Sasanian Empire: A History from Beginning to End

Persia, as Iran was originally known, was an imperial superpower of the ancient world not once but twice, and during its height, it was famed for its culture and learning. First rising to power under the might of Cyrus the Great, the Persian Achaemenid Empire ruled over a vast territory that encompassed the lands of three major early civilizations: Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Nile Valley of Egypt. They dominated the region from 550 to 330 BCE until the armies of Darius III fell to the conqueror Alexander the Great. After Alexander's untimely death, his empire was divided up among his generals.
Almost half a millennium later, in 224 CE, a new Persian dynasty, the House of Sasan, challenged the waning power of the Parthian Empire, restoring the Persians to dominance. Emperors in the ancient world lived an exalted but often precarious existence, and this was true for the monarchs, or shahs, as they were known, of the Sasanian Empire. Some of the Sasanian shahs were mighty leaders, adept in battle and in governance, but that was no protection against the threat of assassination. After 400 years of dominance, the Sasanians were torn both internally by struggles between members of the nobility and externally on their borders by Arab raiders. The raiders evolved into a powerful Islamic caliphate, and by 651 CE, the Sasanian Empire was entirely under Islamic rule. In this way, the legacy of Persian art, learning, and culture, which had spread across the ancient world, also nurtured the foundation of Islamic civilization.