Farídún-i-farrukh farishta na-búd:
Zi mushk ú zi ‘anbar sarishta na-búd.
Bi-dád ú dahish yáft án níkú'í:
Tú dád ú dahish kun: Farídún tú'í!

“Ferídún the fortunate was not an angel:
He was not compounded of musk and of ambergris.
By justice and bounty he attained such excellence:
Be thou just and bountiful, and thou shalt be a Ferídún!”

Yet for all this he was not exempt from bitter trouble in his own house. Having given his three sons in marriage to the Ferídún's three sons. three daughters of Sarv (or Surv, according to al-Bundárí's Arabic prose translation of the Sháhnáma, made about A.D. 1223),* he divided between them his vast dominions, giving to Íraj, the youngest, the land of Írán (Érán-shahr). His other two sons, Salm and Túr, regarding this as the choicest portion of the heritage, were filled with envy, and eventually, by a dastardly stratagem, succeeded in compassing the death of their younger brother. His body is brought to Ferídún, who bitterly laments his death, and swears vengeance on Túr and Salm.

Some time after the murder of Íraj, his wife Máh-áfaríd bears a son, named Manúchihr, who, on reaching mature age, Manúchihr. attacks and kills his wicked uncles, and sends their heads to Ferídún. Soon after this, Ferídún abdicates in favour of Manúchihr, and shortly afterwards dies.

The three sons of Ferídún may be roughly described as the Shem, Ham, and Japhet of the Íránian legend; and from this Afrásiyáb. fratricidal strife date the wars between the sons of Túr (the Túránians or Turks), long led by the redoubtable Afrásiyáb, and those of Íraj (the Íránians) —wars which fill so great a part not only of the legen­dary, but of the actual history of Persia. At this point the The Sístán legend. National Epic begins to be enriched by a series of episodes whereof the Avesta shows no trace, and which are connected with a series of heroes belonging to a noble family of Sístán and Zábulistán, viz., Naríman, Sám, Zál, Rustam, and Suhráb. Of these Rustam Rustam. is by far the most important. For centuries he plays the part of a deus ex machinâ in extricating the Persian Kayání monarchs—especially Kay Qubád, Kay Ká'ús, and Kay Khusraw—from their difficulties and dangers, while, with his good horse Rakhsh, he plays the chief part in a series of heroic adventures in combats with men and demons. His death is only compassed at last by a treache- Isfandiyár. rous stratagem of his brother, after he has slain Isfandiyár (Isfandiyádh, Spandedát), the son of Gushtásp (Víshtáspa), the champion of Zoroaster. Spiege. supposes* that Rustam's name was deliberately suppressed in the Avesta as an adversary of “the good Religion,” but Nöldeke* thinks this improbable, and inclines rather to the view that the Sístán legend to which he and his ancestors belong was almost or quite unknown to the authors of the Avesta. At any rate Rustam's name has only been found in one or two places in late Pahlawí writings, though his doughty deeds were known to the Armenian Moses of Khorene in the seventh or eighth century, and the stall of his horse Rakhsh was shown about the same period to the Arab invaders of Sístán.* Moreover, the Persian general who was defeated and slain by the Arabs in the fatal battle of Qádisíyya (A.D. 635) was a namesake of the great legendary hero.

The death of Rustam brings us nearly to the end of the Kayání, or purely mythical period of the Epic. Isfandiyár, End of the purely mythical part of the Epic. the son of Gushtásp, leaves a son named Bahman (Vôhumanô), who succeeds his grandfather. In the later construction of the Epic this Bahman was identified with Artaxerxes (Artakhshatr, Ardashír) Longi- Bahman Arta­xerxes Longi­manus. manus (<text in Greek script omitted>, Diráz-dast),* who was known through some Syriac writer drawing his material from Greek sources. Bahman, according to the practice of the Magians, married his sister Khumání (Humáy), Khumání. who bore him a posthumous son named Dárá. Her brother Sásán, who had looked forward to inheriting the crown, was so overcome with disappointment Dárá. at seeing his sister made Queen-Regent that he retired to the mountains amongst the Kurds and became a shepherd.* From him, as the Persians believe, Sásán. descend the Sásánian kings, who are uniformly regarded as the legitimate successors of the Kayánís, and the restorers of their glory. Their founder, Ardashír Bábakán (Artakhshatr son of Pápak), is represented as the great-great-great-grandson of Sásán the son of Bahman the son of Zoroaster's patron Gushtásp. By thus represent- Ancestry of the Sásánian kings. ing their pedigree, the Sásánians strove to establish their position as the legitimate rulers of Persia, and “defenders of the faith” of Zoroaster—a character which, with few exceptions, they strenuously exerted themselves to maintain.

We have seen that the Parthians Ashkániyán, Mulúku'ṭ-Ṭawá'if ) occupy hardly any place in the Epic, and it might The Alexander­legend. therefore be supposed that we should find therein an almost direct transition from the second Dárá (son of him mentioned above) to the Sásánians. At this point, however, an entirely foreign element is intro­duced, namely, the Alexander-romance, which, reposing ultimately on the lost Greek text of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, is preserved in Syriac, Egyptian, Abyssinian* and Arabic, as well as Modern Persian, versions. The fate of Alexander in Alexander in the Zoroastrian tradition. Persian legend is curious. In the genuine Zoro­astrian tradition (as, for example, in the Pahlawí Arda Víráf Námak),* he appears as “the accursed Alexander the Roman,” who, urged on by the evil spirit, brought havoc, destruction, and slaughter into Persia, burned Persepolis and the Zoroastrian Scriptures (which, written with Alexander in the Sháhnáma. gold ink on 12,000* prepared ox-skins, were stored up in the Archives at Stákhar Pápakán), and finally “self-destroyed fled to hell.” Later, the picturesque contents of the romance of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, and a desire to salve the national vanity com­parable to that which tempted the authors of former English histories to treat William the Conqueror as an English king, led the Persians, including Firdawsí, to incorporate Alexander in the roll of their own monarchs, a feat which they achieved as follows. The first Dárá demanded in marriage the daughter of Philip of Macedon, but afterwards, being displeased with her, divorced her and sent her back to her father. On her return she gave birth to Alexander, who was in reality her son by Dárá, though Philip, anxious to conceal the slight put upon his daughter by the Persian King, gave out that the boy was his own son by one of his wives. Hence Alexander, in wresting Persia from his younger half-brother, the second Dárá, did but seize that to which, as elder son of the late King, he was entitled, and is thus made to close the glorious period of the ancient Píshdádí and Kayání kings. In the third Alexander in the Sikandar-náma. version, represented by the Sikandar-náma of Nidhámí (twelfth century), he is identified with a mysterious personage called Dhu'l-Qarnayn (“The two-horned”) mentioned in the Qur'án as a contemporary of Moses (with whom some suppose him to be identical), and, instructed by his wise and God-fearing tutor Aristotle (Aristú, Aristátalís), represents the ideal monotheistic king, bent on the destruction of the false creed of the heathen Persians. It is important to bear in mind these different conceptions of Alexander, and also the fact that he does not really survive in the genuine national remembrance, but has been introduced, together with Darius, from a foreign source, while the national memory goes no further back than the Sásánians.