Sasanian Iran 224-651 Ce: Portrait of a Late Antique Empire

I think that the best way to review this book is to describe what's good about it before going into what's bad. The good: this is basically the only straight history of Sassanian Persia. The Persian Empire as a whole has gotten very little press, and no era more so than the Sassanian one. The Parthians have several books on them (mostly out of date) but the Sassanians are only covered in general histories of Iran (Such as Frye's excellent  Heritage of Persia ) or in foreign language works such as Christensen's 'L'Iran sous les Sassanides' and Schippmann's 'Grundzüge der Geschichte des sasanidischen Reiches.' Obviously this poses a problem to anyone working on them in English. The only other works which deal with them are books on the Romans and Arabs and then only through the lens of these cultures. This book tries to correct that lack and generally succeeds despite its brevity.First off this book really functions best as a companion piece to Dr. Daryaee's other book  Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire . This book offers a pretty straightforward political narrative of the Sassanid era while that book offers a social and economic view. That book includes a summary of the political side too, but it is so brief as to be almost unintelligible. The political narrative here is also fairly brief, though not fatally so. It is unfortunate that the book couldn't be longer (it's only about 100 pages). There is clearly much further that needs saying. However, focusing on what it does have it contains the best overview of Sassanid Persian history that I can find. It is less in depth than I would like (I feel like there was a missed opportunity here) but in general it is complete and provides a solid grounding for further research.  The Cambridge History of Iran  goes more in depth but offers a confusing and dense account of the period. It is also easily sidetracked. This book is a good reference for the political history and offers details on where to search elsewhere for information.A complaint from an earlier reviewer is indeed valid, though I didn't even notice it until he pointed it out. Dr. Daryaee often uses X for Ch (as in loch). Thus Khusrau becomes Xusro. That's a standard use of the letter in Near Eastern linguistics, but it will be confusing for people who've never seen it before. Beginners in other words, which is who this book is designed for. Also appearing is the letter s with an inverted ^ over it. It's pronounced sh. Don't ask why they don't just write sh, it just is that way. Perhaps a pronunciation guide would have helped. This book also features some horribly outdated maps. I believe that they are just photocopies of 19th Century originals. There is only one decent map and it comes at the very end. Better maps are a must for future works in this field.Now for the real problem of the book. It has a definite nationalist agenda. The first chapter is more of a rant about Eurocentrism and Western prejudices than any serious introduction to the subject. In it he makes some seriously unsupportable claims. For example, he states that historians of Iran, Egypt, and Mesopotamia are hopelessly scarce in the West. For Persia he has a point, and perhaps that's why he went so far off base on the other two. But he is off base. Without the efforts of European scholars there would be no histories of Egypt or Babylon. All of the early archaeological work as well as the linguistic decipherment of the ancient languages was done by Europeans. Even today the majority of archaeologists are European and among the countries of the Middle East only Egypt and Turkey have really learned the value of archaeology. Europeans invented, refined, and dominated the field. In short, what he says is not only false but insanely so. A doctor of history cannot possibly be so ignorant. I have no choice but to assume he got so carried away that he just typed the whole thing out in a rage. I turned vainly to the end in the hope that the introduction was written by another author, but to no avail.I have to feel that a lot of this anger comes from his finding that Iranian studies are put in with Near Eastern Languages and Cultures or Civilizations rather than with History. He is also exceedingly annoyed that Greek and Roman history falls under the heading Classics, a fact which annoys me as well. Using this as a basis for a belief in the essential racism of the Western University system however is just wrong. The reason that Persian, Egyptian, Babylonian, etc. history comes under Languages, Anthropology, or Archaeology is because the evidence is primarily archaeological or linguistic. Greece and Rome left behind a great deal of written material and thus come under History (which is why the term Classics throws it all off). If the Western system were truly incorrigibly racist then even cultures with rich written material would also fall under different departments provided they were foreign. Cultures such as China, which is the only other society from the time to leave vast written records. And Africists are among the most sought after historians in the field. So why the fuss?He also rants about Eurocentrism and calls  Black Athena  the 'best historiography of the development of Classical Studies in the past three centuries.' That book is a long discredited attempt to prove that all of European civilization was stolen entire from Egypt. Listing it on page one as a major influence automatically discredits your objectivity before you even start. Then going on to rant about how blind the "New World Order" is to Iranian history and how unimportant and temporarily their period of dominance is only serves to highlight such bias. Rome's fear of Persia cannot be compared to America's fear of Iran since the one derives from their proximity and failures and the other from religious conflicts. I don't think that most Americans are even aware that Persia is the same as Iran. I here feel nothing but embarrassment for the author as this section reads more like one of Ahmadinejad's speeches than the work of an impartial historian. I certainly don't expect an author to remain unenthusiastic or fail to defend his field, but if he can't do that except by denigrating the entire educational and cultural system of his target audience then the problem lies with him, not them.Fortunately such propaganda is mostly contained in the introduction. In the work itself he is better able to maintain the appearance of impartiality. To my surprise he even listed Alexander Severus' campaign against Ardashir as "a conflict which proved to have no clear winner," when he could easily have maintained that it was a Persian victory (as many others do). He is also undecided on Gordian's death which makes me all the more astonished at his introduction. I've seen many writers on the Sassanians maintain that Gordian was killed in battle with Shapur so to find an undecided voice when expecting a fanatical nationalist is quite a relief.So what to make of this book? It's still very good although the nationalistic elements and cultural paranoia are a nuisance. They can however be filtered out as long as you can spot them. If you read a book on Roman history you will be forced to filter out the Roman perspective anyway, so in some sense you're doing the same thing for this book. Nonetheless a modern work has different standards from an ancient one. To spend so much time going on about these things is disgraceful and unprofessional. Fortunately his second book has toned down the rhetoric some which comes as a welcome relief. Books on this subject are simply unavailable anywhere else which makes this work invaluable.

