Dsemschid (Jamshid), a Babel era hero or Iranian imitation of King Solomon?

by Damien F. Mackey “In this profile Solomon resembles another mythic king whose rise and fall is told in another book in Meḥmed's library at Topkapı: Jamshīd, the culture hero of Abū’l-Qāsim Firdawsī's Iranian epic Shāhnāma”. Carlos Grenier The first time that I ever heard of this character with the impossible name of Dsemschid was in reading stigmatist Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich’s supposed visions of the Old Testament. I had never heard of Dsemschid, who does not appear in either the Bible, or in any history of which I am aware. Who was he? Below one will find Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich’s detailed account of Dsemschid, “one of the grandsons of Thubal”, an antediluvian patriarch. Just yesterday (22nd April, 2025), I came across Dsemschid’s name in the variant form of Jamshid, a figure from Iranian mythology, who, some think, was King Solomon. Thus Carlos Grenier writes in his article: Solomon, his temple, and Ottoman imperial anxieties Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2022 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bulletin-of-the-school-of-oriental-and-african-studies/article/solomon-his-temple-and-ottoman-imperial-anxieties/6647CBD2FB994F8E80D29594F088548B Abstract Several works focusing on the complex figure of Solomon appeared between 1450 and 1580, each offering variations on the themes of empire-building, sedentarization, sacral kingship, and technological change.The Dürr-i Meknun, written around the time of the conquest of Constantinople, uses Solomon to illustrate the risks of urbanization, imperial hubris and potential tyranny. The second, the Süleyman-name by the technically inclined author Uzun Firdevsi, portrays Solomon in the image of Sultan Bayezid II. The prophet, using his bureaucratic capacities, enacts Ottoman dreams of control over the eastern Mediterranean. Finally, the accounts given of the deeds of Sultan Süleyman, notably the reconstruction of the Temple Mount and the construction of the Süleymaniye complex in Istanbul, show the Solomonic myth consciously enacted by the state itself. These sources trace a trajectory whereby anxieties surrounding the transformations of early modernity are expressed and worked through by means of the vocabulary of a prophetological sacred history. …. In his library in Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1451–81) kept a copy of the Testament of Solomon, an anonymous Greek text of disputed date.Footnote1 It tells of the Biblical Solomon's encounters with demons and spirits and closes with a cautionary tale in which the prophet-king falls in love with a princess from a pagan land. This pagan princess says she will not marry him unless he worships her gods, which Solomon, as prophet of the one God, refuses to do. She insists and lays before the king “five grasshoppers, saying ‘Take these grasshoppers, and crush them together in the name of the gods Raphan and Moloch; then I will sleep with you’”. Solomon confesses, “And this I actually did. And at once the Spirit of God departed from me … Wretch that I am, I followed her advice … and my spirit was darkened, and I became the sport of idols and demons”.Footnote2 Elsewhere in Topkapı's library were preserved closely related stories. Several versions of the ubiquitous medieval collections of prophet tales known as Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyā (“Tales of the Prophets”) present Solomonic narratives derived in part from the sources of the Testament. Emerging out of a body of lore on pre-Islamic prophetology collectively termed isrā’īliyyāt (“Israelite lore”),Footnote3 the Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyā of al-Thaʿlabi and al-Kisā’i tell of a pagan princess whom Solomon had married, and who was secretly devoted to the cult of her own father whom she had re-imaged as an idol of gold in her private palace.Footnote4 The wise vizier Asaf discovers this and informs Solomon, who, distraught, loses his divine guidance as the demon Sakhr steals the king's signet ring and sits on his throne. Exiled from kingship and prophecy, the disgraced Solomon is forced to repent fully for his wife's paganism before he can regain his throne. The Solomon of the Qiṣaṣ of Ibn ʿAsākīr hews even more closely to that of the Testament: the king sacrifices a locust to his wife's idols.Footnote5 As for the Quran itself, the standard by which Muslim readers would measure the authenticity of the others, Solomon is rehabilitated,Footnote6 but not before he is for a time made absent from his throne, replaced by a “mere body”.Footnote7 This exiled Solomon, whose love for his wives leads him to dabble in pagan worship and to rush towards a hubristic fall, is based on the canonical Solomon of the Hebrew Bible. “As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods …”, reads 1 Kings, and God resolves to take his kingdom away from him.Footnote8 This complex Biblical Solomon presents to the Jewish and Christian exegete a certain problem: the ultimate builder, possessed of wisdom and kingly virtues, nonetheless succumbs to a temptation that squanders his gifts.Footnote9 In this profile Solomon resembles another mythic king whose rise and fall is told in another book in Meḥmed's library at Topkapı: Jamshīd, the culture hero of Abū’l-Qāsim Firdawsī's Iranian epic Shāhnāma. “[Jamshīd cried] ‘Who would dare say that any man but I was king?’ All the elders inclined their heads … By saying this he lost God's farr, and through the world men's murmurings of sedition grew … Jamshīd's days were darkened, and his world-illuminating splendor dimmed”, writes Firdawsī.Footnote10 For this reason, Jamshīd and Solomon were commonly interpreted by Muslims from India to the Ottoman lands as two names for the same person.Footnote11 Indeed, the conflation of Solomon and Jamshīd seems to have created in the minds of Muslim commentators the same problem that vexes Biblical exegetes. How could Solomon and Jamshīd have been the same, when the latter clearly sinned? How can a glorious king and prophet fail so spectacularly? Although the fifteenth-century Persian historian Mīrkhwānd absolves Solomon of Jamshīd's sins by noting the many centuries that separate the two,Footnote12 Solomon, in the imagination of many, had absorbed Jamshīd's darker aspects. Seen together, the several Solomon stories that shared the shelves of Sultan Meḥmed's library speak with deep multivalence. While remaining the ultimate archetype of sacral kingship and the overseer of monumental urbanism, Solomon presents at the same time a counter-narrative critical of monarchy. In showing Solomon succumbing to the allure of power as his domain expands to pagan territories and as his household grows to include polytheist women, the story seems to give voice to an awareness of dangers of imperial expansion and the centralization that complements it. The story alludes to the precarity of the imperial model, always at the verge of a fall, a fall precisely connected to the cosmopolitanism of empire. The strength of empires in accommodating difference here leads to their disintegration. …. [End of quote] Now, According to Blessed Anne Catherine Emmrich’s completely different account of Dsemschid (in Life of Jesus Christ): …. I saw them, Thubal's fol¬lowers, on a high mountain where they dwelt one above another in long, low huts like arbors. I saw them digging the ground, planting, and setting out trees in rows. The opposite side of the mountain was cold. Later on the whole region became much colder. In consequence of this change in the climate, one of the grandsons of Thubal, the ancestor Dsemschid, led them further toward the southwest. With a few excep¬tions, all who had seen Noe and had taken leave of him died in this place, that is, on the mountain to which Thubal had led them. They who followed Dsem¬schid were all born on the same mountain. They took with them the few surviving old men who had known Noe, carrying them very carefully in litters. When Thubal with his family separated from Noe, I saw among them that child of Mosoch, Hom, who had gone with Thubal into the ark. Hom was already grown, and later on I saw him very different from those around him. He was of large stature like a giant, and of a very serious, peculiar turn of mind. He wore a long robe, he was like a priest. He used to go alone to the summit of the mountain and there spend night after night. He observed the stars and practiced magic. He was taught by the devil to arrange what he saw in vision into a science, a religion, and thereby he vitiated and counteracted the teaching of Henoch. The evil inclinations inherited from his mother mingled in him with the pure hereditary teach-ings of Henoch and Noe, to which the children of Thubal clung. Hom, by his false visions and revela¬tions, misinterpreted and changed the ancient truth. He studied and pondered, watched the stars and had visions which, by Satan's agency, showed him deformed images of truth. Through their resemblance to truth, his doctrine and idolatry became the mothers of heresy. Thubal was a good man. Hom's manner of acting and his teaching were very displeasing to Thubal, who was greatly grieved to see one of his sons, the father of Dsemschid, attach himself to Hom. I heard Thubal complaining: "My children are not united. Would that I had not separated from Noe!" Hom conducted the waters of two springs from the higher part of the mountain down to the dwellings. They soon united into one stream which, after a short course, swelled into a broad torrent. I saw Dsemschid and his followers crossing it at their departure. Hom received almost divine homage from his followers. He taught them that God exists in fire. He had also much to do with water, and with that viscous root from which he derived his name. He planted it, and solemnly distributed it as a sacred medicine and nour¬ishment. This distribution at last, became a ceremony of religion. He carried its juice or pap around with him in a brown vessel like a mortar. The axes were of the same material. They got them from people of another tribe that lived far away in a mountainous country and forged such implements by means of fire. I saw them on a mountain from which fire burst forth, sometimes in one place, sometimes in another. I think the vessel which Hom carried around with him was made out of the melted metal or rock that