As Night Turned Dark
- Poet:
- Ferdowsi
- Era:
- 10th century
- Persian Desert Blues
Music & vocals AI-generated · poem in the public domain
The poem
شبی چون شبه روی شسته به قیر
نه بهرام پیدا نه کیوان نه تیر
سپاه شب تیره بر دشت و راغ
یکی فرش گسترده از پر زاغ
نه آوای مرغ و نه هرای دد
زمانه زبان بسته از نیک و بد
نبد هیچ پیدا نشیب از فراز
دلم تنگ شد زان شب دیریاز
The Night Prologue of Bijan and Manijeh · Shahnameh of Ferdowsi — Bijan and Manijeh, opening section
About the poem
The most celebrated description of night in Persian literature — the prologue of Bijan and Manijeh in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh. A night black as jet washed in pitch: no planet shows, the army of darkness spreads a carpet of raven feathers over plain and meadow, no bird calls and no beast cries — until the poet, heartsick of the long night, is offered a lamp, and a tale.
Meaning & background
«شبی چون شبه روی شسته به قیر / نه بهرام پیدا نه کیوان نه تیر» — “A night black as jet washed over with pitch: no Mars to be seen, no Saturn, no Mercury.” The prologue of Bijan and Manijeh is widely held to be the most beautiful description of night in all of Persian literature. Ferdowsi piles image on image: the moon dressed strangely and shrunken on its way, the sky like rust-eaten steel smeared with pitch, the army of night spreading a carpet of raven feathers over plain and meadow, the world so still that no bird calls, no beast cries, and up cannot be told from down.
The passage is also the most personal moment in the whole Shahnameh: oppressed by that long, black night — «دلم تنگ شد زان شب دیریاز» — the poet rises, and a kind companion of the house lights a lamp “like a bright day,” brings wine and fruit, and offers to read him an old tale from a Pahlavi book: the romance of Bijan and Manijeh, which she asks him to turn into verse. That intimate frame, unique among the epic's stories, has led many scholars to consider Bijan and Manijeh one of the earliest tales Ferdowsi composed. The session sets the darkness — and the lamp against it — as Persian Desert Blues, a resonator guitar under a starless sky.
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