Azaghâl

Lord of Belegost

Azaghâl ruled Belegost, the northern of the two Dwarf-cities of the Blue Mountains, in the middle years of the First Age. This atlas follows the usual convention that the Dwarves of Belegost were the Broadbeams and those of Nogrod the Firebeards; the published texts name the cities but never assign the house-names, so Azaghâl's house is a matter of reasonable inference rather than statement. His people were builders and smiths who had delved the halls of Menegroth for Thingol long before, and who under Azaghâl had close dealings with the Noldor of the east, above all with Maedhros and Caranthir, whose lands lay nearest the mountain-passes.

The Dragon-helm

The smith Telchar of Nogrod made for Azaghâl a helm of grey steel bearing a gilded image of the dragon Glaurung, then newly appeared out of Angband. It was proof against any weapon and made its wearer terrible to look on, but it was too heavy for most Men and Elves. Azaghâl gave it to Maedhros as a reward for saving his life on the Dwarf-road when he was ambushed by Orcs, and Maedhros gave it to his brother Fingon, who passed it to Hador of Dor-lómin. In the house of Hador it became the Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin and the heirloom of Túrin.

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad

When Maedhros formed his union against Morgoth, the Dwarves of Belegost sent a great force, and Azaghâl led it himself, the only time in the histories of the First Age that a Dwarf-lord marched to war beside the Elves. The Dwarves of Belegost went into battle in tall masks of iron and steel, and it was these masks that saved the field on the day the battle turned: when Morgoth loosed Glaurung and the dragon-fire scattered Elves and Men, the Dwarves could stand in the heat, and Azaghâl's people surrounded the dragon and hewed at him. Glaurung's scales turned most blows aside, and in his fury he crushed Azaghâl under his body. The dying lord thrust a knife into the dragon's belly, and the wound was deep enough that Glaurung fled the field, and the other beasts of Angband went with him. The Dwarves lifted their lord's body and carried it out of the battle in a slow march, chanting a dirge, and no enemy dared to attack them as they went. That withdrawal, and the retreat of Turgon's host, were the only ordered movements left on a field of ruin.

Legacy

Azaghâl's death cost Belegost its king, and the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains took no further part in the wars against Morgoth, though they kept faith with the Elves; when Nogrod later marched against Doriath, Belegost refused to join and tried to prevent it. The wound he gave Glaurung was the first serious injury the dragon ever suffered and foreshadowed the stroke by which Túrin, wearing the very helm Azaghâl had given away, would kill him at Cabed-en-Aras. The Dwarves did not tell outsiders their own history, and so Azaghâl is remembered chiefly in the Elves' account of the battle that broke them; but that account gives him and his people the honour of the day.

Crushed beneath Glaurung at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad in F.A. 472 after stabbing the dragon; his people carried his body from the field singing.