Reflection of matriarchy myths in the stories of Shahnameh

matriarchy refers to a time in previous millennias when women played a special role in society and without them, the lives of the tribe's members would be in danger. In some of the stories of Shahnameh, one can see signs of the matriarchy era. In this research, an attempt has been made to classify the matriarchy stories of Shahnameh with a morphological approach and to provide a model for these stories. For this purpose, after introducing the characteristics of the matriarchy era, a number of mythological narratives that have similar structures in different cultures and whose similarities are same as the events influenced by the matriarchy period are briefly introduced. In the main part of the research, by examining four stories from Shahnameh, namely “Kaikavus and Soodabeh”, “Siavash and Soodabeh”, “Bijan and Manijeh” and “Esfandiar and Katayoun” in terms of morphology, we have shown a common pattern in them: The presence of the goddess of love in these stories causes death or a trouble for the main character of the story as a vegetation deity, and then a return or, in other words, a resurrection occurs for the vegetation god. All of these events are allegorical narratives for the season rotation as a matriarchy myth.