My lovely land; whom knew your love's worth, once lodged a bow in his life and died forever!
Synopsis of story from wikipedia:
At the end of war between Iran and Turan, Turan had advanced close to the Damavand mountain area. Damavand in Iranian mythology is the very heart and centre of the Middle Clime where Iranian people reside. This Middle Clime or Iran Zamin, incorporating far larger area than present Iran, was reputed to have the best soil, most moderate weather and the greatest of peoples. However to the east of the Iranian plateau lay the vast expanses of the wintry Southern Siberia where the nomadic and covetous Turanians lived and the story of early Iranian civilizations is that of survival against Turan.
The humiliation of conquest was to be complete with a Turanian proposal to limit Iran to the radius of an arrow's flight from the umbilical Damavand. Iranians were to shoot an arrow towards Turan and wherever the arrow landed, the new border between Iran and Turan would be drawn. Âraŝ, an old man, volunteered to shoot the arrow. On the bright morning of Tirgan, Âraŝ stripped naked, faced north, strained his bow as never before, let the arrow fly and, exhausted, became one with the arrow and disappeared. The arrow flew the entire morning and fell at noon (other persian references mentioned the arrow flew 10 days) on the far bank of the Oxus River in what is now Central Asia. The Oxus river is the traditional boundary between the Iranian world and outer central Asia or Turan. Âraŝ's body was never found. There are still stories from travelers who, lost in the mountains, hear Arash Kamangir's voice who helps them find their way and thus saves their lives.
