The River of Silver characters

Appears from the start

The Nahid healer at the centre of the trilogy: born to Banu Manizheh and a human father, raised as an orphan thief and con artist in Ottoman Cairo, and brought to the djinn city of Daevabad to take up a name, a family and a set of obligations she never asked for.

Also known as Alizayd al Qahtani, Ali

Appears from the start

The devout younger prince of Daevabad, raised at the Citadel to command his brother's armies and drawn instead to the cause of the city's part-human shafit. Marid magic left in him after the events of the first novel permanently changes what he is.

Also known as Darayavahoush e-Afshin, the Afshin

Appears from the start

The Nahids' warrior, called the Scourge of Qui-zi by the tribes he fought during the war that ended Nahid rule. Enslaved by the ifrit for centuries, killed on Daevabad's lake and raised again by Banu Manizheh, he spends the trilogy carrying out orders he becomes steadily less able to justify.

Also known as Banu Manizheh

Appears from the start

The most gifted Nahid healer of her generation, believed murdered by ifrit for twenty years and in fact alive, working toward the recovery of the city her family lost. Nahri's mother and Jamshid's, and the trilogy's central antagonist.

Appears from the start

Ghassan's elder son and emir of Daevabad, a diplomat and a drinker who is far fonder of company, poetry and wine than of power, and who loves Jamshid e-Pramukh.

Also known as Jamshid e-Pramukh

Appears from the start

Kaveh e-Pramukh's son, an archer and Muntadhir's closest companion, and, unknown to him for most of the trilogy, Banu Manizheh's son and Nahri's half-brother.

Appears from the start

Ali's mother, an Ayaanle noblewoman of Ta Ntry and Ghassan's queen, whose money, family connections and willingness to scheme repeatedly change what her son is able to do.

Appears from the start

Ghassan's daughter and Ali's older sister, the most politically adept of the Qahtani children, who works from inside the court in ways neither of her brothers can.

Also known as Ghassan al Qahtani

Appears from the start

King of Daevabad through the first two novels, bearer of Suleiman's seal, and the head of the family that took the city from the Nahids fourteen centuries earlier. He holds six mutually hostile tribes together by knowing exactly what each person under him has to lose.