Episode 164 – Island of Horrors III – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 164 Show Notes

Source: Middle Eastern Folklore

This week on MYTH, we’ll catch up with our old pal Sinbad for his third legendary voyage. You’ll learn that you should really take the hint after the ocean tries to kill you twice, that it pays to know your classic mythology (even inside other mythology), and that it rarely ends well to be a nameless red shirt on a dangerous voyage with a folk hero. Then, in Gods and Monsters, a cousin of the great roc will teach us the secrets of modern obstetrics. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 164, “Island of Horrors III”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Back in Episode 152, we followed up with Scheherazade’s tale of Sinbad the Sailor. In it, we followed poor Sinbad the porter as he met rich Sinbad the Sailor. The latter man, well into his twilight years by now, paid the former man quite handsomely to come back two days in a row to hear the tales of his first two great voyages at sea. As has become their way now, the elder Sinbad asked the younger Sinbad to come back again the next day for a third story of the third great voyage he had made to seek his fame and fortune on the open sea. As had happened to him during the first two voyages, Sinbad the Sailor had sworn off ever setting foot on a boat ever again, vowing to live a safe, boring life in Baghdad. And, as before, he proved to be a goddamned liar. Sinbad is many things, but boring simply isn’t one of them.
It was an even shorter time that Sinbad managed to keep his feet firmly planted on terra firma before wanderlust began to tug at his heart again. He had amassed great wealth during the trade of his first two voyages, which allowed him to live a very luxurious life. It was easy enough to forget just how harrowing adventuring really is when you’re not in the thick of things. Our roving sailor soon found himself amassing a great selection of the rarest and choicest merchandise that Baghdad had to offer and arranging for his third voyage with a group of merchants. He sent the goods ahead to Balsora in modern Iraq. From that port, the merchant fleet set sail for the wider world yet again.
Things went swimmingly at first. The ships traveled without any major incident from city to city. They traded their goods at each port of call, amassing significant wealth for all involved with each new location. Of course, this wouldn’t be one of the legendary voyages included in the 1001 Nights if all went smoothly the whole time. After many long weeks of travel, the fleet found itself in open ocean far from any shore when a terrible storm caught them unawares. The winds seemed to almost leap from calm to raging in mere moments, driving the ships far off their plotted course. The gale lasted for several days before finally dying down, leaving the Sinbad’s ship alone in strange waters that none of them recognized. The boat had taken damage during the storm, forcing them to limp to shore in the natural harbor of a strange, unfamiliar island. Surely only good, fun things can happen here.
The captain grew more and more apprehensive as they pulled in and weighed anchor, looking around him for recognizable landmarks. Finding them did not make him feel better. “I would rather have come to anchor almost anywhere other than this fucking island. It and all its neighbors are inhabited only by hairy savage beasts. If they spot us, they are certain to investigate. Once that happens, we’ll have to calmly accept whatever happens. They swarm like thrice-damned locusts, and if one falls in battle, the rest will overwhelm us and make a speedy end to all and sundry. Unfortunately, we don’t have any choice. Our ship can’t possibly make it to anywhere else in the condition that it’s in. Let’s hope we can get our repairs done and slip away with them none the wiser.”
As you might expect, such a proclamation didn’t exactly make people feel at ease with the whole ‘stranded’ situation. The warning proved timely however as, well before repairs were finished, something could be seen moving through the trees beyond the harbor. Out of the underbrush swarmed a massive horde of beings that appeared to be some kind of sentient ape. The original story calls them dwarves, but apart from the obvious bigotry, these violent creatures really seem more like especially vicious chimpanzees. They were two feet tall and completely covered with reddish fur, but smarter than your average ape. They chattered to each other in what was unmistakably a language, but not one anyone on the ships had ever heard before.
The swarm of monstrous beasts hurled themselves into the waves and swiftly surrounded the anchored vessel. They then hauled themselves out of the water, swarming up the sides of the ship, swinging hand over hand from the ropes and gangplanks. They moved with such speed and agility on their watery climb that they almost seemed to fly out of the ocean and onto the deck. It was a terrifying sight, made all the more horrifying for the captain’s warning to make absolutely no hostile move. None dared to move a muscle to hinder them nor even to speak a word to try and deter them. Whatever mysterious mission they were on would simply need to be allowed to play out however it would.
