The first ten lines praise the beauty and skill of a harpist who is playing at the autumn festival of Mehrgan.
The poet goes on to encourage Manuchehr to enjoy the feast and ends with a prayer that his career will continue to be successful and glorious.
The title Espahbad or Espahbod was given to an army commander or minor ruler not directly appointed by the Sultan, but who was a vassal like Manuchehr or his father.
[6] It was possible for the same person to be both a soldier and to play the harp, as this verse of Farrokhi, in another qasida using the rhyme -ang and playing on the two meanings of čang, makes clear:[7] Both Kazimirski and the author of EIr (2004) translate Manuchehri's poem as if the harpist is male, and this also accords with the Arabic masculine adjective ma'šūq "beloved" used in verse 4, as opposed to the feminine ma'šūqe.
A farsang, which Ancient Greek authors called a parasang, is a unit equivalent to the distance travelled in an hour, still used today.
In modern times it is defined as a distance of 6 km (about 3.7 miles), but in the past it varied with the terrain.
[11] It is a frequent metaphor of Persian love poetry that the curly locks (zolf) of the beloved keep the lover in bondage.
E. G. Browne relates a story of how Sultan Mahmud cut off the locks of his favourite slave boy Ayaz when drunk and was in a very bad mood the following day.
Bādrang is a citrus fruit or orange, such as even today commonly grows in Mazandaran Province;[15][16] it is also a kind of cucumber.
Mehregan is a Zoroastrian autumn festival which at this period was celebrated as widely as Now Ruz, but later, after the Mongol invasions (13th century), became less popular.
[18] Fereidun was a mythical ancient Iranian king, whose life is described in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh.