Zal and the Simorgh in Persian Painting: Story and Scenes

Updated By VanArtHub Curatorial Team

Zal is a hero of the Shahnameh, the Persian "Book of Kings" by the poet Ferdowsi. He is born with white hair, and his father, Sam, has the baby left on Mount Alborz. A great mythical bird called the Simorgh finds him there, raises him in her nest with her own young, and later gives him feathers to burn whenever he needs her. We are VanArtHub, a Vancouver gallery that sells original paintings, and two of our paintings share a subject with this story. Below you will find the story in order, the way painters draw the Simorgh, and paintings to look up in named museums.

Who are Zal, Sam and the Simorgh?

The Aga Khan Museum says Ferdowsi completed the Shahnameh ca. 1010. The Encyclopaedia Iranica calls Zal a legendary prince of Sistan and the father of Rostam, and it calls his father Sam the lord of Sistan and "the foremost noble of Iran". For the whole poem and its illustrated copies, start with our page on the Shahnameh in art.

The Simorgh (also written Simurgh) is "a fabulous, mythical bird". In Ferdowsi's poem, writes Hanns-Peter Schmidt in the Iranica, she is "the savior, tutor and guardian" of Zal. Schmidt calls her a female bird in this story, so we write "she".

You will meet four more names. Rudaba (also written Rudabeh) is a princess of Kabul. Rostam is the son she has with Zal, Rakhsh is Rostam's horse, and Esfandiyar is a prince whom Rostam fights late in life. Inside a quotation or the title of a painting we keep the museum's own spelling (Rustam, Isfandiyar). For the words of the poem we use the English verse translation hosted by the Packard Humanities Institute.

A white-haired child on Mount Alborz

Sam "had no child", the Iranica says, and then a woman of his household gave birth to a beautiful boy whose "hair was all white". The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art quotes the poem on the newborn: a face like paradise, "but his hair was that of an old man".

Sam was ashamed. The Iranica says he likened the baby to the child of a demon, and in the verse translation he fears that the great men of Iran will laugh at him "in public and in private". The Smithsonian says he had Zal "left in the mountains where the mythical simurgh makes her home". The poem names the mountain: Alborz.

"He sucked his finger-ends and wailed," the translation says of the baby. Then the Simorgh flew out to find food for her young and saw him. Here two tellings differ. Schmidt writes that God gave the bird a feeling of love for the child, and that she took him to her nest to raise him. The Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin says she first thought of giving him to her chicks to eat, "but compassion overtook instinct".

The bird had no milk to give. Schmidt writes: "She chose the most tender meat for him so that he could suck the blood as a substitute for the milk he lacked." The Smithsonian says a passing caravan later saw a youth "whose body was like a cypress tree", and the news spread.

We think the poet's hardest judgment on Sam comes here: "the beasts we find more tender to their young than are mankind". Schmidt adds that the Simorgh's kindness "went against her nature as a raptor".

Whisper of Flight by Marjan Mousavi is an acrylic on canvas, 70 x 100 cm. A woman's face with closed eyes fills the canvas, her hair runs across it in lines of purple, gray and light blue, and many small gray, white and yellow birds fly around and through it. It is a contemporary work that shares one subject with this part of the story: a person at rest among birds.

Serene woman with closed eyes, surrounded by colorful birds. Acrylic painting by Marjan Mousavi.
Whisper of Flight One-of-a-kind original$2,168.00 Free insured shipping. 14-day returns. See this original

Sam's dream and the ride to the mountain

Years pass, and Sam starts to dream. In the Iranica's account a mounted warrior rides in from India and tells him that he has a grown-up son. In a second dream an army appears, led by a youth with a priest and an adviser at his side, and these two condemn Sam: "If white hair is a cause of shame, what say you of your own white hair and beard?"

The sources differ on what makes him go. The Smithsonian says news of the caravan reaches Sam. The Iranica and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge give the dream. The poem has both: Sam tells his priests about his dream and about "the gossip of the caravans".

So Sam rides to Alborz. The Fitzwilliam says he "could not reach the mountain top". In the verse translation he walks round the mountain, finds no way to climb it, and prays for mercy.

The Simorgh's feathers

The Simorgh sees the men below and knows why they have come. She tells Zal that she must carry him down to his father. Zal has never seen another person, and the poem says he learned to speak from the bird herself. "Thy nest is unto me a shining throne," he says.