The purpose of this expedition soon became clear to the horrified sailors. The red-haired apes hoisted the sails and cut the anchor, freeing the damaged ship. These they guided smoothly to a nearby island and then drove the ships ashore, beaching them. The original crew was then herded onto the island and was forced to watch as the diminutive sailors pushed the ship back out onto the ocean and sailed away. The crew was now marooned on an island somehow even more dangerous and horrible than the one they had originally had the misfortune to sail into.
The sea no longer offered any hope of escape, so the deeply depressed crew trudged inland. All of their supplies had been on the ship and the tiny, hairy pirates had left them with nothing but the clothes on their backs. There wasn’t really much hope of escape or rescue in the island’s interior either, but that damned survival instinct was kicking in. Thus it was that they gathered whatever fruits, mushrooms, and other sundries that could be found along their way to stave off hunger.
They trudged this way for a time before, on the horizon, they spotted what appeared to be a magnificent palace rising up from the distant forest. It was still a long ways off, but it very clearly offered the best hope of rescue so they all agreed to head that way instead. It was every bit as far away as it appeared but luckily, it was no mirage. As they neared, the structure came into better focus and was revealed as a mighty castle, its lofty towers and stout walls built from dark stone. The main gate, constructed of an ebony wood of some sort, was unguarded when they approached. Hesitantly, they pushed on the doors and found that they swung open beneath their hands. It all seemed eerily still and empty and entirely too easy, but it wasn’t like the marooned men were spoiled for other options. Peering about nervously, they headed inside.
The gates opened onto a large courtyard that, like the gates themselves, were utterly abandoned. All was still and silent, save for the sound of their own footsteps. It was incredibly disquieting, but there was no choice but to press on so they crossed and headed inside the grand hall of the keep. There, they finally found the castle’s inhabitants. Or at least, what was left of them.
Sinbad and the others stopped in horror at the threshold as their eyes adjusted to the dim light inside. One side of the massive room was entirely given over to countless fire pits set up with wooden roasting spits above each, though none was currently burning. The other side was piled high with bones – human bones. They had been stripped bare of flesh and many showed signs of scorching or being gnawed upon. Some had been broken clean open and the soft marrow inside scraped out. Overcome with despair, the small crew sank trembling to the ground, huddled together for safety as they tried to process what they were seeing.
Most of the day had been spent getting ship-jacked and stranded, followed by the long hike to the castle, so the sun was setting fast. What finally roused the depressed bunch back to their senses was a loud noise out in the courtyard. It was all the more shocking given how silent and empty the whole place had been up until now. Before they could scramble back to their feet to flee, hide, something, the heavy doors of the great keep burst open with a resounding crash and in strode a terrible giant. He was as tall as a palm tree (so probably around 25 feet) with a form as pitch black as a starless sky and he had one great eye burning in his forehead like a flaming coal. That’s right – much like our old pal Odysseus back in Episode 72C, our intrepid sailors have accidentally wandered into the home of a man-eating cyclops.
The great brute’s teeth were long and wickedly sharp like the fangs of a great beast. They were all on display as he grinned huge and horribly, his lower lip drooping all the way down to his chest. He had massive ears like those of an elephant, which covered his massive shoulders, and his nails were as long and razor-sharp as the talons of the roc from Sinbad’s last voyage back in Episode 152. The sight of the charnel house all by itself had been enough to stupefy this unlucky crew, so the monstrous visage of this hulking doom was enough to drive them all senseless. They fainted en masse, collapsing to the ground like the corpses they were well on the way to becoming.
By the time the humans recovered their senses, the cyclops had spied them with his one huge eye and was squatting down to examine them up close. With his enormous hand, he seized Sinbad by the scruff of the neck and lifted him up for a better view. The giant turned our hero this way and that, pinching his skin and sniffing deeply before tossing him back into the group with annoyance. The wandering sailor assumed that the giant had found Sinbad to be too lean and gangly to be a proper meal, all bone and gristle. One by one, the cyclops lifted and examined each of them in turn before settling on the captain as the fattest and juiciest among them. The terrified man began screaming in abject fear as the cyclops stood and carried him, struggling ineffectually, towards the nearest fire pit. The screaming stopped abruptly as a wooden skewer was shoved down the captain’s throat to rip through his guts and out his ass, killing him horribly. Kindling a fire, the monster began turning the captain’s corpse on its spit to roast for dinner.
The dead man’s horror-struck crew mates did their best not to smell the horribly delicious aroma of roasting meat nor to listen to the terrible sounds of his flesh being stripped from his bones and devoured greedily. Once he had eaten, the cyclops yawned and stretched out beside the fire to sleep, snoring like a raging thunderstorm. Unlike Polyphemus, he did nothing to prevent his prey from leaving, but unlike Odysseus and the Greeks, Sinbad and his men had no way off the island. No one slept more than a few fitful winks the whole night through as they huddled together on the far side of the hall from their captain’s butcher. After a seemingly endless night, dawn finally broke on the grisly scene, making it no easier to endure. Their tormentor awoke with a snort, stretched hugely, and then wandered out of the castle again, leaving the humans behind to do whatever the fuck they felt like. He clearly didn’t see them as a threat to him nor as capable of escaping the island.
The crew stayed huddled there in the hall for a long time, certain that their doom had only pretended to leave but no, he was really gone. Once they were certain, they wailed out their misery and despair, filling the hall with their cries bemoaning their terrible fate. Sinbad says that it never occurred to the crew to try and kill the cyclops even though they were many and he was few. Odysseus and his men had considered and abandoned murder as a plan because Polyphemus’ death would have left them trapped in the cave with no way to move the boulder blocking the door. Sinbad and his crew simply didn’t have the stones to try. To be fair, these were merchants, not soldiers, and the story says that it would have been extremely difficult to have done even if they had thought of it.
Also, they weren’t completely trapped, so they did what was probably the most logical thing to do – they fled the castle and headed out across the island to search for somewhere to hide. They gathered more fruit as they searched, but that was the only victory to be had that day. The island was not terribly large and, other than the castle itself, offered little in the way of shelter. There was nowhere they could flee to that their pursuer could not easily find and retrieve them to be dinner at his leisure. They were trapped with their cannibalistic doom. As night began to fall, the dejected men returned to the castle to sleep. It was the only place even remotely protected from the elements, and it wasn’t like sleeping rough would save them anyway. They would just have longer to scream before they died.
At sunset, the giant returned as he had before (no clue what the great lout is up to during the day or where he’s doing whatever it is). After striking a fire in one of the pits, he grabbed the next-fattest of the crew, skewered him alive, and began roasting him for dinner. Again he fell asleep as soon as he had finished eating, snoring fit to wake the damned (which the men in that black castle certainly considered themselves). At sunrise, he left them alone again to contemplate their inevitable doom by devouring. Once they were alone, the men talked over their horrible fate to try and wrack their brains for any new idea. Several were so despondent that they suggested going to the cliffs. Better a clean death by leaping into the pounding surf far below than the horrible impalement that awaited them after a slow eternity of waiting.
They probably would have gone that route too if good old Sinbad hadn’t been along. He wasn’t ready to give up the ghost just yet, and what’s more, he had a plan. “Listen, my brothers – I think we can still get out of this. You remember that driftwood we saw flung up on the beach? I think there’s enough of that lying around for us to make a couple of rafts, enough to carry all of us if we’re careful. Best case, they take us somewhere better than here where we can actually be rescued. If we’re lucky, we might even spot a passing ship that we can reach by raft. Worse case, we still get a watery death that’s cleaner than the one that monster has in mind.”
There were no objections to Sinbad’s scheme. Any chance was better than none, and he was right that there was literally nothing to lose by trying it. They spent the rest of the day collecting driftwood and building rafts, lashing it all together with vines gathered from the forest. When they were done, they had enough three-man rafts to carry everyone away from that fatal island. To avoid arousing suspicion, they all headed back to the castle at sunset. I’m not entirely sure why they didn’t just get on their rafts right then and there and set out. Maybe the tide was coming in rather than out, making escape impossible. Maybe they were afraid the cyclops would be able to swim in and catch them, or throw rocks from the shore if they weren’t all the way gone before he noticed.
