Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (International Library of Iranian Studies)

First off, this book is a vital one for the study of Sassanian history since there really isn't anything else like it in English. This book and its companion book  Sasanian Iran: Portrait of a Late Antique Empire  are the only books for a general audience that are devoted solely to the Sassanians. There are a few other books that deal with specific issues within the Sassanid empire such as  The Sasanian Era  (a collection of essays),  Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran  (which argues about a specific issue within the empire), and  Sasanian Society: Warriors, Scribes, Dehqans  (an analysis of one aspect of Persian society). There are also a number that deal with the Sassanians within the context of greater Iranian history including Frye's excellent  The Heritage of Persia   The Golden Age of Persia , Ancient Persia , and  Arsacids and Sasanians: Political Ideology in Post-Hellenistic and Late Antique Persia . There are also foreign language books that deal solely with the Sassians such as 'L'Iran sous les Sassanides' and 'Grundzüge der Geschichte des sasanidischen Reiches.' But in English these two books are it.While his previous book dealt with the political history this one covers the social, economic, and religious background. Both of these work best in tandem.There aren't really any problems with this book that couldn't be solved by a good editor or proofreader. There are many examples of sentences which show that the author is not a native English speaker and display rather an excess of punctuation. Such as from the Introduction: "Do we stay silent for the fifth century and make do with what we have, which is very little, or try, according to historians, to do a reading against the grain?" The introduction also gets the chapters wrong. He says that the chapter order is 1. Political, 2. Religious, 3. Economic, 4. Sociological, and 5. Textural. In reality the chapters go 1. Political, 2. Social, 3. Religious, 4. Textural, 5. Economic. This isn't a particularly major problem here but it is symptomatic of a greater lack of care and attention to detail throughout the book. I actually think that the publishers are more to blame for this than the author since they are a small printing company and seem to be filled with Iranian speakers. As such they are unlikely to do as thorough a job of proofreading as a larger publisher would.The first chapter is a political narrative of Sassanian history. Dr. Daryaee has really been quite lazy here since it is nothing but an abbreviation of his first book. It provides nothing new and in many cases even includes the exact same wording. Here's page 25 from that book: "What was the lie? In effect, although Philip had promised to allow the Iranian control of Armenia, he did not actually cede Armenia to the Sasanians." Compare that with page 7 of this book: "What was this lie? In effect, although Philip had promised to give Iranians control over Armenia, he did not cede Armenia to the Sasanians." One or two words changed is still paraphrasing. If it wasn't his own work that he copied this would be plagiarism. As it is it's just very lazy. How hard would it be to rewrite the entire section? If you've got the time or the money I'd recommend that book over this chapter. This one abbreviates the other a bit too much and is unclear in several sections. But reading both will gain you nothing. It's about half the length and contains the same information.As with his last book there are several anti-Western comments and complaints of prejudice, but they are so toned down that I probably wouldn't have even noticed them if I hadn't read that book first. This makes the book that much more readable since, let's face it, nobody likes to hear foreigners tell them how bad they are. Especially when they're unfair about it and especially when they're from places like Iran which, as you may know, doesn't have the greatest of governments right now. So well done on that score. Hopefully Dr. Daryaee will follow through on his promise to write a more in depth work about some of the topics covered in here because I would very much like to read it. This work is really just an introduction to the Sassanians and hopefully there will be more to come.

