Though it is rarely baldly stated as such, one can find an implicit assumption in much writing about Rostam, which is as follows: “Rostam is the greatest pre-Islamic hero of Iran; pre-Islamic Iran was Zoroastrian; ergo Rostam was a Zoroastrian hero.” Rostam's strong identification with the defense of Iran, the intertwining of his legend with six generations of Iranian kings in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, and the often emphatic identification of the Iranian monarchy and polity with Zoroastrianism by the country's pre-Islamic dynasties (most emphatically by the Sasanians) have provided the background to this assumption. But it is of course the kings identified by Ferdowsi as pre-Zoroastrian, and unknown to the historical record, whose persons and possessions Rostam protects. Zoroaster's appearance in the Shahnameh, and the royal family's adoption of Zoroastrianism as its faith, mark the moment when Rostam turns away from the Iranian court, and retreats once and for all to his appanage in Sistan. This fact, together with the striking absence of his name from Zoroastrian sources, suggests that the assumption that Rostam was a Zoroastrian hero may well be an unwarranted one.

As others and I myself have suggested elsewhere, the figure of Rostam is, like that of many legendary and mythological figures, in all probability a composite one, combining features from various sources, and from various historical (and prehistoric) periods. There are indications that one source for the Rostam legend was a figure whose legend not only did not identify him with Zoroastrianism but in all likelihood saw him as an anti-Zoroastrian hero, and indeed perhaps as the tragic leader of pre-Zoroastrian Iran's last stand against the new faith. Although the suggestion is obviously highly speculative, it is not perhaps wholly a coincidence that the leader of the Zoroastrian forces, when their turn for a tragic last stand comes at the end of the Shahnameh, is also called Rostam. It is not unknown for a historical event, particularly one thought of as highly significant for the fate of the peoples involved, to be presented in terms of a previous event that might be thought to parallel it.