Persion Poet Shirin wrote a legend about Mount Behistun that states that a man named Farhad was told if he cut away the mountain he could marry his lover, but after he got through removing half the mountain he found out his loved died and then he died too.
The most important work about him is Khosrow and Shirin by Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi, but the story was well known in Persian literature long before Nezami. Farhad is a sculptor who falls in love with Shirin, the princess of Persian Armenia. Khosrow asks Farhad to carve a staircase in a mountain and tells him if he manages to do so, Khosrow will give up Shirin. 