Whatever the reason, another of their number was again chosen and skewered, dying a horrible, agonizing death while his companions tried to ignore his screams. As he had both times before, the giant yawned and stretched once he had finished eating, and then lay down on his back to snore the night away. It seems that our dear Sinbad is indeed familiar with our even older friend Odysseus because he’s about to take a page out of the Greek’s book of tricks. Gathering nine of his bravest companions, Sinbad handed out spits for everyone to harden in the fire that was still burning. They crept up quietly on the cyclops and, at the signal, they all plunged their red-hot skewers into the cyclops’ eye. He sat up with a terrible screeching scream, arms flailing in search of his attackers. The men had been prepared for this and had all fled in different directions as soon as the blow was struck. They scattered and hid in corners and other out of the way places that he wasn’t likely to stumble over accidentally or squish them with a luckily-placed foot.
The cyclops stumbled around the great hall in search of those who had blinded him, but in vain. Without the benefit of his sight, he was large, clumsy, and easily avoided. Eventually, he happened upon the door out of the castle and, feeling pain and fear for the first time in his life, the giant fled screaming from his attackers. That was the moment they’d been waiting for. Fleeing the castle (but in a different direction than the blinded cyclops), the surviving crew headed for the beaches and their rafts. Rather than launch immediately however, Sinbad and the others held a conference. “Let’s wait and see if that asshole’s screams stop before sunrise. We need enough light to see anyway, and the tides will be with us then. Maybe we did enough damage for him to lay down and bleed out. If so, then we can stay here on the island, which will be a lot safer than the open ocean without a man-eating giant on it. If not, we set sail.”
Those who could lay down to get some rest while others kept a watch. As the sun rose, the giant’s howls did indeed stop but the heavy echoing crash of his footsteps did not. In the faint dawn light, they could see their terrible enemy approaching the beach. Worse, he wasn’t alone. There were more of his kind on this island, and two of them almost as large were supporting their kinsman towards them with a crowd of the smaller cyclopes trailing behind them. This was a worse situation than they’d even had nightmares about, so the open ocean was clearly the better option. I’m not sure where the cyclopes were hiding when the humans did their search, but whatever. The humans launched their rafts out onto the waves and began paddling away from that island of horrors.
Either the cyclopes had also read their Greek classics or (more likely) they were just very similar in nature to Polyphemus and his ilk: seeing their prey escaping, the giants seized the largest rocks and boulders they could find and hurled them towards the fleeing rafts. They couldn’t swim but, as tall as they were, they could wade out deep into the water to get a better shot. Their aim was surprisingly good for creatures with no depth perception – every raft save Sinbad’s alone was either crushed outright or swamped by the crash of near misses. Through a combination of skilled rowing and amazing luck, they led the rickety fleet and narrowly avoided all rocks hurled in their direction. Only our intrepid sailor and the two companions on his raft survived; all others drowned trying to escape the island of the cyclopes.
Having finally gained the open sea, the little raft was now at the mercy of the wind and waves. Rowing with driftwood did little against the unbridled fury of the sea and besides, the three survivors had no idea where to go anyway. They conserved their strength for clinging to their bobbing raft as it was buffeted this way and that for the rest of the day and that night. When dawn rose again on the exhausted, bedraggled trio, it revealed another island not far off. Grateful for any dry land, they paddled that way and soon made it ashore.
The first order of business (once they were able to pry their exhausted bodies off the sand anyway) was food. They hadn’t eaten in a day and a half; luckily, this island seemed to be just as verdant as the one they had left and there were plenty of wild fruit trees to eat from. Once their hunger was sated, the bedraggled survivors found a shady spot to lay down and get some much-needed rest. Their nap was cut short by a loud rustling noise coming towards them from somewhere out of sight. Sitting up, Sinbad spied an enormous serpent slithering across the beach towards them. He called the alarm and the other two men struggled to their feet, exhaustion and exposure still hanging heavy on them. They weren’t fast enough. The snake overtook the men before they could get away. With a single lightning-fast strike, it seized one of the three men in the scaly coils of its body and began to slowly crush the life out of him as he screamed.
