iran still means god, as deva, in India.
Who is the White Div?
Div-e Sepid, the White Div, is the giant chieftain of the demons of Mazandaran in the Shahnameh. A master of sorcery, he blinds and imprisons King Kay Kavus and his army, until the hero Rostam slays him at the climax of the Seven Labours.
How did Rostam defeat Akvan Div?
Akvan, a shapeshifting demon, lifted the sleeping Rostam into the air and asked whether to throw him onto the mountains or into the sea. Knowing the demon would do the opposite of what was asked, Rostam begged for the mountains, was thrown into the sea, survived, and returned to behead Akvan.
What is the Kurdish word for a Div?
In Kurdish the word is dew, meaning a giant, ogre or monster, descended directly from the same ancient Avestan daeva. The dew is a common figure in Kurdish folktales, the man-eating giant whom the clever hero must outwit.
Are Divs and jinn the same thing?
They are not, though they were often confused in the Islamic period. The div is the demonized daeva of the Iranic tradition, while the jinn belong to a separate Arabian tradition. Over time they shared much folklore, but they are distinct in origin.
References and Further Reading
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