Her answer is the part of the story we remember best. She would gladly keep him, she says, but it is better for him to go. Then she gives him her feathers. The Iranica translates the line: "put one of my feathers onto fire, at once shall you behold my farr". Farr is a Persian word that the Iranica explains as God-given fortune.

How many feathers? The Smithsonian says two. Schmidt says one. Both agree on the use: burn a feather, and the Simorgh comes.

The parting hurts the bird too. "Let not thy heart forget to love thy nurse," she says in the verse translation, "for mine is breaking through my love of thee." She carries him down, and Sam bows to her. The Fitzwilliam ends the scene this way: "Overjoyed, Sam named his son Zal ('white-haired')".

Zal and Rudaba

The next part is a love story, and the Iranica entry on Rudaba repeats one scholar's judgment that it is "one of the most beautiful narratives in Persian poetry". On a trip to Kabul, Zal hears a description of Rudaba, the daughter of King Mehrab. Her black hair, in the Iranica's summary, "fell in two musky ringlets over her silveren neck down to her ankle". Rudaba in turn hears her father praise Zal.

Her maids arrange a meeting. Rudaba lets her hair down the palace wall so that Zal can hold it and climb, and the Iranica compares her to Rapunzel in the tales of the Brothers Grimm. Zal chooses another way up. The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns the scene on folio 72v of the Shahnameh made for Shah Tahmasp (a folio is one leaf of a manuscript), and its text says that he "tosses up his lasso" to catch the top of the wall.

The marriage is opposed. Mehrab is a descendant of the tyrant king Zahhak, and the Iranica says this meant "certain opposition" from King Manuchehr. The king gives his consent after astrologers predict that the greatest hero of Iran will come from the marriage. The Iranica adds that Rudaba later took an active part in the education of the prince Siyavash, whose story we tell in our post on Siyavash and the fire.

The birth of Rostam

The feather is first burned for a birth. The Iranica says Rudaba "could not deliver her enormously large baby in the normal way" and lost consciousness from the pain. In the verse translation Zal remembers the feather and burns part of it over a censer of fire. The air grows dark, and the Simorgh comes down.

Schmidt sums up her instructions: the bird "suggested they anaesthetize the mother with wine before opening up her side and also prescribed the herbs for healing the wound". In the poem the herb is to be pounded with milk and musk and dried in the shade. Last, "Rub o'er the wound my plume". Then she drops a fresh feather from her wing and flies off.

Rudaba sleeps for a day and a night. The Fitzwilliam calls the baby "a boy of prodigious size", and the poem says that on his first day he looked twelve months old. They name him Rostam.

The family sends Sam a likeness of the child. In the poem it is a doll of silk, made to the baby's size. "This silken thing," Sam says, "is just like me." The Fitzwilliam describes a painting of this moment made in Herat, c. 1444, and notes a change: "In the Shahnameh, the image is a stuffed doll, but here the artist has interpreted it as a painting on silk." Rostam grows up to be the hero of our earlier post on Rostam and Sohrab.

The last feather: Rostam, Rakhsh and Esfandiyar

The Simorgh comes once more, when Zal is an old man. King Goshtasp orders his son, the prince Esfandiyar, to go to Sistan and "bring in chains the mighty Rostam". In the Encyclopaedia Iranica's account, Rostam offers every concession "short of letting himself be chained", Esfandiyar insists, and the two meet in single combat. Esfandiyar cannot be wounded, and by the end of the day his arrows have beaten Rostam. At home, Rostam "uncharacteristically considers flight".

Zal burns the feather. The British Library owns a painting of what happens next, and the Fitzwilliam describes it: the bird "drew eight arrowheads out of Rostam and six out of Rakhsh, and provided another of her feathers to stroke and heal their wounds".

In the verse translation her first advice to Rostam is to make peace. She also tells him what the Iranica calls a secret of destiny: whoever sheds Esfandiyar's blood will suffer in this world and in the next. That night she leads him to a tamarisk tree and has him cut a branch for an arrow, which the verse translation fits with "three feathers and two points". If Esfandiyar still refuses peace, Rostam must aim at his eyes.

The next day Rostam pleads again and is refused. He shoots. The Met owns the scene on folio 466r of Shah Tahmasp's Shahnameh. Both men know, the Met writes, that the killing "will bring trouble down on Rustam's head".