flowed from the mountain, and which was caught in a mold. Hom never married nor did he live to be very old. He published many of his visions referring to his own death. He himself put faith in them as did also Derketo and his other followers at a later period. But I saw him dying a frightful death, and the evil one carried him off body and soul; nothing remained of him. For that reason his followers thought, that, like Henoch, he had been taken up to a holy dwelling place. The father of Dsemschid had been a pupil of Hom, and Hom left him his spirit in order that he might then be the one who would succeed him. On account of his knowledge, Dsemschid became the leader of his people. They soon became a nation, and were led by Dsemschid still further south. Dsems¬chid was very distinguished; he was well-educated, and had embraced Hom's teachings. He was unspeak-ably lively and vigorous, much more active and better also than Hom, who was of a dark, rigid disposition. He practiced the religion formulated by Hom, added many things of his own thereto, and gave much atten¬tion to the stars. His followers regarded fire as sacred. They were all distinguished by a certain sign which denoted their race. People at that time kept together in tribes; they did not intermingle then as now. Dsem¬schid's special aim was to improve the races and maintain them in their original purity; he separated and transplanted them as seemed best to him. He left them perfectly free, and yet they were very sub¬missive to him. The descendants of those races, whom I now see wild and barbarous in distant lands and islands, are not to be compared with their progeni¬tors in point of personal beauty or manly character; for those early nations were noble and simple, yet withal most valiant. The races of the present day are also far less skillful and clever, and possess less bodily strength. On his marches, Dsemschid laid the foundations of tent cities, marked off fields, made long roads of stone, and formed settlements here and there of cer¬tain numbers of men and women, to whom he gave animals, trees, and plants. He rode around large tracks of land, striking into the earth with an instrument which he always carried in his hand, and his people then set to work in those places, grubbing and hack¬ing, making hedges and digging ditches. Dsemschid was remarkably strict and just. I saw him as a tall old man, very thin and of a yellowish-red complex¬ion. He rode a surprisingly nimble little animal with slender legs and black and yellow stripes, very much like an ass. Dsemschid rode around a tract of land just as our poor people go around a field on the heath by night, and thus appropriated it for cultivation. He paused here and there, plunged his grubbing axe into the ground or drove in a stake to mark the sites of future settlements. The instrument, which was after¬ward called Dsemschid's golden plough share, was in form like a Latin cross. It was about the length of one's arm and, when drawn out, formed with the shaft a right angle. With this instrument, Dsemschid made fissures in the earth. A representation of the same appeared on the side of his robe where pockets gen¬erally are. It reminded me of the symbol of office that Joseph and Aseneth always carried in Egypt, and with which they also surveyed the land, though that of Dsemschid was more like a cross. On the upper part was a ring into which it could be run. Dsemschid wore a mantle that fell backward from the front. From his girdle to the knee hung four leath¬ern flaps, two behind and two before, strapped at the side and fastened under the knee. His feet were bound with leather and straps. He wore a golden shield on his breast. He had several similar breastplates to suit various solemnities. His crown was a pointed cir¬clet of gold. The point in front was higher and bent like a little horn, and on the end of it waved some¬thing like a little flag. Dsemschid constantly spoke of Henoch. He knew that he had been taken away from the earth with¬out undergoing death. He taught that Henoch had delivered over to Noe all goodness and all truth, had appointed him the father and guardian of all bless¬ings, and that from Noe all these blessings had passed over to himself. He wore about him a golden egg shaped vessel in which, as he said, was contained something precious that had been preserved by Noe in the ark, and which had been handed down to him¬self. Wherever he pitched his tent, there the golden vessel was placed on a column, and over it, on ele¬gant posts carved with all kinds of figures, a cover¬ing was stretched. It looked like a little temple. The cover of the vessel was a crown of filigree work. When Dsemschid lighted fire, he threw into it something that he took out of the vessel. The vessel had indeed been used in the ark, for Noe had preserved the fire in it; but it was now the treasured idol of Dsemschid and his people. When it was set up, fire burned before it to which prayers were offered and animals sacri¬ficed, for Dsemschid taught that the great God dwells in light and fire, and that He has many inferior gods and spirits serving Him. All submitted to Dsemschid. He established colonies of men and women here and there, gave them herds and permitted