Abstract
The myth of the founding hero ("The Hero who was exposed at birth") plays an important and even structuring role in the Shāhnā̄me. The type, well attested in the ancient world (see particularly The Legend of the Birth of Sargon), regularly consists of seven elements: 1) the motivation for the future abandonment of the child, 2) the birth of a child of noble extraction, 3) the preparations for the child's exposure, 4) the child's exposure in nature/water, 5) the child protected or fed/allocated in an extraordinary way, 6) the discovery and adoption, 7) the hero's exploits.
In the Shāhnā̄me, there are at least four attestations (Fereydūn, Zāl, Kay Khosrow, Dārāb), as well as several allusions and incomplete sequences (e.g. Kay Kobād). Comparative study of this corpus may note, for example, the relevance of the remarks of Sām, father of Zāl, who compares his son to a demon's child (the founding hero is often the son of a god, a demon or an angel, etc.). Moreover, the protective animal, the Simorḡ, is reminiscent of the eagle in the stories of Gilgamos and Achaemenes (in Elian).
