The role of power and heredity in choosing an heir to throne in Shahnameh

From Iranians’ perspective Shahnameh is a book of politics and the manner of ruling a country and via portraying the destiny of heroes and kings in fact gives a lesson to dictators and world worshippers informing them of punishments and consequences of their sins and oppressions imposed.  The purpose of this article is to study from different angles how states are formed.  Aspects such as Divine Farr, Royal Farr (heredity , blood relationship in royal generation),  power and having social status as important factors in forming sovereignties.  For this purpose the conflict of power and heredity is studied in more than fifty kings.  The main pillar of sovereignty in Shahmameh is power and varieties of its manifestations.  In other words, Shahnameh is the struggle of powers that is the battle of justice against injustice. According to the beliefs of certain communities in Shahnameh women whether in a position of a reign or as a queen are transmitters of heredity and agents who transfer royal blood and power in the infrastructure of the sovereignty.  Traces of the ancient tradition of matriarchy can be seen and in this regard women mostly appear in the role of a mother, a daughter or a sister as the agents who transmit heredity example being the marriage of Zahak with Jamshid’s sisters, the tale of Siavash, and the tale of King of Yemen, Sarv who refused to let his daughters marry Feraydun’s sons.  The writers of this article employed a comparative analytic method to study and compare different reigns and to deal with the conflict of power and heredity as one of pillars of their sovereignty.