them to plant and build. They were now allowed to follow their own pleasure in the mat¬ter of marriage, for Dsemschid treated them like cat¬tle, assigning wives to his followers in accordance with his own views. He himself had several. One was very beautiful and of a better family than the oth¬ers. Dsemschid destined his son by her to be his suc¬cessor. By his orders, great round towers were built, which were ascended by steps for the purpose of ob¬serving the stars. The women lived apart and in subjec¬tion. They wore short garments, the bodice and breast of material like leather, and some kind of stuff hung behind. Around the neck and over the shoulders they wore a full, circular cloak, which fell below the knee. On the shoulders and breast, it was ornamented with signs or letters. From every country that he settled, Dsemschid caused straight roads to be made in the direction of Babel. Dsemschid always led his people to uninhabited regions, where there were no nations to expel. He marched everywhere with perfect freedom, for he was only a founder, a settler. His race was of a bright red¬dish yellow complexion like ochre, very handsome people. All were marked in order to distinguish the pure from these of mixed descent. Dsemschid marched over a high mountain covered with ice. I do not remem¬ber how he succeeded in crossing, but many of his followers perished. They had horses or asses; Dsem¬schid rode on a little striped animal. A change of cli¬mate had driven them from their country. It became too cold for them, but it is warmer there now. Occa¬sionally he met on his march a helpless tribe either escaping from the tyranny of their chief, or awaiting in distress the advent of some leader. They willingly submitted to Dsemschid, for he was gentle, and he brought them grain and blessings. They were desti¬tute exiles who, like Job, had been plundered and banished. I saw some poor people who had no fire and who were obliged to bake their bread on hot stones in the sun. When Dsemschid gave them fire, they looked upon him as a god. He fell in with another tribe that sacrificed children who were deformed or who did not reach their standard of beauty. The lit¬tle ones were buried up to the waist, and a fire kin-dled around them. Dsemschid abolished this custom. He delivered many poor children, whom he placed in a tent and confided to the care of some women. He afterward made use of them, here and there, as ser¬vants. He was very careful to keep the genealogical line pure. Dsemschid first marched in a southwesterly direc¬tion, keeping the Prophet Mountain to the south on his left; then he turned to the south, the mountain still on his left, but to the east. I think he afterward crossed the Caucasus. At that period, when those regions were swarming with human beings, when all was life and activity, our countries were but forests, wildernesses, and marshes; only off toward the east might be met a small, wandering tribe. The Shining Star (Zoroaster), who lived long after, was descended from Dsemschid's son, whose teachings he revived. Dsemschid wrote all kinds of laws on bark and tables of stone. One long letter often stood for a whole sen¬tence. Their language was as yet the primitive one, to which ours still bears some resemblance. Dsem¬schid lived just prior to Derketo and her daughter, the mother of Semiramis. He did not go to Babel him¬self, though his career ran in that direction. I saw the history of Hom and Dsemschid as Jesus spoke of it before the pagan philosophers, at Lanifa in the isle of Cyprus. These philosophers had in Jesus' presence spoken of Dsemschid as the most ancient of the wise kings who had come from far beyond India. With a golden dagger received from God, he had divided off and peopled many lands, and had scattered bless¬ings everywhere. They questioned Jesus about him and the various wonders related to him. Jesus responded to their questions by saying that Dsem¬schid was by nature a prudent man, a man wise ac¬cording to flesh and blood; that he had been a leader of the nations; that upon the dispersion of men at the building of the Tower of Babel, he had led one race and settled countries according to a certain order; that there had been other leaders of that kind who had, indeed, led a worse life than he, because his race had not fallen into so great ignorance as many others. But Jesus showed them also what fables had been writ¬ten about him and that he was a false side picture, a counterfeit type of the priest and king Melchisedech. He told them to notice the difference between Dsem¬schid's race and that of Abraham. As the stream of nations moved along, God had sent Melchisedech to the best families, to lead and unite them, to prepare for them lands and abiding places, in order that they might preserve themselves unsullied and, in propor¬tion to their degree of worthiness, be found more or less fit to receive the grace of the Promise. Who Melchisedech was, Jesus left to themselves to deter¬mine; but of one thing they might be certain, he was an ancient type of the future, but then fast approach¬ing fulfillment of the Promise. The sacrifice of bread and wine which he had offered would be fulfilled and perfected, and would continue till the end of time.