Introduction
Iraj is the youngest son of Fereydun, given rule over Iran, the choicest portion of his father's divided kingdom. His murder by his jealous elder brothers Salm and Tur is one of the great founding tragedies of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, the grievance from which the epic's long-running conflict between Iran and Turan directly descends.
Family
The favoured inheritance
When Fereydun divided his kingdom among his three sons, he gave Rome and the West to Salm, Turan (Central Asia) to Tur, and Iran itself, the most fertile and prestigious portion, to his youngest son Iraj, whose gentleness and virtue Fereydun particularly favoured.
Murder
Salm and Tur, resentful of their younger brother's superior portion, conspired against him. Iraj, learning of their jealousy, offered to give up his own claim to Iran for the sake of peace between the brothers, a gesture of remarkable humility that nonetheless failed to satisfy his brothers' resentment; they murdered him regardless, in most versions sending his severed head back to their grieving father.
Legacy
Iraj's murder becomes the Shahnameh's founding wound, the grievance that fuels the long war between Iran (whose later kings and heroes descend, through Iraj's line, from Manuchehr) and Turan, a conflict that continues across many generations of the epic's subsequent narrative.