Kahram: The Commander Who Sacked Balkh
- Sherko Sabir
- Jun 3
- 13 min read
Introduction
Kahram is a Turanian warrior of the Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings: a son of the enemy king Arjasp and the commander who led the great army of the second invasion against Iran, capturing the holy city of Balkh and killing the aged king Lohrasp in his retirement of worship.
Kahram's deeds belong to the dark second phase of the holy war over the new faith. When the Iranian king Goshtasp had imprisoned his own son, the great prince Esfandiyar, and was away from his capital, Arjasp seized the moment and sent his son Kahram with a great army against the undefended city of Balkh. Kahram took the holy city, killed the aged Lohrasp and many priests of the faith, and worked great destruction, until he was at last slain, with his father and brother, by the invulnerable Esfandiyar.
Like all the figures of the Book of Kings, Kahram belongs to the shared epic heritage of the Iranian peoples, a tradition the Kurds hold in common with the Persians, the Lurs, and others of the Iranic world. To know Kahram is to encounter the commander of the sack of Balkh, the agent of one of the darkest deeds of the holy war, the Turanian prince whose destruction of the holy city marks the deepest peril of Iran before the turning of the tide.
Contents
Who Is Kahram?
Kahram, also spelled Kohram or Gohram, is a Turanian warrior and commander of the Shahnameh, a son of the enemy king Arjasp and a leading figure of the Turanian side in the great holy war over the new faith. He is remembered above all as the commander who led the great army of the second invasion against Iran, at a time when the Iranian king Goshtasp had imprisoned his own son Esfandiyar and was absent from his capital. Kahram captured the holy city of Balkh, killed the aged former king Lohrasp in his retirement of worship, slew many priests, and worked great destruction upon the city and the faith. He was at last slain, together with his father Arjasp and his brother, by the invulnerable prince Esfandiyar, when the prince was released from prison to save the realm. He is one of the notable enemy commanders of this part of the epic, the agent of the sack of Balkh.
Son of Arjasp
Kahram was a son of Arjasp, the powerful king of Turan and the great enemy of the Iranian king Goshtasp and of the new faith. As a son of the enemy king, Kahram was a prince of the Turanian royal house and a leading commander of the Turanian forces in the war against Iran.
In the tradition, Arjasp had several sons who served as commanders in his wars against Iran, and Kahram is the most prominent of these, the son entrusted with the command of the great army of the second invasion. His brother Andariman is also named among the sons of Arjasp who fought in the war and met their deaths at the hands of Esfandiyar. As a son of Arjasp and a commander of his forces, Kahram belonged to the leadership of the Turanian cause against the faith, a prince of the enemy royal house who carried out his father's war against Iran. His standing as the son of the enemy king and the commander of the great invading army marks him as a figure of importance on the Turanian side, the leading agent of his father's renewed assault upon Iran. It is as the son of Arjasp, the Turanian prince and commander entrusted with the great invasion, that Kahram enters the epic, the leading enemy figure of the second phase of the war whose deeds, above all the sack of Balkh, would bring him a dark prominence in the tale before his fall at the hands of the invulnerable Esfandiyar.
Key Takeaways
Kahram is a son of the Turanian king Arjasp in the Shahnameh.
He commanded the great army of the second invasion of Iran.
He attacked while Goshtasp was away and Esfandiyar imprisoned.
He captured the holy city of Balkh and worked great destruction.
He killed the aged former king Lohrasp in his retirement of worship.
He was slain, with his father and brother, by the prince Esfandiyar.
Quick Facts
Name: Kahram (also Kohram, Gohram)
Role: Turanian commander; son of Arjasp
Father: Arjasp, the Turanian king
Brother: Andariman, also a Turanian commander
Famous deed: Leading the army that sacked Balkh
Victim: The aged former king Lohrasp
Occasion: The second invasion, during Esfandiyar's imprisonment
Slain by: Esfandiyar, the invulnerable prince
Setting: The holy war over the faith
Heritage: Shared Iranic epic tradition
The Second Invasion
The great deeds of Kahram belong to the second invasion of Iran by the Turanians, a renewed assault that came at a moment of great vulnerability for the realm. After the first war had been turned back by the valour of Esfandiyar, a bitter estrangement arose between the prince and his father Goshtasp, who, fearing or resenting his heroic son, had him imprisoned.
