Iranshahr and the Downfall of the Sassanid Dynasty

Book excerpt: The Sassanid Persia (224-651 CE) has received increasing attention in both Western and domestic scholarship, not to mention within Iranians in general, particularly in the last three decades. The 1979 Islamic Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the theoretic-clerical regime, the apparent failure of its ideologues in their attempt to reinvent an Irano-Islamic identity based on Twelver Shia myth, and the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) were all key stimuli that have contributed to this increased attention towards the revival of a none-Islamic historicity. The present work sheds light on some significant sociopolitical and cultural aspects which played decisive roles in the collapse of the Sasanian Empire, a world's antique power, whose decline--with on exaggeration--rewrote the history of the three Asian, European and African continents. The authors meticulously describe, analyze and evaluate all the major historical events at the eve of the Arabo-Islamic invasions whose prediction, and subsequently underestimation by and rivalry within the Sasanian nobility put a definite end to the last Iranian pre-Islamic monarchy. The reader hence, by studying this book, may reconsider the downfall of Sasanians and the rise of the Islamic Caliphate to be a mere unexpected event; a cliche which still dominates within majority of scholars and those interested in the Middle East and Iranian Studies looking at Sasanians' decline as an incomprehensible surprise.