Salm ( fa, سلم) is a character in the Persian epic

Shahnameh The ''Shahnameh'' or ''Shahnama'' ( fa, شاهنامه, Šāhnāme, lit=The Book of Kings, ) is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 5 ...

. He is the oldest son of legendary hero and king Fereydun. It is believed that his name was given to him by his father, after Salm chooses to seek safety and run instead of fighting the

dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted a ...

that had attacked him and his brothers (the dragon was Fereydun himself who had disguised himself to test his sons). When Fereydun decides to divide his kingdom among his sons, he gives Salm

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

and West. Salm and his brother Tur become jealous of their younger brother Iraj. They combine their forces against him and eventually murder the young prince. Years later Iraj’s grandson Manuchehr avenges his grandfather’s death by killing both Salm and Tur.

Name

English scholar

Harold Walter Bailey Sir Harold Walter Bailey, (16 December 1899 – 11 January 1996), who published as H. W. Bailey, was an English scholar of Khotanese, Sanskrit, and the comparative study of Iranian languages. Life Bailey was born in Devizes, Wiltshire, an ...

(1899–1996) derived the base word from

Avestan Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...

''sar-'' (to move suddenly) from ''tsar-'' in Old Iranian (''tsarati, tsaru-'', hunter), which also gave its name to the western Avestan region of ''Sairima'' (''*salm'', ''– *Saⁱrmi''), and also connected it to the 10–11th century AD Persian epic ''

''s character "Salm".

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References

External links

A king's book of kings: the Shah-nameh of Shah Tahmasp
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Salm Pishdadian dynasty Mythological princes {{Shahnameh-stub

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