This book attempts to fill a large gap by providing a concise and up-to-date survey of a neglected period and area of the ancient world, and for the most part it succeeds. It helps that the Sasanian Empire is Dr. Daryaee's academic specialty, which allows him to present the story of the Sasanians from their own perspective, not that of the Romans and Byzantines, as is often done. I found the work to be both engaging and illuminating.However, the book also leaves the reader with questions that I think should have been addressed, and that would have strengthened it. I understand that this is a political history, and so social and economic issues will therefore be less of a focus, but to discuss politics without them is also a hazard. Two things in particular would have strengthened the presentation: first, a discussion of the Sasanian importance on the Silk Road, which could include contacts with Central Asia, India and China, as well as the Mediterranean world. While there might not be much political history available from our sources there, some information could certainly be derived from other material, both archaeological and textual.Second, I would have appreciated more discussion of the importance of Zoroastrianism in Sasanian Iran, particularly since it was the Sasanians who gave that faith its strongest political support, and under whom a concerted effort to create an orthodox state religion took place. What do we know about the relationship between traditional Zoroastrianism and Zurvanism, for example, and why and how did the Sasanians embrace Zurvanism? What information do we have about persecutions of non-Zurvanaite Zoroastrians under the Sasanian kings, particularly with figures like Tansar and Kirder? Some information on these subjects is available from Mary Boyce's  Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices) , but that book is thirty years old and it would be helpful if a specialist like Dr. Daryaee could bring us up to date.Such omissions are, of course, a minor quibble. The only other complaint I have is the book's poor editing. I understand that Dr. Daryaee is not a native speaker of English, and so cannot blame him here; his English is infinitely better than my Persian. However, when publishing any book it is not too much to ask that the publisher let a qualified editor who does know the language well go through the text at least once and iron out grammatical mistakes and unclear sections. Also, a brief discussion of the spelling conventions for Sasanian period names and words would have been helpful, since there appears to be no consensus on these in the literature; is it Bahram or Wahram, for example? And why use "X" for the "Kh" sound ("Xusro" vs. "Khusrau"), given that only a professional linguist is likely to understand the symbol? Since the book has very real value to a non-professional audience, using more traditional letters would would certainly widen its appeal without compromising its value to the specialist.On the whole, however, Dr. Daryaee's book is a fine contribution to ancient history studies, and helps to offset the Roman/Byzantine bias of many of our histories of this period (and boy, were they biased, too, perhaps because the Sasanians regularly defeated the Romans and Byzantines in battle and posed a constant threat to them; in the early 7th Century they nearly brought down the Roman/Byzantine Empire, which would have changed European history in completely unpredictable ways). The reader who takes the time to study this fascinating empire will be richly rewarded, and this book is a good place to start.

Touraj Daryaee has become the senior scholar working on the Sasanian Empire and Late Antique Iran today (2019). This little book was the first major work, exclusively devoted to the Sasanians, to be published since the 1940's. It was also the only book-length publication in English since George Rawlinson's book The Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy in 1882.Daryaee is clear from the beginning that his goal was simply to write a brief introduction to the political history of the Sasanian Empire. After an introduction that considers the bias in existing scholarship to ancient Iran, Daryaee considers the Sasanian Empire through an examiniation of its rulers. Each chapter that follows focuses on one, or in some cases a group, of the Sasanian Shah's, considering their life and their political & military activities. While issues of ideology and religion are touched on, particularly when dealing with the late 3rd century, socio-cultural history does not form an important part of this book. While Daryaee does a good job, this is a very concise book, because of this some chapters feel too compressed. Also, while I can appreciate the need to put primary focus on the political history, I wish Daryaee had included a greater amount of economic, military, and religious history. A good and affordable introduction.Greater coverage of the socio-cultural aspects of Sasanian Iran can be found in Touraj Daryaee's _Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire._ For an in-depth examination of the Sasanian military see Kavah Farrokh's _The Armies of Ancient Persia: The Sassanians._