Parthia was a region north of Persia in what is today northeastern Iran. Its rulers, the Arsacid dynasty, belonged to an Iranian tribe that had settled there during the time of Alexander. They declared their independence from the Seleucids in 238 BC, but their attempts to expand into Persia were thwarted until after Mithridates I advent to the Parthian throne in about 170 BC.
The Parthian Empire shared a border with Rome along the upper Euphrates River. The two empires became major rivals specially over control of Armenia. Parthian heavily-armoured cavalry (cataphracts) supported by mounted archers proved a match for Roman legions, as in the Battle of Carrhae in which the Parthian General Surena defeated Marcus Licinius Crassus of Rome. Wars were very frequent, with Mesopotamia serving as the battleground.
During the Parthian period, Hellenistic customs partially gave way to a resurgence of Persian culture. However, the empire lacked political unity. The administration was shared between Seven Parthian clans who constituted the Dahae Confederation, each of these clans governed a province of the empire. Suren-Pahlav Clan, Karen-Pahlav Clan and Mihran Clan were the most influential ones. By the 1st century BC, Parthia was decentralized, ruled by feudal nobles. Wars with Rome to the west and the Kushan Empire to the northeast drained the country's resources.
Parthia, now impoverished and without any hope to recover the lost territories, was demoralized. The kings had to give more concessions to the nobility, and the vassal kings sometimes refused to obey. Parthian's last ruler Artabanus IV had an initial success in putting together the crumbling state however the fate of Arsacid Dynasty was doomed when in AD 224, the Persian vassal king Ardashir revolted. Two years later, he took Ctesiphon, and this time, it meant the end of Parthia. It also meant the beginning of the third Persian Empire, ruled by the Sassanid kings. Sassanids were from the province of Persis, native to the first Persian Empire, the Achaemenids.
During Parthian rule, Persia was only one province in a large, loosely controlled empire. The local king of Persia at this time, Ardashir I of Persia, led a revolt against the imperial government of Parthia. In two years he was the Shah of a new Persian Empire.
The Sassanid (or Sassanian) dynasty (named for Ardashir's grandfather) was the first dynasty native to the Pars province since the Achaemenids; thus they saw themselves as the successors of Darius and Cyrus. They pursued an aggressive expansionist policy. They recovered much of the eastern lands that the Kushans had taken in the Parthian period. The Sassanids continued to make war against Rome; a Persian army even captured the Roman Emperor Valerian in 260.
Sassanid Persia, unlike Parthia, was a highly centralized state. The people were rigidly organized into a caste system: Priests, Soldiers, Scribes, and Commoners. Zoroastrianism was finally made the official state religion, and spread outside Persia proper and out into the provinces. There was sporadic persecution of other religions. The Catholic (Orthodox) Christian church was particularly persecuted, but this was in part due to its ties to the Roman Empire. The Nestorian Christian church was tolerated and sometimes even favored by the Sassanids.
The wars and religious control that had fueled Sassanid Persia's early successes eventually contributed to its decline. The eastern regions were conquered by the White Huns in the late 5th century. Adherents of a radical religious sect, the Mazdakites, revolted around the same time. Khosrau I was able to recover his empire and expand into the Christian countries of Antioch and Yemen. Between 605 and 629, Sassanids successfully annexed Levant and Egypt and pushed into Anatolia.
However, a subsequent war with the Romans utterly destroyed the empire. In the course of the protracted conflict, Sassinid armies reached Constantinople, but could not defeat the Byzantines there. Meanwhile, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius had successfully outflanked the Persian armies in Asia Minor and attacked the empire from the rear while the main Persian army along with its top Eran Spahbods were far from battlefields. This resulted in a crushing defeat for Sassanids in Northern Mesopotamia. The Sassanids had to give up all their conquered lands and retreat. This defeat was mentioned in Qur'an as a "victory for believers," referring to the Romans, who were monotheists, in contrast to the pagan Sassinids. (Note: The official religion of the Sassanid empire was Zoroastrianism. While not an Abrahamic/Semitic religion like Christianity or Islam, it is not strictly speaking "Pagan" (Polytheistic)).
