Rustam’s red hair is a familiar feature of illustrated Shahnama manuscripts, but it is not an uncontested detail in Ferdowsi’s poem. Art historian Peyvand Firouzeh traces the red-haired hero across manuscript paintings while noting that two lines sometimes used to describe his hair in the birth story are disputed. The safest answer is that red hair became a strong pictorial convention; its origin and meaning are still uncertain.
Who is Rustam in Ferdowsi’s Shahnama?
The Shahnama, or “Book of Kings,” is the Persian epic completed by Ferdowsi around 1010. The University of Washington Press describes it as more than 80,000 lines of verse, tracing pre-Islamic Persian history from legendary beginnings to the Arab conquest in the seventh century. Rustam is one of its central heroes, whose adventures include the Seven Labors, the tragic encounter with his son Sohrab, and his later conflicts and death.
![Three Illustrated Leaves from the Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp. London 13 April 2000. Sale L00500A. [Auction catalogue].](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41L66a0Aw3L._SL160_.jpg)
Readers may also encounter the spelling “Rostam” in scholarly books and catalogs; “Rustam” is used here. The hero’s story sits within a much larger epic about kings and dynasties, but Rustam’s exploits often take the narrative center stage.
Why does Rustam have red hair in miniature paintings?
Red hair is a recurring visual convention in illustrated Shahnama manuscripts. Firouzeh identifies red-haired Rustam figures in surviving manuscripts from the fourteenth century onward, across places including Baghdad, Shiraz, Tabriz, Isfahan, Gilan, Mazandaran, and workshops in India. In the material she surveyed, all four surviving Shahnamas made under the Inju dynasty depict him with red hair. The feature remains common in fifteenth-century manuscripts and appears proportionally less often in Safavid depictions.
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These observations describe the surviving examples discussed by Firouzeh, not a complete census of every illustrated manuscript. She writes that “a complete survey would be necessary” to understand the convention’s full extent. The hair is one of Rustam’s visual identifiers, alongside his tiger-skin clothing and leopard headwear. His appearance can change with age and scene: some images show him without facial hair as a youth, while others give him white hair in old age.
Does Ferdowsi’s poem say Rustam was a redhead?
Not in a way that is settled across editions. Firouzeh reports two couplets in some versions of Rustam’s birth episode that describe the newborn’s hair as red and blood-like. Editors disagree about whether those lines belong in the text: Khaleghi-Motlagh excludes them from his critical text, Dabir Siyaqi includes them, and another edition records them in a footnote. Firouzeh says she had not found an illustrated manuscript containing the lines, including manuscripts that paint Rustam with red hair.
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That gap matters. The paintings cannot simply be treated as illustrations of an agreed textual description, and the disputed couplets do not establish that Ferdowsi definitively made Rustam a redhead. Firouzeh puts the distinction this way: “Unlike the tiger-skin coat (babr-i bayan), which is mentioned by Ferdowsi in the Shahnama, and similar to the leopard headwear, it has been noted in passing that there is no indication of Rustam’s red hair in the text of the Shahnama (Swietochowski, 186).” The qualification is that some textual versions preserve the contested birth-story lines.
What might the red hair mean?
No explanation is established. Firouzeh points to earlier scholarship that has discussed possible associations between red hair, bloodshed, and strength, and identifies medieval physiognomy as an avenue for further study. These are hypotheses, not a settled symbolic code. The available evidence supports the existence of a visual convention more firmly than any account of why artists adopted it.
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Which English Shahnama should you read?
Choose by scope and reading style. A translation intended for general readers is not the same thing as a full, unabridged rendering, and a focused translation of Rustam and Sohrab is not a substitute for the whole epic.
| Edition | Best suited to | Format and scope |
|---|---|---|
| Dick Davis, Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings | Readers who want an accessible route into the broader epic, including Rustam’s stories. | Iranica describes the 2006 translation as aimed at nonspecialists, primarily prose with selected verse. It covers the epic in one volume, but some passages are summarized or omitted to keep the book manageable. |
| Jerome Clinton, The Tragedy of Sohrab and Rostam | Readers focused on the encounter between Rustam and Sohrab. | The University of Washington Press describes it as a blank-verse translation with the Persian text facing the English. |
| Warner brothers’ translation | Readers seeking a complete English translation of the epic. | Iranica’s survey identifies this nine-volume translation as the only complete English translation. “Complete” should not be confused with an unabridged rendering in every other edition. |
| Khaleghi-Motlagh critical edition | Readers able to work with the Persian text who need a critical edition. | The Persian Heritage Foundation records this eight-volume edition, based on early manuscripts including the Florence manuscript, as published from 1987 to 2005. |
For this red-hair question, the key distinction is between what paintings repeatedly show and what an edited text securely states. The illustrations make Rustam’s red hair recognizable; the poem’s relevant lines remain disputed, and the reason for the visual tradition remains open.
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