He Divided It in Three

He reigns five hundred years without giving a day to evil, and then the Shahnameh has him do the thing the rest of the poem is about. He tests his three sons in the shape of a dragon, names them for how each behaves, and splits the world: the west to the eldest, the eastern lands to the second, and Iran itself, with the throne and the seal, to the youngest. The eldest cannot bear it, and works on his brother until the brother does the killing; the youngest son's head comes back to his father in a gold casket. The long war between Iran and Turan that fills the rest of the heroic history is downstream of that morning.