The roles and Functions of giving identity to women in the Ferdowsi's Shahnameh

The present study investigates the identity-constructing roles and functions attributed to female characters in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, through the lens of sociological concepts—a subject that has remained largely unexplored in scholarly literature. The research aims to address the question of which narrative roles and sociocultural functions ascribed to women in the Shahnameh contribute to the construction of their social identity. The source is Ferdowsi's Shahnameh—edited by Khaleghi Motlagh.The research method is qualitative, and the technique used is content analysis. The research framework is a conceptual model. To analyze women's social identity, we used social role and function. the identity functions of Shahnameh women in the six roles of child, kinship, wife, mother, political and economic have been investigated. The results of the present study show that The important function of women in Shahnameh is to help men and accompany men with identity. The most identifying roles for women in Shahnameh are the two roles of wife and child. Women in the Shahnameh can be classified into two categories of women with good functions and negative functions based on their function. The good functions of women in all roles are loyalty, sacrifice, courage, cooperation, compassionate guidance of men and secrecy. The negative functions of women in the role of wife and children are conspiracy and deception of the opposite man, opposition and disloyalty to the father after marriage, killing the wife and killing the rival woman.