With no weapons in their hands and terror in their hearts, Sinbad and his other companion left their friend to his doom, fleeing as fast as they could. The sailor spared one last look over his shoulder as he ran, seeing the snake crush the life out of his doomed companion and begin to devour him whole. There weren’t an abundance of places to hide from some terrible snake akin to the Hollywood version of the anaconda, but they found a tall tree. Gathering as much fruit from the surrounding trees and bushes as they could carry, the two men scrambled up as high as they could.
A lot of nothing happened the rest of that awful day and, as night fell, the two men managed to find fitful slumber in the boughs of that tree. Some hours later, Sinbad was startled awake by the horribly familiar sound of that enormous snake slithering their way. It circled around the tree, hissing dreadfully as its tongue flicked in and out of its mouth, tasting the air. It seemed to sense the presence of its escaped prey directly overhead. To their horror, the two men discovered that this type of snake is in fact a very fast climber. It slithered up the tree and seized the first man it came to, which happened to be Sinbad’s one remaining companion. It grabbed the poor man with another lightning-quick strike, this time opting to swallow the screaming man alive. Satiated now with two grown men in its belly, the snake slithered off, leaving Sinbad half-dead with terror.
When the sun rose in the morning with no further sign of the dread serpent, Sinbad climbed back down the tree. He couldn’t very well stay there forever and it wasn’t like it had offered any protection anyway. The sole surviving sailor had little hope of escaping the doom that had overtaken everyone else on this cursed expedition, but that damned survival instinct is a hell of a drug. His mind working feverishly, Sinbad concocted another survival scheme. He spent his day gathering dry branches, reeds, and thorns, binding them all together into makeshift logs. These he placed in a ring around the tall tree, stacking more on top of these until he had a rough lean-to big enough to crouch inside. Night was falling by the time Sinbad finished and he crawled inside, sealing himself in with the last few bundles. It was a nerve-wracking, sleepless night as he waited for the snake to come back to finish the job.
Sure enough, in the wee hours of the morning, it did so. Eager for another easy meal, the great serpent slithered across the beach towards the place where Sinbad hid. Hissing and flicking its black tongue, the creature circled the thorny enclosure looking for a way in. Our hero was terrified that it would find one, knowing how crude and unstable were the building materials he’d been working with but his luck held. As the first faint light of dawn lit the horizon, the snake gave it up as a bad job and slithered away to hide out in its den for the day.
Sinbad wasn’t sure how much longer he could survive like this. The poisonous breath of the man-eating serpent had left him feeling dizzy and hopeless. How many more nights could his rickety structure possibly protect him? How long until he too was devoured alive by the foul beast? Maybe he should have listened to his now-dead companions who suggested leaping from the cliffs and into the sea. Surely suicide would be painless compared to that. His shaky steps carried him to the rocky cliffs, intent on hurling himself back into the surf to drown. From his high vantage point, Sinbad was able to see something on the horizon – a ship, and drawing closer! Unwinding his turban into a long cloth, Sinbad leapt and yelled and waved until the ship’s crew spied him and turned towards the island, launching a dinghy to rescue the marooned sailor.
Before long, Sinbad found himself standing (still rather unsteadily) on the deck facing a crowd of curious mariners and merchants. He was hailed with a barrage of questions about who he was and how he had come to be stranded on that desolate island that all careful sailors avoided. After sharing the whole sordid tale that we’ve just heard, the captain invited his guest to a sumptuous dinner of all the finest foods available on the ship. Afterwards, he generously gifted Sinbad one of his own coats since his own fine clothes had become filthy, shredded rags after all of his adventures on the two deadly islands.
The ship was on its own merchant voyage, so Sinbad traveled along from port to port until they arrived at Salahat, a land renowned for its sweet-scented sandalwood trees. The ship anchored at this latest port and our narrator stood on board and watched as the other merchants offloaded with their goods to sell or trade in Salahat’s markets. The captain sauntered up beside him. “You said you’re a merchant, right? Could you do me a favor? One of my passengers died on this trip, leaving behind the goods he’d meant to trade. Could you go and trade it for him? That way, I can provide his family with a proper bequeathment for this poor lost soul when we return. Naturally, it’s only fair that you keep a percentage of what you make since you’ll be doing all the work.” Others had performed this exact last request for Sinbad himself when he was thought dead on his first voyage, so he considered it an honor to pay it forward. Besides, he’d never been a man to sit by idly when there was money to be made.
