Siyavush

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.

Domains

• fire purity
• resurrection vegetation

Powers

• pass unburnt through fire

Epithets

• Siyavuš — he of the black stallionsMary Boyce, 'Zoroastrian Survivals in Iranian Folklore,' Iran 3 (1965) (secondary)

Sources

• The Iranian hero-prince Siyavush, the innocent martyr who passed unburnt through fire, survives among the Talysh within the wider Iranian stratum of fire-veneration and mourning for the slain innocent.: Mary Boyce, 'Zoroastrian Survivals in Iranian Folklore,' Iran 3 (1965): 70-80 (secondary); 'Formation of the Talysh Ethnos Worldview under Geoethnic Conservation Area Conditions' (research paper, 2018), on the Zoroastrian and Avestan layer of the Talysh worldview (secondary)