An Investigation of Characters in Shahnameh Based on the Psychological Theories of Kretschmer and Sheldon

Ernest Kretschmer was a German psychiatrist who classified people with regard to their body features such as shoulder width, thinness or fatness into 3 main types named pyknic (stocky, fat), asthenic (thin, small, weak), and athletic (muscular, large–boned). Later on, William Sheldon who was an American psychologist and numismatist developed a new version of somatotypology by classifying people into endomorphic, mesomorphic, and ectomorphic types, based on statistical methods and the growth of embryonic layers. The main characters in Shahnameh being over 57 ones can be put into this sort of classification. The major part of this study deals with the descriptive analysis of the main characters in Shahnameh in terms of the above-mentioned typology. In another words, the characters of Shahnameh are introduced as the Iranian models for the theories of personality developed by Kretschmer and Sheldon. It seems that the above theories are not confined to the 20th century, but rather they have been relevant and practical even many centuries ago. The results of this study showed that in Shahnameh, Firdowsi believes in correlation between the temperament and physiology type of his characters such that there is a meaningful compatibility between their behavior and apparent look.