Bahram Gur between Al-Gharor and Al- Ayman

Abstract

Bahram Gur  is one of the Sassanid kings,  ruled between (420-430 AD) .His Life was full of adventures and  heroic deeds, including the adventures and the heroic actions of fishing  and hunting, as depicted by the epic of Haft Peykar (by :Nizami Ganjavi), which was concerned with the story of his life.He also  tended to drink and have fun as was reported  inFerdowsi`s   Shahnamaand the Haft Peker epic. The two dealt with two important lines from the life of Bahram Gur: the stories  about Bahram Gur’s marriage to the daughters of the kings of the seven regions and the building of the seven palaces which  were varied in terms of colour .

By pursuing and reading a lot of sources about Bahram Gur, I found through his stories that he is a firm believer in the Lord. That explains why in  most of the wars in which he won, he was not  not present, as he used to stress out of unwavering  belief in God , that the Creator will  grant his armies victory  . Indeed, this  used to happen and this indicated his strong  faith. In contrast, the researcher  found him cruel and merciless in the hunt , a conduct bearing  witness  to  his arrogance. Then , the land  of the Sassanids  was afflicted by drought and hunger during  the period of his reign , but he passed it successfully, unscathed, and he attributed that success to God Almighty .                                                    

King Bahram`s vanity and faith will be studied  in  this research in order  to reach a conclusion through answering the following two questions: Is he a real  believer to the extent of utter  faith? Or is he conceited to the point of heresy?. Some details of his life will also be studied through deeds that indicate his deep and firm faith in the Creator. In contrast, the vanities in his life as a great king  and a leader of  a great empire will be investigated . Due to the contradictions and strange stories in his life , Bahram has been  the focus of attention of some researchers in some international and Arab universities .