With a smile, the captain indicated the dead man’s bales of packed goods and sent for the man whose job was to keep the ship manifest. “And who were these goods originally registered to?” The captain put a friendly hand on his new friend’s shoulder. “They were under the name Sinbad the Sailor!” At that, our Sinbad started with shock and gave this captain a more careful once-over. Looking again, he realized that this man was in fact the captain of the ship from his second voyage. He’d changed much in the intervening months, enough that Sinbad hadn’t recognized him at first. To be fair, he was hardly expecting such a serendipitous reunion. For his part, this kindly captain thought Sinbad dead and gone, so it was hardly a surprise he hadn’t thought this marooned stranger in a totally different part of the ocean could possibly be the same man.
“You say that these goods used to belong to a man called Sinbad the Sailor, captain?” The captain nodded solemnly at his theoretically new friend, still not recognizing him. “Indeed. He set sail from Baghdad and joined up with my ship at Balsora. By terrible accident, he was left behind on a deserted island when we stopped to fill up our water barrels. It wasn’t until four hours after we departed again that we noticed he was missing. By that time, the winds had picked up quite sharply, making it impossible to go back and search for him. A terrible tragedy.” “So you assume he’s dead then?” “He must be. No one could survive on such a desolate island alone for very long. His death weighs on my soul.” “Well good news, my friend – I survived that affair after all. After falling asleep while you were topping up, I awoke to find myself utterly alone. You won’t believe what happened between being abandoned and now being rescued by you many months later and many miles away.”
After recounting his whole wild story of his second and now third voyages, the captain was amazed at Sinbad’s cunning and tenacity. Now that he knew who he was looking at, it was clear to him that this was indeed Sinbad the Sailor back from the dead. “It is good to see you alive, my friend! Saving you now does much to soothe a guilty conscience. Take now your goods and the profit I have been able to make from it since you were left behind and go forth and prosper!” Sinbad was only too happy to do so. As you may recall from Episode 152, he’d managed to make a tidy sum on his second voyage off the diamonds he found even without his lost goods. Having them returned to him now was a nice boon to make up for what the hairy pirates had stolen away.
In Salahat and in the port cities that came after, Sinbad traded his goods for cloves, cinnamon, and other spices, turning a tidy profit. He saw a tortoise whose shell was twenty cubits in diameter (about 30 feet) as well as a fish that looked like a cow with skin thick enough to make shields (likely a manatee as they are native to West Africa). Another time, he saw a great fish that almost appeared to be a camel in both shape and color (but I’m guessing it wasn’t just a swimming camel). By this winding way, he made the return trip once more to Balsora and from thence to Baghdad once more. Yet again he had managed to build great wealth out of his shrewd trades and lucky finds. Upon his return to the city, he gave generously to the poor and used what was left to buy more land to add to his previous holdings as well as investing wisely.
But by this time, it was getting late back in the present day. The elder Sinbad bestowed another 100 gold pieces on the younger porter and once again invited him to come back the next day for the story of the fourth voyage. Three days of being an attentive audience for an engaging if unbelievable story had already made him more money than lugging and hauling for the rich ever had. His long years of scrimping and saving and slaving away were already beginning to fade away and feel like a bad dream.
He hurried home once more to deliver the money to his wife, who of course agreed that he had to stay on this gravy train as long as possible. They’d made 300 gold so far, which was a small fortune. Thus it was that, early the next day, Sinbad the porter rose and went again to the home of Sinbad the Sailor. But alas you and I will have to wait until some other time to hear of the fourth voyage. But while we wait for the ever-restless sailor to set sail once more, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s legendary creature is the simurgh.
This mythic bird, whose name derives from an ancient Persian one meaning ‘30 birds’, arose in Persia around the 10th century BCE. The origin of the name is unknown, but theories include it referring to the simurgh’s age of 30 centuries, its size of 30 meters, or its plumage of 30 colors. Alternatively, it could be more esoteric, referring instead to a wide variety of wise birds as a metaphor for knowledge of distant or perhaps future events. It is generally depicted as a peacock with the head of a dog and the claws of a lion, though it sometimes also has a human face. It is often a metaphor for life or a symbol of immortality since it is said to have lived long enough to see the world die and be reborn three times over. According to at least one story, much like the better-known phoenix, the simurgh is said to periodically die in a great blazing fire only to be reborn anew from the ash.