Sassanid Iran is an unknown entity to most readers - including a good number of historians. ForLate Antiquity the number of books in English diminishes progressively the farther east onemoves. By the time one arrives at Sassanid Iran the number of relevant and inexpensive(under $75) can probably be counted on one hand.There are a number of reasons for this, foremost of which is the bewildering array of languages faced by anyone interested in understanding this very important era in Iranian and Central Asian history. To make matters worse, much of what we do know about this empire comes from either outside accounts of Sasanian Persia, or from sources written long after the empire's collapse in the seventh century.Pehlevi(Middle Persian), the official language of Sassanid administration and rule, lacks evena modern reference grammar in English. Even Tibetan offers better linguistic resources. This is truly a shame, considering the enduring cultural influence of Sassanid Iran.Touraj Daryaee has performed a great service in his presentation of Sasanian Persia. This is probably the best introduction available in English. His discussion of the culture as well as the history of the Sassanid Empire, is worth the price of the book. The section on languagesand texts is outstanding as well as the only readable account on this subject. The treatment of Sasanian religious structure exhibits care and critical insight into the sources.Where this introduction falls down is in its less than transparent prose. A little more proofing would have made reading this work a far less choppy experience. Another minor flaw is the failure to include abbreviations in a listing of works other than journals and reference works (eg.SKZ). A little better editing is needed.Most distressing is the total lack of maps. Professor Daryee's use of recent archeological work is commendable, but without geographical location archeology loses meaning. A list ofrulers would also be nice.All said, Touraj Daryee's Sasanian Persia is the best general reference in English to thisfascinating and important era. Its flaws, however, prevent this work from be coming a classic.It is to be hoped that a carefully and fully revised second edition would would become this classic.

The editors at I.B. Taurus, to paraphrase John le Carre, should be hung by their thumbs for a while to contemplate the fiasco they have unleashed on the world. This book is the first rough draft of the author sent to the printers, or so it seems. From grammatical and spelling errors to a complete sentence that has no spaces between the words, a 10 year old would have edited this horrific output better.I have no qualms with the author and his scholarship. The material is first rate and provides an excellent tour through the history of the Sassanian. I very much enjoyed learning the information. I think of much greater value is the role of the book as a jumping off point for further study. The book provides an amazing index of references that the text contextualizes and lets the reader find additional sources.However, given what the publisher has done, this book remains a very frustrating experience because one cannot get over the fact that in the hands of someone who could use a word processor this book would have been amazing. For now, it remains a black eye for I.B. Taurus.Incidentally, this is not the only book by this publisher I’ve read. I invite the editors to go pursue other careers as this is, clearly, not what they can do. Forget about being good at their job; that is too much to ask. They simply are incapable of editing books.

Being an Afghan and Pashto speaking, I always wonder where my ancestors come from, there are many traditions but none of those are proven with evidence. In my quest for finding the origin of our people, I came across this book. Historically the region of now Afghanistan and West Pakistan has been part of the Persian empire for the most part.Although this book did not answer my questions, however, Kerdir (The Zoroastrian priest) seems to have left some clues in his inscription which I find useful.According to the traditions Arab/Islam empire came out of nowhere and swept the Persian empire, this book indirectly busts that myth by highlighting the infighting of sassanians that destabilized the empire from within.

This book fills an important gap in western historiography. There is far too little written about the Sasanian Empire, and what original sources there are,are usually written by their enemies. Yet this was a fascinating realm and the King of Kings was the only person that the Roman Emperor would regard as an equal. This is a thorough and learned overview of different aspects of the Sasanian Empire and its history, people's, religion and culture. So why only three stars? Because occasionally the book is confusing and is not clear what King did what, with reforms attributed to different Kings. There are occasional spelling errors, which grate and which should have been picked up. And the language occasionally reads very strangely, as if through a bad translation or (what is likely the case) as if the author is not quite doesn't in English but did not pass the manuscript through an editor. Still, I liked it and recommend it.

This book gives a good and readable overview about the Sasanian empire.After giving a short abstract of the Sasanian history it discusses topics like religion (in detail), administration, society, gender and economy (with less detail, probably due to the lack of sources).I would have like the book even better, if it had dwelled a bit more on the (political) history (40 pages).Definitely, one or two maps and a genealogy of the royal family would have helped as well, but it is still a recommendable read.

good introduction to the subject

Excellent book with great insight into a rarely covered period in Persian history.