sassanid empire

[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذه الصورة]

About 224 CE, the
Parthian
governor of the province of Fars (which still exists as a province in
present-day
Iran), brought down the central government in Ctesiphon and
established
the Sassanid Empire, taking the throne as Ardashir I. The Sassanid
Empire
would last over 400 years, and would be the last Persian Empire before
the
Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century brought the region under
Arab
rule. For this reason the Sassanid Empire is important to our
understanding of
Islamic history, because it was instrumental in
promoting Persian nationalism,
and creating a Persian identity that
remained strong even after the Islamic
conquest and attempted
Arabisation of the region.

The Sassanid Empire
was
almost constantly at war with the neighbouring Roman Empire to the west;

Ardashir's son, Shapur I, even captured the Roman Emperor,
Valerian, for a time
in 260. The animosity between the two empires
was exacerbated in the 4th
century, when the Roman Emperor,
Constantine I, converted to Christianity, and
later, Theodosius I
made Christianity the official state religion. After that,
relations
between the two empires took on an increased religious aspect, as the
Roman
Empire sought to protect all Christians outside its borders, including
those
under Sassanid rule. The Christians in the Sassanid Empire had not
previously
faced persecution for their religion, since they were mostly
Nestorian
Christians, a different branch of Christianity than that practiced in
the
Roman Empire. For that reason the Sassanids viewed their Christians not
as
following the religion of the enemy, but rather another Persian
religion. Still,
the Sassanid Christians were the first to be
suspected of political disloyalty
whenever the empire came into
conflict with the Romans after Constantine's time.

While Christianity
had
become the state religion of the Roman Empire, Zoroastrianism had been
the
official religion of the Sassanids since the beginning of their
empire in the
3rd century. The Zoroastrian church became very
powerful, and its head, the
mobadan mobad, joined the
military and bureaucratic leaders as one of the
most important men
in the empire. Zoroastrianism is also said to have influenced
Judeo-Christian
theology, such as that pertaining to the dualism between good
and
evil, or light and darkness; the belief in angels and archangels; Satan
as
the epitome of evil and the adversary of God; the idea of
paradise and hell; the
idea of the continued existence of the soul
past that of the body; reward and
punishment by divine justice; the
resurrection of the dead; the Last Judgement;
beliefs in millennial
periods and the end of the world; and the coming of a
Saviour at the
end of the world. Many of these ideas would also appear in
Islamic
theology. Zoroastrianism, which itself might have absorbed some of these

ideas from Buddhism and Hinduism, was thus an important influence
on several
religions that followed it.

Politically,
Khusrau I (r.
531-579) is considered the most influential Sassanid ruler. He has
been
compared to the 16th century Safavid ruler Shah Abbas I for instituting

reforms that changed the empire. He reformed the army by providing
soldiers with
salaries and equipment, thus earning their loyalty and
decreasing the power of
nobles with private armies. He also
improved efficiency in the tax system, by
changing the method of
assessment and collection. This was perhaps his most
significant
reform, because the Sassanid tax system later became a model for tax
collection
in the Islamic caliphate. The Muslims were also influenced by the
office
of the Sassanid prime minister, which became a prototype for the
Islamic
grand vizier.

After 50 years of
peace,
Khusrau II (r. 590-628) resumed hostilities with the neighbouring
Byzantine
Empire, the successor to the Roman. He rapidly expanded into Byzantine
lands,
capturing Jerusalem in 612 and Alexandria in 619, while placing
Constantinople,
the Byzantine capital, under siege. The Byzantines responded by
staging
a surprise attack through the Caucasus into the northern Sassanid
Empire.
They sacked Ctesiphon in 627, and Khusrau II was killed while fleeing
the
city. There were 11 more rulers in the following 10 last years of the
Empire,
but after Khusrau II the Sassanids grew weaker and more inefficient.
The
Empire collapsed under a rapid military assault by the invading
Arabs between
636 and 642. Although the Arabs, seeking to spread
their new religion, Islam,
had fewer numbers and a simpler military
structure than the Persians, the
Sassanid Empire was weak from
fighting the Byzantines. By remaining highly
mobile and not relying
on long supply lines, the Arabs rode in on horses and
camels and
defeated the Persians first at the Battle of Qadisiyya in 636. By 638
they
had occupied the Sassanid palace in Ctesiphon, forcing the young king,
Yazdegard
III, to flee. Continuing through the Zagros Mountains, the Arabs won
two
more decisive battles, at Jalula and Nihavand in 642, to take over the
entire
Iranian plateau.

After 400 years,
the quick
collapse of the Sassanid Empire was a bit of a surprise. There are
several
possible reasons behind it, however. Not only had the Persians and
Byzantines
mutually wearied each other, but each regarded themselves as superior
to
the rest of the world, which was seen as somewhat barbarian. They
therefore
focussed their energies on fighting each other, while
virtually ignoring other
threats. The Arabs were particularly
underestimated; the Persians gave more
credence to the threat from
raiding groups from the east than to the Arabs,
possibly due to the
Persian victory in southern Arabia that helped the Sassanids
maintain
control of the Red Sea trading route in the early 6th century. By the
time
of the invasion, however, the Arabs were able to take advantage of
Persian
weaknesses, such as disunity among the provinces and a lack
of allegiance among
the people to the Sassanid central
administration. Many Persians submitted to
the invaders when the
Arabs demanded less taxes than the Sassanids had, and did
not force
conversion to Islam. Later, Islam did spread to non-Arab groups, most
notably
the Persians, who began to convert in significant numbers as Islamic
rule
over Persia strengthened in the centuries after the initial conquest.
However,
the Sassanid Empire played a major role in developing a distinct
Persian
nationalism, which survived the Islamic conquest and mass conversion of

Persians to Islam. The Persians and the Arabs would become the
leading ethnic
groups in the Islamic world, and each soon realised
that their cooperation was
fundamental to the survival of the empire

الموضوع الأصلي : sassanid empire المصدر : مُنتَدَيَاتْ صُـوتــْ بَــلَــدْنََــا

______________________________________________________

eNg AhMeD