There is a second Simorgh in the poem. In the fifth of his own seven trials, Esfandiyar killed a great bird of the same name. The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto owns a painting of it and says the Simorgh "plays an ambiguous role in the Shahnameh": a protector in one story and "an evil, dragon-like creature" in the other.

In our view this last visit is the most serious part of the story. The bird who once fed a baby now shows a man how to kill a prince, and she tells him the cost before he chooses.

End and Beginning by Melina Ghaemi is an oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm. A winged figure with a human head and torso rises from a fiery, feathered form, its red and orange wings spread wide, above a waterfall that falls over dark rocks. It is a contemporary work that shares one subject with this story: a great winged, feathered being.

Fiery winged woman in feathered dress emerging from dark rock. Oil on Canvas by Melina Ghaemi.
End and Beginning One-of-a-kind original$2,168.00 Free insured shipping. 14-day returns. See this original

How painters show the Simorgh

Schmidt writes that we do not know how Ferdowsi pictured the bird. The Berlin museum says the early pictures "painted her more like a chicken than a celestial bird".

That changed after the Mongol conquest of Persia in the thirteenth century, when Chinese designs reached Persian workshops. The Met owns a tile of the late 13th century with what it calls a "soaring phoenix with crested head and elaborate trailing plumage". In the Met's audio guide for the tile, one speaker says that Persian potters and painters took the Chinese phoenix and "transform it into a bird that is thoroughly Persian".

Toh Sugimura, writing in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, explains how. The Chinese meanings of such animals were "largely unknown to Persian painters", who fitted the images to stories of their own. His example is the Simorgh drawn "in the form of a phoenix". Our page on symbols in Persian painting explains what the bird came to mean in Persian poetry.

Four things help you find the scene in a museum. First, the tail: the Smithsonian describes the bird in Zal Is Sighted by a Caravan "with her magical tail feathers trailing behind". Second, the nest: the Berlin page has "two baby simurghs in the nest". Third, a figure with white hair: Berlin's painter shows "a young man with white hair", and the Herat page of c. 1444 shows an infant. Fourth, the rocks, where the Smithsonian finds "finely drawn animals, grotesques, and human faces".

Paintings of Zal and the Simorgh to look up

One manuscript matters most here: the Shahnameh made for Shah Tahmasp in Tabriz. The Smithsonian says the discovery of Zal and his return are "illustrated three times by different painters" in that one book, and three of its pages fill the first three rows below. Our page on famous Persian paintings covers other well-known pages of the same manuscript.

Scenes from the story of Zal and the Simorgh and a painting of each. Sources: the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Aga Khan Museum, read October 2026.
Scene Painting to look up Where it is held
The Simorgh raises Zal in her nest Zal Is Sighted by a Caravan, attributed to Abdul Aziz, Tabriz, ca. 1525 Art and History Collection, lent to the Smithsonian, LTS1995.2.46
Sam comes to the mountain Father Sam brings back his son Zal from Mount Alborz, c. 1530 Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin, I. 5/77
Zal leaves with his father Sam Returns with His Son Zal, Tabriz, ca. 1520s Ebrahimi Family Collection, lent to the Smithsonian
The Simorgh carries Zal down The Simorgh restores Zal to Sam, Herat, c. 1444 Royal Asiatic Society, London, Persian MS 239, fol. 16v
The same scene "Zal is Restored to his Father Sam by the Simurgh", ca. 1300 to 1330 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 69.74.1
Zal climbs to Rudaba "Rudaba Makes a Ladder of Her Tresses", attributed to Qadimi, ca. 1525 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970.301.7
The Simorgh heals Rostam and Rakhsh The Simorgh heals Rakhsh, Shiraz, c. 1590 to 1595 British Library, London, MS Add. 27257, fol. 306v
Rostam shoots Esfandiyar "Rustam Slays Isfandiyar", ca. 1525 to 1530 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970.301.55
Esfandiyar kills the other Simorgh Isfandiyar kills the Simurgh, attributed to Siyavush, Qazvin, 1576 to 1577 Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, AKM103

Start with the Berlin page. The museum has held the painting since 1977, and its text explains the picture part by part. The Met's page of ca. 1300 to 1330 is the oldest in the table, and it is small: its painted area is 5.2 cm high and 12.1 cm wide. When we read the Met's pages in October 2026, its three folios in the table were listed as not on view, and the phoenix tile, object number 12.49.4, was listed as on view in Gallery 455.