The simurgh is generally considered to be the monarch of all birds and a benevolent guardian of the natural realms. Having lived for what is effectively an eternity compared to human civilization, it has acquired great wisdom as well as the knowledge of its many accumulated centuries and a familiarity with every language ever spoken. Its feathers are often depicted as coppery in color, but the hue of its plumage is said to shift and change depending on the angle of the light. Those magical feathers are, unsurprisingly, said to have mystical healing properties capable of curing any disease and healing any wound. Its bright, piercing gaze can see through any illusion or subterfuge and its melodious voice is enchanting enough to calm even savage tempers. When I said all languages before, I didn’t just mean human ones – it can speak with any living creature (which also ties into it being the guardian of the natural world).
Having existed since essentially the beginning of time, it naturally features in a number of stories and epics. One of the more famous (and earliest) depictions comes from the epic poem Shahnameh or The Book of Kings, written by Ferdowsi in the 10th century BCE. In it, the Simurgh rescues the infant prince Zal who has been abandoned on a mountain by his father Saam for the crime of having albino hair, assuming the child was the spawn of devils. The compassionate bird raises the child as its own in its nest on Mount Alborz in northern Iran, teaching the young Zal a great variety of skills and wisdom. When Zal reaches adulthood, he leaves the nest literally and metaphorically to return to the human world, becoming a great hero and a benevolent ruler. The great bird gave Zal three golden feathers to burn if he ever needed her assistance on his quest. He fell in love with and married the princess Rudaba. The labor for their first child was long and difficult, and Zal feared that she would die in childbirth so he summoned the Simurgh who taught him how to perform a cesarean section, saving mother and child. Their son, Rostam, eventually grows up to become one of the greatest heroes of Persian folklore.
A less benevolent depiction of the legendary avian appears in the Seven Trials of Esfandiyar later in the Shahnameh. This young man is also a prince fighting in support of the prophet Zarathustra and the spread of Zoroastrianism. In return, Esfandiyar was given the armor of heaven, making him invulnerable, and a chain with the power to bind anyone perfectly, even a powerful magician or devil. He was also granted a divine blessing from the prophet himself that anyone who spilled the prince’s blood would live a cursed life until death and then be consumed by hell afterwards. In the service of this quest, he encountered seven difficult battles (the aforementioned seven labors). The fifth of these is fighting and killing a wicked simurgh and its two offspring (who are not the same as the kind bird from Zal’s section of the tale). I want to come back and cover this epic in more detail at some point, so we won’t get into the rest of the story now.
Given its long history in the Persian empire, it’s no surprise that the Simurgh left a heavy mark on the Arabic speaking world that came after. It became conflated with other mythical birds such as the phoenix, eventually becoming the roc of Sinbad’s second voyage. Maybe our much beleaguered sailor should have tried collecting and burning some of that great bird’s feathers to summon it for assistance. Of course, since the roc doesn’t have the wisdom or the affinity for language of its elder cousin, it might have just eaten him for trying.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on TuneIn, on Vurbl, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Instagram as MythsYourTeacherHatedPod, on Tumblr as MythsYourTeacherHated, and on Bluesky as MythsPodcast. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff.
I’m about to launch a brand-new podcast in early September that we’re in the final stages of prep for. It’s going to be an actual play table-top role playing game show using a variety of systems to tell short arcs (roughly three to five episodes per story) influenced by some of our favorite classic cartoons. The first story of this new show, Saturday Morning Roleplay, will be the Recyclors, a mixture of the Transformers and Captain Planet using the Cartoon Action Hour system. The first episode will be dropping in early September, and when it does, you’ll be able to find it on Facebook at Saturday Morning RPG. Check it out!
Next time, it’s off to the tropical beaches of the Philippines for an isekai love story. You’ll see that sometimes it’s not the sky gods who are assholes, that the secret ingredient to a good meal is a stick, and that true beauty can be blinding. Literally. Then, in Gods and Monsters, when the waves keep you from sleeping, raise an army of crabs. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.