A 600-year-old warrior rides an invincible stallion, wears a suit of panther skin, and was born through a surgical procedure taught to his father by a magical bird. This episode explores Rostam, champion of champions in Iranian mythology, immortalized in Ferdowsi’s 10th-century Shahnameh. We start with his parents: Zal, the white-haired ruler of Zabulistan raised by the Simurgh, and Rudaba, princess of Kabul, whose labor was so dangerous that the Simurgh instructed a cesarean delivery still remembered in Persian tradition as the Rostamzad.

From there we follow Rostam slaying a rampaging white elephant as a boy, taming the horse Rakhsh, donning the Babr-e Bayan armor that Bactrian records echo in a title meaning the man with the panther’s skin, and enduring the Seven Labors to rescue the reckless King Kay Kavus from the divs of Mazandaran. We cover the devastating combat with his unrecognized son Sohrab, his death in a spear-lined pit dug by his half-brother Shaghad, and the historical trail that leads scholars like Ernst Herzfeld to the Parthian House of Suren, the kingmakers who crowned monarchs, commanded armies, and defeated Crassus at Carrhae.

• Why the name Rostam is traced to a meaning of river-strong or as strong as a river
• How the word div shifted from ancient gods to demons under Zoroastrian reform
• Why an undefeated national hero must die by family treachery rather than a foreign enemy
• How oral storytelling on the eastern frontier preserved Parthian legends the Sasanians tried to erase
• Rostam’s living legacy in wrestling titles like Rustam-e Hind and the Dari proverb about his name