With Esfandiyar, the great champion of the faith, languishing in prison, and the king Goshtasp away from his capital in a distant land, the realm was left undefended at its heart. The enemy king Arjasp, learning of these events, of the imprisonment of the formidable prince and the absence of the king, saw his opportunity and resolved upon a renewed assault. He despatched his son Kahram with a great army towards the capital of Iran, to carry out his purpose of revenge and conquest while the realm lay vulnerable. The second invasion, led by Kahram, thus came at the moment of Iran's greatest weakness, when its mightiest defender was in chains and its king was far away. This circumstance, the imprisonment of Esfandiyar and the absence of Goshtasp, is essential to the tale, for it explains how the enemy was able to strike so deep and to take the holy city of Balkh. The second invasion, led by the son of the enemy king, is the dark turn of the war, the renewed assault that exploited the realm's vulnerability and brought the enemy to the very heart of Iran. It is as the commander of this second invasion that Kahram works his most notable and terrible deeds.
The Sack of Balkh
The central deed of Kahram, and the act for which he is chiefly remembered, is the sack of the holy city of Balkh, a centre of the new faith and the seat of the aged former king Lohrasp. Leading the great army of the second invasion, Kahram fell upon the undefended city and took it.
Balkh was a holy city, a centre of the faith of Zoroaster, and at the time of Kahram's assault it was left without an adequate defender, its great champion Esfandiyar imprisoned and its king away. The people of the city, in great apprehension and without a leader, were unable to withstand the great army of the enemy. Kahram took the city and worked great destruction upon it: in the tradition, the invaders killed many of the priests of the faith, destroyed and burned the fire-temple, and even burned the holy book, the Avesta, the sacred scripture of the religion. The sack of Balkh by Kahram was thus not merely a military conquest but an assault upon the faith itself, the destruction of a holy city and its sacred things by the enemy of the religion. This deed marks the darkest hour of the holy war, the deepest penetration of the enemy and the gravest blow to Iran and its faith. The sack of Balkh is the central and most terrible deed of Kahram, the act that defines him as the agent of the enemy's assault upon the holy city and the faith, and that sets the stage for the great Iranian counterstroke, the release of Esfandiyar and the turning of the tide. It is for the sack of Balkh, above all, that Kahram holds his dark place in the epic.
The Killing of Lohrasp
Among the deeds of Kahram in the sack of Balkh, the most grievous was the killing of the aged former king Lohrasp, the father of Goshtasp, who had retired from the throne to a life of worship and devotion.
Lohrasp, the old king, had given up his throne to his son Goshtasp and withdrawn into religious retirement at Balkh, devoting himself to the worship of God. When the enemy fell upon the city, the people in their distress begged the old king to lead them, but he replied that he had abandoned all earthly concerns and given himself to God, and could not take up arms again. Yet when the city was assailed, the aged Lohrasp was drawn into the fighting, and there, in the sack of Balkh, he was killed by the forces of the invaders. The killing of the aged Lohrasp, a former king who had become a man of devotion and worship, is among the most grievous and lamented deeds of the war, the slaying of an old and holy man in the destruction of the holy city. As the commander of the invasion that took Balkh, Kahram bears the responsibility for this terrible deed, the killing of the aged king in his retirement of worship. The death of Lohrasp deepened the tragedy of the sack of Balkh and added to the infamy of the invasion, the slaying of a venerable former king who had renounced the world for the worship of God. The killing of Lohrasp is among the darkest deeds associated with Kahram and the second invasion, a grievous loss that intensified the peril and the grief of Iran before the coming of its deliverance.
The Fall of Kahram
The triumph of Kahram and the second invasion did not endure, for the sack of Balkh and the killing of Lohrasp brought about the release of the imprisoned champion Esfandiyar, who would turn the tide and slay the enemy, Kahram among them.
