The Pit on the Garden Path

The Shahnameh opens him as a young Arab prince, son of a just and pious king with a thousand milch cattle, and it gives him a friend. The friend swears him to secrecy and then tells him the throne should be his. The boy balks at his own father's blood and is called a perjurer for balking. So a covered pit is dug on the garden path the king walks at dawn to bathe before his prayers, and the king falls into it and breaks his back. Ferdowsi will not quite let the crime rest there: no son does this, a sage says in the verse, and if it looks as though he did, look on the mother's side.