Siyamak, also spelled Siamak, is Kayumars’s son in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. His killing interrupts the first king’s peaceful court and links the story of founding kingship to mourning, vengeance and the next generation.
The prince and the Black Div
The opening reign places Kayumars among mountains, with people wearing leopard skins and animals gathering around him. His beloved son Siyamak faces the hostility of Ahriman’s demonic offspring. After Surush reveals the threat, Siyamak assembles his forces. The poem emphasises a world without armour or an established art of warfare. The Black Div overpowers and kills the prince. [1]
Mourning and Hushang’s succession
Kayumars, his followers and the animals mourn for a year. Surush then brings a command to confront the demon. Siyamak’s son Hushang, raised by his grandfather, leads a mixed host of animals and supernatural beings, with Kayumars behind him. Hushang kills the Black Div; Kayumars’s life subsequently ends. [1] [2] The sequence binds the continuation of the royal household to a loss that its original ruler cannot prevent.
How the genealogies differ
The relationships in this episode belong to Ferdowsi’s particular arrangement of early legendary history. Mansour Shaki’s study of Gayomart traces a longer lineage in Middle Persian books: Mashya and Mashyanag, then Siyamak, Frawak and Hushang. Ferdowsi’s account places Siyamak directly after Kayumars and makes Hushang his grandson. Shaki also distinguishes the religious creation traditions concerning the primordial human Gayomart from the epic account of the first world king. [3] These versions give the same names different places within accounts of human origins and royal succession. Reading the genealogy alongside the episode helps explain why summaries of the wider mythology can differ.
Siyamak in manuscript painting
The Court of Kayumars in Shah Tahmasp’s Shahnameh stages the warning before the killing. The Aga Khan Museum dates the folio to about 1524–1525 and attributes it to Sultan Muhammad in Tabriz. Its curator identifies the seated younger man as Siyamak and the standing figure opposite him as Surush, while noting that some earlier scholarship called that standing figure Hushang. The king’s gesture and the triangular arrangement bring the threat into an apparently harmonious landscape. [4] The layered rocks, small animals and gathering courtiers make the episode readable as a scene of royal order poised before disruption.
Another painter’s choice
A later Court of Gayumarth in the David Collection, made in Shiraz in 1575–1590, uses a related gathering to tell the story. Its catalogue identifies Hushang standing beside the ruler and Siyamak seated, announcing the demon’s attack. [5] Different manuscripts thus select and organise the characters in different ways. The illustrations preserve a history of interpreting the narrative as well as a history of painting it.
Sources and further reading
- Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Kayumars 1: Persian text, Ganjoor.
- Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Kayumars 2: Persian text, Ganjoor.
- Mansour Shaki, Gayōmart, Encyclopaedia Iranica X/3, 2000, pp. 345–347: creation traditions and variant genealogies.
- Aga Khan Museum, The Court of Kayumars, AKM165; commentary by Sheila R. Canby, including discussion of the figures’ identities.
- The David Collection, The Court of Gayumarth, Shiraz, 1575–1590, inventory 56/2007: catalogue interpretation.