Rustam is the supreme champion of the Iranian heroic tradition and a living presence in Tajik oral and literary culture. Sprung from the line of Sistan and mounted on the incomparable horse Rakhsh, he passes through the Seven Trials, slays the White Demon of Mazandaran, and serves the Kayanian kings across generations, unknowingly killing his own son Sohrab in the epic's most tragic episode. In the Tajik world his exploits are transmitted through Firdawsi's Shahnama, recited and sung, and through folk retellings that stand beside the indigenous Central Asian oral epic of Gurughli. He is a mortal hero of gigantic stature rather than a god, but his legend forms a core strand of the mythic imagination the Tajiks share.