The Arrow of Arash
The arrow shot by Arash the archer from the summit of Mount Damavand to fix the frontier between Iran and Turan, a flight said to have been blessed by the giving of his own strength, so that his body wasted as the arrow flew. Reaching the far bank of the Oxus at noon, the arrow ended the war between the two kingdoms and fixed the boundary for the people of Iran. The story is known from Avestan references and from Ferdowsi and other Persian sources, and the arrow's course, hundreds of miles from the Elburz peaks to the Amu Darya, has been endlessly debated and romanticised. The twentieth-centur