When the news of the disaster reached the king Goshtasp, of the sack of Balkh, the death of his father Lohrasp, and the peril of the realm, he was compelled by necessity to release his imprisoned son Esfandiyar, the great champion of the faith, and to call upon him to save the realm and avenge these grievous wrongs. Esfandiyar, freed from his chains, took up the defence of Iran and turned the tide of the war. In the fighting and the campaign that followed, the prince defeated the Turanian forces and slew the enemy, including the king Arjasp and his sons. Kahram, the commander of the sack of Balkh, was slain by the invulnerable Esfandiyar, together with his father Arjasp and his brother Andariman, in just retribution for the destruction they had wrought. The fall of Kahram is the resolution of his tale, the downfall of the agent of the sack of Balkh at the hands of the great champion of the faith, in vengeance for the holy city and the aged king. In his fall, Kahram meets the fate of the enemy commander overcome by the hero, the Turanian prince whose terrible deeds are answered by his death at the hands of the invulnerable Esfandiyar. The fall of Kahram, with the defeat of the second invasion and the slaying of the enemy, marks the turning of the tide and the deliverance of Iran from the deepest peril of the holy war.
Symbolism and Meaning
Kahram embodies, above all, the destructive enemy of the faith, the agent of the assault upon the holy city and the sacred things of the religion. As the commander who sacked Balkh, killed the aged Lohrasp, and destroyed the fire-temple and the holy book, he represents the enemy's assault not merely upon the realm but upon the religion itself, the destroyer of the holy and the sacred.
Kahram embodies, too, the theme of the peril that comes at the moment of vulnerability, for his invasion struck when Iran was weakest, its champion imprisoned and its king away. In this, he represents the danger that exploits division and weakness, the enemy who strikes when the realm is least able to defend itself. And as a son of Arjasp slain by Esfandiyar, Kahram embodies the pattern of the enemy commander whose terrible deeds are answered by his downfall at the hands of the hero, the destroyer brought low in just retribution. In all this, Kahram is a significant figure of the holy war, embodying the destructive enemy of the faith, the peril of the moment of vulnerability, and the enemy commander whose deeds are answered by his fall. He is the agent of the sack of Balkh, one of the darkest figures of the war over the faith, whose terrible deeds mark the deepest peril of Iran and whose downfall marks its deliverance.
Kahram and the Kurds
Kahram, like all the figures of the Shahnameh, belongs to the shared epic and mythological heritage of the Iranian peoples, a tradition that the Kurds hold in common with the Persians, the Lurs, and others of the Iranic world. The great epic of Ferdowsi, with its wars and its figures, is the common inheritance of these peoples, who share in the ancient Iranian tradition from which it springs.
For the Kurds, as an Iranian people, the figures and tales of the Shahnameh are part of the wider cultural and mythological world to which they belong, and the epic and its figures, of both Iran and Turan, hold a place in the broad Iranic heritage that the Kurds share. The figure of Kahram, the Turanian commander of the sack of Balkh, is part of the common store of Iranian epic tradition, known across the Iranic lands. It is honest and accurate to understand Kahram as part of this shared Iranic heritage, rather than as a uniquely Kurdish figure; indeed, he is a commander of the Turanian enemy side. As an Iranian people, the Kurds share in the broad heritage of the epic, whose figures, heroes and enemies alike, are part of the common Iranian tradition to which the Kurds, alongside their neighbours, are heirs. It is worth recalling, too, that the Turanians of the epic are a legendary people, and that the wars of Iran and Turan are the central recurring conflict of the tradition, not to be simply identified with any modern nation. In presenting Kahram, then, we present a figure of the shared Iranian epic heritage to which the Kurds, as an Iranic people, are heirs alongside their neighbours.
Debates and Misconceptions
Did Kahram or Arjasp himself sack Balkh? The tradition presents the sack of Balkh as the work of Kahram, the son of Arjasp, whom the king sent with the great army of the second invasion to carry out his purpose. While the assault was ordered by Arjasp and served his cause, it was his son Kahram who led the army that took the city, killed the aged Lohrasp, and worked the destruction. Some summaries speak of Arjasp's invasion of Balkh, since it was his war and his command, but the leading of the army and the deed itself are attributed to his son Kahram. Both father and son are thus bound up in the sack of Balkh, the one as the king who ordered it, the other as the commander who carried it out.
