Derafsh Kaviani

Five priests brought it out of the storehouse, and the army knew. That was the whole announcement. There was no herald and no proclamation, only the sight of the thing coming into the light at the head of the muster ground, and the smell of old tanned hide and warm metal reaching the front ranks before the banner itself did. It took more than one man to carry, and the men who carried it walked slowly, because centuries of jewellers had made it heavy.

Underneath the gold, it was an apron. That is the part the Shahnameh insists on and the part every later teller kept, because it is the only detail in the story that does any work. A blacksmith named Kaveh, whose sons had been taken to feed the serpents growing out of the tyrant Zahhak’s shoulders, walked into the royal court, tore up the document certifying that the king ruled justly, and walked out again with his last boy under his arm. In the street he pulled off his leather apron, drove a wooden spear through it, and raised it over his head. People followed him. He took them north to the Alborz, where a prince of the old royal line called Fereydun was waiting, and Fereydun took the apron off the spear-top of a stranger and made it his own, working gold and brocade into the hide, setting gems along it, hanging tassels of red, of yellow or blue, and of violet from its edge. Then he named it, and the name is where the trouble begins. Derafš-e kāviān can be read as the standard of Kāva, which is what the poem wants, or as the standard of the kavis, an old Iranian word for king, which is what the philology suggests. If the second reading is right, the banner came first and the blacksmith was invented afterwards to explain it.

Nobody agrees on what it was made of. Tabari and Masʿudi say panther skin and give it dimensions, eight cubits by twelve, which comes out around five metres by seven and a half and would have needed a mast rather than a spear. Khwarazmi cites sources saying bear or lion. Maqdisi offers goat or lion. Ibn Khaldun, writing four centuries later still, reports that a magic square of a hundred fields was woven into it in gold, on the understanding that an army carrying such a square could not lose a war. Each king who inherited it added stones, so that the surface accumulated like a reef, and by the time the accounts were written down it was supposed to give off light in the dark.

What it did was simpler than any of that. In battle it stood where the commander stood, and men who had lost their formation looked for it and came back to it. The poem attaches the words auspicious and blessed to it almost every time it appears, the way a modern account might call a warship storied. It travelled only with the king or his general, and never on its own errand.

The older record is silent. There is no Derafsh Kaviani in the Avesta, none in the Achaemenid inscriptions, none in anything Parthian. Several scholars have wanted to find it in a damaged corner of the Alexander mosaic from Pompeii, where Darius III is losing at Issus, but Xenophon says plainly that the Achaemenid royal standard was a golden eagle mounted on a shield and carried on a spear, which is a different object entirely. Arthur Christensen, writing in 1919, concluded that the banner was genuinely Sasanian and that the Kaveh legend was built around it during that dynasty, flattering the powerful house of Karen, who traced their line back to Qaren, son of the blacksmith. Stig Wikander took it further back, to the eight kavis of the Yashts, and argued the thing had become a national emblem under the Parthians. All of them are reasoning backwards from a poem written in the eleventh century about events supposed to have happened before history started.

It ended at Qadisiyya, around 637, when the Sasanian army broke in front of the invading Arabs and the standard was taken by a soldier named Dirar b. al-Khattab. He is said to have been paid thirty thousand dinars for it, against a real value put at 1.2 million, or two million, depending on which historian is doing the estimating. The gems were prised out and shared around. The caliph Omar is said to have had what remained of it burned.

Those numbers should not be trusted, and the scholarship no longer trusts them. The Islamic accounts of the conquest treasures are working hard: the impossible valuations demonstrate how gross Sasanian wealth had become, and the stories of commanders insisting that a priceless object be cut up so every soldier got an equal share demonstrate that the conquerors were not in it for the loot. The banner in those tellings is a moral instrument, not an artefact. The effect, over time, was to detach it from the battlefield altogether, so that by the ninth century Persian-speaking Muslims could reclaim it as a piece of their own splendid past, and modern Iranian nationalists could raise it again as a deliberate rejection of the Islamic centuries. Kurdish nationalists fly it. Tajikistan’s state iconography reaches for it. The familiar version sold today, a star on a purple field with streamers, is a modern design; no medieval source describes a device on it at all.

Its powers were always borrowed. It made an army feel unbeatable, which is not nothing, and it gave scattered men a place to run to, which is worth more than most talismans manage. But it could be carried off by one soldier at the end of a bad day. It could be stripped of the stones that made it worth carrying. It could be burned. It did not save the empire that had spent a thousand years decorating it, and the last thing anybody did with it was set fire to a blacksmith’s apron.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Derafsh Kaviani?

The Derafsh Kaviani is the legendary royal standard of the Sasanian kings of Iran. In Persian myth it began as the leather apron of the blacksmith Kaveh, raised on a spear as a signal of revolt against the tyrant Zahhak, and was then adopted by the prince Fereydun and decorated with gold, brocade and jewels. It served as the royal banner of Iran until the Arab conquest in the seventh century.

What does the name Derafsh Kaviani mean?

The Persian derafš-e kāviān can be translated either as “the standard of Kāva”, meaning the blacksmith, or as “the standard of the kavis”, using an old Iranian word for king. Scholars generally favour the royal reading, which would mean the banner’s name came first and the blacksmith was supplied later to explain it. The same object is also called the royal standard, the standard of Jamshid and the standard of Fereydun.

What was the Derafsh Kaviani made of?

The sources disagree. The Shahnameh says a leather apron on a wooden spear, later covered with gold thread, brocade, gems and tassels of red, yellow or blue, and violet; Tabari and Masʿudi describe panther skin about five metres by seven and a half; Khwarazmi reports bear or lion skin and Maqdisi goat or lion. Ibn Khaldun adds that a hundred-field magic square was woven into it in gold, which was supposed to make the army carrying it unbeatable.

What happened to the Derafsh Kaviani?

It was captured at the battle of Qadisiyya around 637, when the Arab armies defeated the Sasanians, and fell to a soldier named Dirar b. al-Khattab. He was reportedly paid thirty thousand dinars for it, against claimed values of 1.2 or even two million. Its jewels were removed and the caliph Omar is said to have had the remainder burned.

Is the Derafsh Kaviani mentioned in ancient Persian sources?

No. There is no reference to it in the Avesta, in Achaemenid inscriptions, or in Parthian material. Arthur Christensen argued in 1919 that the banner was a genuine Sasanian standard and that the Kaveh legend grew up around it during that period, connected to the prestige of the noble house of Karen, who claimed descent from Kaveh’s son Qaren.

Related Entries

Kaveh the Blacksmith, Zahhak, Fereydun, Rostam, Simurgh, Div, Homa, Shahbaz, Verethragna, Ahura Mazda, Angra Mainyu, Mithra, Anahita