Sasanian Empire
The Sasanian Empire (/səˈsɑːniən, səˈseɪniən/) or Sassanid Empire, officially known as Eranshahr ("Kingdom of the Iranians"),[9][10] was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th to 8th centuries. Named after the House of Sasan, it endured for over four centuries, from 224 to 651, making it the second longest-lived Persian imperial dynasty after the Arsacids of the Parthian Empire.[2][11]
Kingdom of the Iranians
Middle Persian (official)[4]
Other languages
Ardashir I (first)
Yazdegerd III (last)
28 April 224
526–532
602–628
628–632
633–651
651
3,500,000 km2 (1,400,000 sq mi)
The Sasanian Empire succeeded the Parthian Empire and re-established the Persians as a major power in late antiquity alongside its arch-rival, the Roman Empire (after 395 the Byzantine Empire).[12][13][14] The empire ended with the Muslim conquest of Persia. It was founded by Ardashir I, a ruler who rose to power as Parthia weakened as a result of internal strife and wars with the Romans. After defeating the last Parthian King of Kings, Artabanus IV, at the Battle of Hormozdgan in 224, he established the Sasanian Empire and set out to restore the legacy of the Achaemenid Empire by expanding Persia's dominions.
At its greatest territorial extent, the Sasanian Empire encompassed all of present-day Iran and Iraq, and stretched from the Levant to the Indian subcontinent and from South Arabia to the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The period of Sasanian rule was a high point in Iranian civilization,[15] characterized by a complex and centralized government bureaucracy, and revitalized Zoroastrianism as a legitimizing and unifying ideal.[16] They also built grand monuments, public works, and patronized cultural and educational institutions. The empire's cultural influence extended far beyond its territorial borders, including Western Europe,[17] Africa,[18] China, and India[19]—and helped shape European and Asian medieval art.[20]
Following the early Muslim conquests, the influence of Sasanian art, architecture, music, literature and philosophy on Islamic culture ensured the spread of Iranian culture, knowledge and ideas throughout the Muslim world.[21]
Name
Officially, the empire was known as the Kingdom of the Iranians (Middle Persian: ērānšahr, Parthian: aryānšahr, Greek: Arianōn ethnos); the term is first attested in the trilingual Great Inscription of Shapur I, where the king says "I am the lord of the Kingdom of the Iranians".[b][22]
More commonly, as the ruling dynasty was named after Sasan, the empire is known as the Sasanian Empire in historical and academic sources. This term is also recorded in English as the Sassanian Empire, the Sasanid Empire, and the Sassanid Empire. Historians have referred to the Sasanian Empire as the Neo-Persian Empire, since it was the second Iranian empire that rose from Pars (Persis),[23] while the Achaemenid Empire was the first.
Language
Official languages
During the early Sasanian period, Middle Persian along with Koine Greek and Parthian appeared in the inscriptions of the early Sasanian kings. However, by the time Narseh (r. 293–302) was ruling, Greek was no longer in use, perhaps due to the disappearance of Greek or the efforts of the anti-Hellenic Zoroastrian clergy to remove it once and for all. This was probably also because Greek was commonplace among the Romans/Byzantines, the rivals of the Sasanians.[4] Parthian soon disappeared as an administrative language too, but was continued to be spoken and written in the eastern part of the Sasanian Empire, the homeland of the Parthians.[150] Furthermore, many of the Parthian aristocrats who had entered into Sasanian service after the fall of the Parthian Empire still spoke Parthian, such as the seven Parthian clans, who possessed much power within the empire. Sometimes one of the members of the clans would even protest against Sasanian rule. The Sasanian Empire appears to have stopped using the Parthian language in their official inscriptions during the reign of Narseh.[151]
Aramaic, like in the Achaemenid Empire, was widely used in the Sasanian Empire (from Antioch to Mesopotamia), although Imperial Aramaic began to be replaced by Middle Persian as the administrative language.[152]
Regional languages
Although Middle Persian was the native language of the Sasanians (who, however, were not originally from Pars), it was only a minority spoken-language in the vast Sasanian Empire; it only formed the majority of Pars, while it was widespread around Media and its surrounding regions. However, there were several different Persian dialects during that time. Besides Persian, the unattested predecessor of Adhari along with one of its dialects, Tati, was spoken in Adurbadagan (Azerbaijan). Unwritten Pre-Daylamite and probably Proto-Caspian, which later became Gilaki in Gilan and Mazandarani (also known as Tabari) in Tabaristan, were spoken about in the same regions. Furthermore, some other languages and dialects were spoken in the two regions.[153]
In the Sasanian territories in the Caucasus, numerous languages were spoken including Old Georgian, various Kartvelian languages (notably in Lazica), Middle Persian,[154] Old Armenian, Caucasian Albanian, Scythian, Koine Greek, and others.
In Khuzestan, several languages were spoken; Persian in the north and east, while Eastern Middle Aramaic was spoken in the rest of the place.[155] Furthermore, late Neo-Elamite may also have been spoken in the province[153] but there are no references explicitly naming the language. In Meshan, Strabo divided the Semitic population of the province into "Chaldeans" (Aramaic-speakers) and "Mesenian Arabs". Nomadic Arabs along with Nabataean and Palmyrene merchants are believed to have added to the population as well. Iranians had also begun to settle in the province, along with the Zutt, who had been deported from India. Other Indian groups such as the Malays may also have been deported to Meshan, either as captives or recruited sailors.[156] In Asoristan, the majority of the people were Aramaic-speaking Nestorian Christians, notably including Middle Syriac, while the Persians, Jews and Arabs formed a minority in the province.
Due to invasions from the Scythians and their sub-group, the Alans, into Atropatene, Armenia, and other places in the Caucasus, the places gained a larger, although small, Iranian population.[157] Parthian was spoken in Khorasan along with other Iranian dialects and languages, while the Sogdian, Bactrian and Khwarazmian languages were spoken further east in places which were not always controlled by the Sasanians. To the further south in Sakastan, which saw an influx of Scythians during the Parthian period, much later the place of Sistanian Persian,[158][153] an unknown Middle Southwestern Iranian language was spoken if it was not likely Middle Persian as well. Kirman was populated by an Iranian group which closely resembled the Persians while, farther to the east in Paratan, Turan and Makran, non-Iranian languages[158] and an unknown Middle Northwestern Iranian language were spoken. In major cities such as Gundeshapur and Ctesiphon, Latin, Greek and Syriac were spoken by Roman/Byzantine prisoners of war. Furthermore, Slavic and Germanic were also spoken in the Sasanian Empire, once again due to the capture of Roman soldiers[159] but this must have been negligible. Semitic languages including Himyaritic and Sabaean were spoken in Yemen.