The Study of Some Narratives about Iranian's Battle with Mazandaran's Demons in the Heroic Literature after Shahnameh

One of the popular stories in Shahnamehis Rustam’squestto Mazandaran in order to rescue Kavoos and his soldiers, which led him into killingDivSepid (the white demon), rescuingKavoos from captivity, and also entrusting Mazandaran to his children. This story, which is known as Haft-khan Rustam, has influenced a number of heroic poems, manuscripts of rhapsodies and oral/public narrativesof Shahnameh. The influence that these works have from the narratives of Rustam’s battle with the demons of Mazandaran can be classified into two categories: first, in many of these texts, are various narratives about or references to Rustam’sjourney to Mazandaran and his battle with DivSepid. Second, in some Iranian epic texts, be it poetry or prose, a number of demons or descendants ofDivSepid are present that each try to take revenge on Rustam or one of the members of his family. But, in all of these stories, they either have failed or were killed by the hero. Although these types of narratives have briefly been expressed in most of Iranian public prose literature, they have been expressed in more details in a number of texts including ShabrangNameh, ShahriyarNameh, and TheNew BorzoNameh. In this paper, first, these types of narratives in some heroic pieces of poetry are addressed. Then, common grounds or differences of these stories with the narrative of Shahnameh are analyzed.