Peril of not knowing Gordafarid

IT was a placard that as students we would draw cartoons on or write slogans with marker pens or thick brushes for college protests. To deter Donald Trump’s vile description of Iranians as an evil lot, the chador-clad Iranian woman chose a verse from the great Persian poet Firdausi for her placard. The 10th-century master poet is credited with reviving Persian literature. His fabled Shahnameh chronicled the legends of Persian kings with motifs and characters that were essentially pre-Islamic. The stories of Rustam and Sohrab, for example, popularised by Firdausi, relate to the early Zoroastrian period of Iran. Colonial upstarts would later drool at the awe-inspiring heritage he spawned. It was reflected in the British pretence at majesty as they attempted to mask an instinct for savage plunder.

After uprooting the Persian-Prakrit-Sanskrit culture nurtured by Muslim rulers in India, chiefly the Mughals, the British viceroy installed a Persian painting on the ceiling of the ballroom of the vice-regal palace, today’s Presidential Palace. The painting still hangs there, mocking Hindutva’s boorish hatred of Iran’s legacy of refinement in India. The painting of a Qajar-era ruler on a tiger hunt was created by an Italian artist as faux inspiration from the legends depicted in Firdausi’s magnum opus, compiled between 977 AD and 1010 AD.

The verse the woman wrote with a blue brush on a placard for the huge Nowruz march through Tehran to mark the Persian new year intrigued an American journalist watching the war. Ergo: there are foreign journalists invited by the reviled Iranian ‘regime’ to chronicle an unprovoked assault on their nation; the opposite seems true of the falsely adulated ‘democracies’ of the US and Israel where opacity and news blackouts have become a legitimate requirement in a self-harming and costly military expedition.

Donald Trump the tycoon doesn’t want the markets to shudder at his foolhardy plans to destroy Iran and thereby the Persian Gulf. Benjamin Netanyahu desperately needs to cover up the untold damage inflicted on precisely chosen targets straddling Israeli cities. One missile cautioned him that Iran could destroy the Dimona nuclear plant at will, with horrific consequences to the world, if its Bushehr nuclear power station was damaged. This is the terrifying prospect Trump and Netanyahu have jointly given birth to in an ultra-volatile region.

In modern Persian culture, Gordafarid is a feminist icon and a symbol of Iranian resistance and ingenuity.

The image of the Iranian woman’s placard was snapped from a news clip, and as such it was angled, blurred and incomplete. It was her explanation of the verse to the American interlocutor that helped me track it down to the Shahnameh. I checked out the verse with an encyclopaedic Persian scholar. The illustrious Sharif Husain Qasemi is Delhi’s only expert on Bedil, the 18th-century Persian poet notorious for being so difficult that he was considered a challenge even by the great Ghalib, himself notorious for his difficult Persian poetry. He found the verse and explained its context: “Agar sar be sar tan be koshtan daham/ Azaan beh ke kishvar be dushman Daham” (“If I give my body — from head to toe — to be killed/ That is better than giving the country to the enemy.”)

The verse is one of the most famous examples of heroic ethos (javanmardi) in Persian literature. It is spoken by a woman warrior, the legendary hero Gordafarid. The sentiment is echoed throughout the Shahnameh also by figures like Rustam or other heroes facing insurmountable odds.

The meaning conveys self-sacrifice over dishonour. The speaker argues that physical death — even complete annihilation (head to toe) — is preferable to the shame and disgrace of surrendering one’s homeland to an enemy. It emphasises the core value of the Shahnameh: that reputation and national honour are worth more than life itself. Notably, the characters are pre-Islamic. Had Firdousi not lauded the character of Gordafarid in the 10th century, some 400 years before the defiant stand of another woman soldier, Joan of Arc, he might have been accused of plagiarism. It so turned out, however, that Gordafarid is believed to be an inspiration for the Pakhtun heroine, Malalai of Maiwand. Malalai rallied a flagging army of Pakhtun men in the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1880.

Curiously, there is no record of her heroic stand in British records, but her words to her compatriots still ring true. “Young love! If you do not fall in the battle of Maiwand, By God, someone is saving you as a symbol of shame!” It was a direct challenge to the men’s honour. That she used her veil as her flag, may have inspired Majaaz Lucknavi in the 20th century to put it in a verse thus: “Tere mathey pe ye aanchal bahot hi khoob hai lekin/ Tu is annachal se ek parcham bana leti to achha tha.” (“The headscarf looks lovely on you sweetheart, but yield/ Why not make a flag with it for the battlefield?”)

In modern Persian culture, Gordafarid is a feminist icon and a symbol of Iranian resistance and ingenuity. Her name (literally meaning ‘created like a hero’) is a popular name for girls, and her story is frequently cited in discussions of female empowerment in classical Persian literature.

Unlike many tragic female figures in the Shahnameh, Gordafarid retains her agency, honour and autonomy throughout her story. She does not submit to Sohrab’s advances, her male adversary in the epic, nor does she die tragically; she outmanoeuvres him and returns to her people as a hero.

In this regard, Malalai of Maiwand was not likely ‘inspired’ by Gordafarid in the way a writer is inspired by a specific book. Instead, Gordafarid represents the archetype of the defiant female hero that existed within the broader Persianate culture of the region.

The awe-inspiring Persian lore and its thriving legacy is difficult to grasp by those that deify cowardly aerial bombardment of schools as valour. On the other side is the fervour that is inspired by the epic heroes of a deep culture.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2026

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