Iranshahr and the Downfall of the Sassanid Dynasty

Persia at the Eve of the Arab Invasions
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-3-8325-5611-2
Verlag: Logos

Buch, Englisch, 273 Seiten, PB, Format (B × H): 170 mm x 240 mm

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 no 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 cliché 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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nezhad, Shahin

Weitere Mitwirkende

Delshad, Farshid

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Östliche Religionen Zarathustrismus, Zoroastrismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Naher & Mittlerer Osten

Über Autor(innen)

Shahin Nezhad (1967) is an Iranian-American scholar and public intellectual with an academic background as a petroleum engineer. From his early youth Shahin developed a special interest in Iranian cultural history and particularly in pre-Islamic Persia. He widely published monographs and essays on topics including Sasanian Iran, Zoroastri -anism, Persian classical literature, Political philosophy of ancient Persia and its application to modern Iranian society.

Farshid Delshad (1972) is an Iranian-German academic and scholar of Middle Eastern and Oriental Studies. He has been teaching and conducting research on Iranian and Islamic Studies as well as Comparative-Historical Linguistics in Iran, Georgia, Germany, Switzerland and the United States. He is currently working as an affiliated faculty at the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C.