Representation of Iranian Myths in Persian Historical Books

Knowledge of myths and epics is important and necessary to get acquainted with the past culture and civilization of nations. Therefore, it is worth considering the developments that occur in a society’s myths and epics due to political and social reasons and the passage of time. So far, no research has been done aimed at identifying the causes and the changes occurred in the mythological and epical images of Iran in the most important Persian history books from the third century up to the end of the Safavid rule. The results of this study, which was done using the descriptive-analytical method, are: the removal of many ideas of Zoroastrianism from the face of Iranian mythology as a result of Arab domination and the influence of Islam, changes in some of the actions and deeds of Iranian mythological characters and the influence of Islamic teachings on them and their mixing with the Israelites (foreign narratives from Jewish sources), the transformations that took place in the form of characters, stories, and mythological geography, and the mixtures that influenced the Iranian mythology due to the spread of Israelites in the form of contemporaneity, fake lineage, uniformity, and geographical affiliation. Other findings of this study show the influence of the thoughts of the Semitic people on Iranian mythology and the logic of the credibility of the historian’s era on the Iranian narratives, which led to various myths about them.