Key Takeaways

  • Zal is a hero of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh who is born with white hair, left on Mount Alborz by order of his father Sam, and raised by the Simorgh in her nest.
  • When Sam comes for his son, the Simorgh gives Zal feathers to burn when he needs her. The Smithsonian says two feathers, and the Encyclopaedia Iranica says one.
  • The feather is burned twice: at the birth of Rostam, and when Rostam and his horse Rakhsh are wounded by Esfandiyar's arrows.
  • After the Mongol conquest in the thirteenth century, Persian artists drew the Simorgh with the crest and long tail feathers of the Chinese phoenix.
  • To recognise the scene, look for a large bird with trailing tail feathers, a nest with chicks on a rocky peak, and a figure with white hair.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the story of Zal and the Simorgh?

The story of Zal and the Simorgh tells how a baby born with white hair is left on Mount Alborz by his father Sam and raised by a great mythical bird. When Sam comes back for his son, the Simorgh gives Zal feathers to burn whenever he needs her. She returns twice, for the birth of Rostam and for Rostam's fight with Esfandiyar.

Who is the Simorgh in the Shahnameh?

The Simorgh is a great mythical bird whose nest is on Mount Alborz. The Encyclopaedia Iranica calls her the savior, tutor and guardian of Zal in Ferdowsi's poem, and describes her as a female bird in this story. She raises Zal with her own young, and later she helps his wife Rudaba and heals his son Rostam.

Why did Sam abandon his son Zal?

Sam abandoned Zal because the baby was born with white hair, and Sam was ashamed. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says he likened the infant to the child of a demon and left him on Mount Alborz. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art says the snow-white hair was considered an ill omen. Years later a dream made Sam go back for his son.

What does the Simorgh's feather do?

The Simorgh's feather calls her back. When Zal burns it, she comes to help him. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says her feathers hold farr, a God-given fortune. In the poem a feather is burned at the birth of Rostam and again when Rostam and his horse Rakhsh are wounded, and the bird also heals wounds by stroking them with a feather.

How was Rostam born?

Rostam was born through a cut in his mother's side, because he was too large for a normal birth. The Encyclopaedia Iranica says the Simorgh told Zal to make Rudaba drunk with wine first, and that the bird prescribed herbs for the wound. The healing was completed by touching the wound with her feather.

Is the Simorgh the same as a phoenix?

The Simorgh is a Persian mythical bird that painters came to draw in the form of the Chinese phoenix. The Metropolitan Museum of Art says Persian artists adopted Chinese imagery after the Mongol conquest in the thirteenth century, and shows a tile with a phoenix as an example. The Smithsonian and the Aga Khan Museum call the Simorgh a phoenix or phoenix-like in their own texts.

Where can I see a painting of Zal and the Simorgh?

Paintings of Zal and the Simorgh are held by the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Royal Asiatic Society in London, and each has a page online. In Canada, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto holds a painting of Esfandiyar killing the other Simorgh of the poem, dated 1576 to 1577.

What size is End and Beginning, and is there only one?

End and Beginning measures 70 x 100 cm (27.6 x 39.4 in), and only one exists. Melina Ghaemi painted it in oil on canvas, and the picture shows a winged figure rising from a fiery, feathered form above a waterfall. Every painting VanArtHub ships is an original, signed work, and each one comes with a Certificate of Authenticity.

Do you ship original paintings to the United States, and what does it cost?

Yes, we ship to the United States and to Canada, and shipping is free and fully insured on each work we sell. Delivery takes 5 to 10 business days to the United States and 3 to 7 business days in Canada. We are based in Vancouver, Canada, and every piece we send is an original, signed, one-of-a-kind work.

How long do I have to decide after a painting arrives?

You have 14 days from the day of delivery. Every work comes with a 14-day trial: if you decide against it, return it within those 14 days for a full refund, and we pay the return shipping. The terms are on our Buy with Confidence page, and our guide on how to buy Persian art answers other common questions.

Sources

Sources read in October 2026. If you spot something out of date, tell us and we will correct this post.

About VanArtHub

VanArtHub is a gallery based in Vancouver, Canada. We sell original, signed, one-of-a-kind works, each with a Certificate of Authenticity, free insured shipping and a 14-day trial. Persian art is also called Iranian art, and our guide to contemporary Persian painting is a good first page to read. You can also browse every original we have for sale, or read the terms of the trial on Buy with Confidence.

Back to blog