Is Kahram the same as the sorcerer who killed Zarir? No; these are distinct figures. The sorcerer who treacherously slew the noble Esfandiyar's uncle Zarir in the first war was Bidarafsh, a different enemy warrior. Kahram is the son of Arjasp who led the second invasion and sacked Balkh, killing the aged Lohrasp. The two belong to different phases of the war and are distinct figures, though both are enemies of Iran and the faith. They should not be confused.
Is Kahram a specifically Kurdish figure? No; like all the figures of the Shahnameh, he belongs to the shared epic heritage of the Iranian peoples, a tradition the Kurds hold in common with the Persians, the Lurs, and others of the Iranic world, rather than a uniquely Kurdish figure. Indeed, he is a commander of the Turanian enemy side. As an Iranian people, the Kurds share in the broad heritage of the epic, whose figures, heroes and enemies alike, are part of the common Iranian tradition to which the Kurds are heirs alongside their neighbours.
Related Topics
Arjasp: the Turanian king and father of Kahram
Lohrasp: the aged former king killed in the sack of Balkh
Goshtasp: the Iranian king whose absence Kahram exploited
Esfandiyar: the invulnerable prince who slew Kahram
Bidarafsh: the sorcerer of the first war, a distinct enemy
Zoroaster: the prophet whose faith and book Kahram's army burned
Afrasiab: the great Turanian king of the earlier wars
The Shahnameh: the Persian Book of Kings, the great epic of Iran
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Kahram in the Shahnameh?
Kahram, also spelled Kohram or Gohram, is a Turanian warrior and commander of the Shahnameh, a son of the enemy king Arjasp. He is remembered above all as the commander who led the great army of the second invasion against Iran, capturing the holy city of Balkh, killing the aged former king Lohrasp in his retirement of worship, and working great destruction upon the city and the faith. He was slain at last, with his father and brother, by the invulnerable prince Esfandiyar.
What did Kahram do at Balkh?
Kahram led the army that sacked the holy city of Balkh during the second invasion, while the Iranian king Goshtasp was away and the prince Esfandiyar imprisoned. He took the undefended city and worked great destruction: in the tradition, the invaders killed many priests of the faith, destroyed and burned the fire-temple, and even burned the holy book, the Avesta. He also killed the aged former king Lohrasp. The sack of Balkh was an assault upon the faith itself, the darkest hour of the war.
How did Kahram kill Lohrasp?
In the sack of Balkh, the aged former king Lohrasp, who had retired from the throne to a life of worship, was killed by the invading forces under Kahram's command. When the enemy fell upon the city, the people begged the old king to lead them, but he had renounced earthly concerns; yet when the city was assailed, he was drawn into the fighting and was killed. As the commander of the invasion, Kahram bears responsibility for the slaying of the venerable former king.
How did Kahram die?
Kahram was slain by the invulnerable prince Esfandiyar. When the news of the sack of Balkh and the death of his father Lohrasp reached King Goshtasp, he was compelled to release the imprisoned Esfandiyar to save the realm. The freed prince turned the tide of the war, defeated the Turanians, and slew the enemy, including the king Arjasp and his sons Kahram and Andariman, in just retribution for the destruction they had wrought.
Was Kahram the same as Bidarafsh?
No; they are distinct figures. Bidarafsh was the sorcerer who treacherously slew the noble Zarir in the first war. Kahram is the son of Arjasp who led the second invasion and sacked Balkh, killing the aged Lohrasp. The two belong to different phases of the war and are distinct figures, though both are enemies of Iran and the faith. They should not be confused with one another.
Is Kahram a Kurdish figure?
Kahram belongs to the shared epic heritage of the Iranian peoples, a tradition the Kurds hold in common with the Persians, the Lurs, and others of the Iranic world, rather than a uniquely Kurdish figure. Indeed, he is a commander of the Turanian enemy side. As an Iranian people, the Kurds share in the broad heritage of the epic, whose figures, heroes and enemies alike, are part of the common Iranian tradition to which the Kurds are heirs alongside their neighbours.
References and Further Reading
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