Siyavush is the innocent prince of Iranian tradition, falsely accused, who proved his purity by riding unharmed through a mountain of fire and was afterwards treacherously slain in exile, his blood giving rise to a green-sprouting plant. In the Talysh country, whose folk religion preserves a distinct Zoroastrian and Avestan stratum beneath its Islam, his figure endures within the broad Iranian complex of fire-veneration and of ritual mourning for the martyred innocent, a dying-and-reviving hero associated with fire, blood and the renewal of vegetation. He is a pan-Iranian rather than a uniquely Talysh figure, but his cult of fire and lament is among the recognised Zoroastrian survivals of the region.