Farhad Tarash

I mentioned yesterday a sculptor named Farhad who was punished by Khosrow II for becoming a rival for the love of Shirin. He was given the impossible task to carve steps into the cliffs of Mount Behistun.As it happens, if you go to Mount Behistun in western Iran you'll find a long smooth section carved into the stone that is decidedly not natural. Called the Farhād Tarāsh, it is 30 meters high and 200 meters long.Its origin is unknown. A medieval geographer named Istakhri, who died in 957, had no idea whence it came. Near the Farhād Tarāsh are several hundred dressed stone blocks that would be suitable for the start of a wall or a building's foundation. They have been dated to the same era as the wall carving.Farhad is only known from Nizami Ganjavi's famous tragic romance Khosrow and Shirin, which he started writing in c. 1180. Did Nizami Ganjavi know something about the history of Mount Behistun? Or did he simply take a mystery and come up with a fiction that explained it and added…