The explosive growth of the Arab Caliphate coincided with the chaos caused by the end of Sassanid rule. Most of the country was conquered from 643 to 650. The last resistance from the remnants of the Sassanid dynasty ended two years later. Persia's conquest by Islamic Arab armies marks the transition into "medieval" Persia.
Yazdegerd III, the last Sasanian King, died ten years after he lost his empire to the newly-formed Muslim Caliphate. He tried to recover some of what he lost with the help of the Turks and the Tatars, but they were easily defeated by Muslim armies. Then, he sought the aid of the Chinese, but they refused to help him. He is believed to have lived on the borders of Islamic Persia. Some historians say that he lived inside Islamic Persia.
The Arab empire, ruled by the Umayyad Dynasty, was the largest state in history up to that point. It stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indus River, from the Aral Sea to the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. The Umayyads borrowed heavily from Persian and Byzantine administrative systems and moved their capital to Damascus, in the center of their empire. The Umayyads would rule Persia for a hundred years.
The Arab conquest dramatically changed life in Persia. Arabic became the new lingua franca and Islam quickly replaced Zoroastrianism; and mosques were built. A new language, religion, and culture were added to the Persian cultural milieu. During this time and because of the vast reaches of the Arab empire, many Persian scientists had a direct impact on the European Renaissance centuries later (See full list here).
In 750 the Umayyads were ousted from power by the Abbasid family. By that time, Persians had come to play an important role in the bureacracy of the empire[1]. The caliph Al-Ma'mun, whose mother was Persian, moved his capital away from Arab lands into Merv in eastern Persia. It was he who later founded the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, based on the Persian Jondishapour.
But political unrest continued. In 819, East-Persia was conquered by the Persian Samanids, the first native rulers after the Arabic conquest. They made Samarqand, Bukhara and Herat their capitals and revived the Persian language and culture. It was approximately during this age, when the poet Firdawsi finished the Shah Nameh, an epic poem retelling the history of the Persian kings; Firdawsi completing the poem in 1008.
In 913, West-Persia was conquered by the Buwayhid, a native Persian tribal confederation from the shores of the Caspian Sea. They made the Persian city of Shiraz their capital. The Buwayids destroyed Islam's former territorial unity. Rather than a province of a united Muslim empire, Persia became one nation in an increasingly diverse and cultured Islamic world.
The Muslim world was shaken again in 1037 with the invasion of the Seljuk Turks from the northeast. The Seljuks created a very large Middle Eastern empire and continued in the flowering of medieval Islamic culture. The Seljuks built the fabulous Friday Mosque in the city of Isfahan. The most famous Persian writer of all time, Omar Khayyám, wrote his Rubayat of love poetry during Seljuk times.
In the early 13th century the Seljuks lost control of Persia to another group of Turks from Khwarezmia, near the Aral Sea. The shahs of the Khwarezmid Empire ruled for only a short while, however, because they had to face the most feared conqueror in history: Genghis Khan.
Mosques with Persian names and designs in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan illustrate just how far east Persian culture extended due to their conquests.
In 1218, Genghis Khan sent ambassadors and merchants to the city of Otrar, on the northeastern confines of the Khwarizm shahdom. The governor of Otrar had these envoys executed. Genghis, out for revenge, sacked Otrar in 1219 and continued on to Samarkand and other cities of the northeast.
Genghis' grandson, Hulagu Khan, finished what Genghis had begun when he conquered Persia, Baghdad, and much of the rest of the Middle East from 1255 to 1258. Persia became the Ilkhanate, a division of the vast Mongol Empire.
In 1295, after Ilkhan Mahmud Ghazan converted to Islam, he renounced all allegiance to the Emperor Chengzong of Yuan China who had recently succeeded his grandfather Kublai Khan as Great Khan. The Ilkhans patronized the arts and learning in the fine tradition of Persian Islam; indeed, they helped to repair much of the damage of the Mongol conquests.
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