Culture | Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, The Story of Zahhak, Part 1

About this episode

The episode discusses the Tale of Zahhak from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, starting with the end of Jamshid's story and Zahhak's rise as an evil king.

In this lesson, we begin our discussion of the famous Tale of Zahhak from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh with Dr. Sahba Shayani. We use the end of the story of Jamshid as a prelude and begin to learn of how Zahhak becomes an evil king.

People in this episode

Guest: Dr. Sahba Shayani

Topics covered

• Ferdowsi
• Shahnameh
• Tale of Zahhak
• Persian culture
• evil kings
• storytelling

Keywords

• Ferdowsi
• Shahnameh
• Zahhak
• Jamshid
• Persian literature
• evil king
• storytelling

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Shahnameh

More episodes of Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation

• Growing Up Irooni: Hamid Rahmanian on Building Persian Culture, One Story at a Time · May 13, 2026 · 1h 30m
• Growing Up Irooni: Danesh Nosirvan on Speaking Up When Our Parents Couldn't · May 7, 2026 · 1h 18m
• Culture | Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, The Story of Zahhak, Part 4 · April 20, 2026 · 22 min
• Culture | Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, The Story of Zahhak, Part 3 · April 11, 2026 · 31 min
• Culture | Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, The Story of Zahhak, Part 2 · March 23, 2026 · 23 min
• Poetry | Hafez's yoosofé gom gashté, Part 6 · February 9, 2026 · 20 min