Sasanian Empire

“ Consequently the national impetus—already clearly revealed in the title of the new Sassanian Wars
with Rome. sovereign—again becomes strikingly manifest. The Sassanian Empire, in fact, is once more a national Persian or Iranian Empire. The religious element is, of course, inseparable from the national, and Ardashir, like all the dynasts of Persis, was an ardent devotee of the Zoroastrian doctrine, and closely connected with the priesthood. ”

“ After the reign of Phraates IV. the coins are dated in the Seleucid era, while the later coins bear a Pehlevi legend in addition to the Greek inscription which is by this time almost unintelligible.
Sassanian Empire.—Early in the third century A.D. the last remnants of Parthian power were destroyed by Ardashir, a Persian prince, who founded the Sassanian empire, which after successfully disputing the supremacy of Asia with the Romans for four centuries finally fell before the conquering hosts of Islam. ”

“ Hulwan and its territories extended up to what is now known as Shahr-i-Zur, and behind the site of the modern Halabja, in the hills which form an amphitheatre behind it, there was a large town called Sasan. Here were great stone buildings, and their ruins still stand, ordinary walls and pillars of the great Sasanian age of Persia. There is every indication, besides legend, to show that a great city existed here, and in the Shahr-i-Zur plain below were a number of villages whose inhabitants cultivated its rich and well-watered soil. ”

“ The Persians of the Sassanian kingdom are not equal to those of the time between Cyrus the Great and Darius Codomannus; they have ruder manners, a grosser taste, less capacity for government and organization; they have, in fact, been coarsened by centuries of Tartar rule; they are vigorous, active, energetic, proud, brave; but in civilization and refinement they do not rank much above their Parthian predecessors. Western Asia gained, perhaps, something, but it did not gain much, from the substitution of the Persians for the Parthians as the dominant power. ”

“ Wide imperial aims were united with a plenitude of solid organisation of government so perfect that it passed into a proverb among the Arabs. In this last connection the Sasanian tradition survived for a long time a number of Moslem dynasties. The powerful influence which Iranian tradition exercised was felt by the Abbaside Khahlifs and after them by the Turkish Seljuks. But not only the science of government, a good deal of other matters of cultural and historical importance in the latter times have their explanation in the Sasanian epoch. ”

“ It played its part, most beneficial for Persia, holding back on the one hand Roman-Byzantine onrush from the West, and on the other restraining the perpetual attempts at irruption into Persian territory by Arab nomadic tribes. Not long before the appearance of Islam, Sasanian influence was extended to the Arabs and the South as well as Yemen passed into the sovereignty of the Persians. Khusro and his Court appeared to the Arab an unattainable ideal of grandeur and luxury. ”

“ Their prelates and dignitaries soon became a very important part of the Christian organisation, and it is interesting to note the sympathy of the Persian Sasanian kings for this new religion, and the success Christian effort met among the Persians. This ancient and highly civilised people, whose character contains a great deal of the speculative, has always been ready to consider the claims of new Deistic theories, and has, in Muhammadan times, found an outlet for its speculative tendency in the adoption of Shiism, which it has made a purely Persian section of Islam. ”

“ From Jund-i-Shapur, already in the territory of the Persian shahs, missionaries were sent out to every Eastern country, Chaldeans by birth and tongue, speaking Persian, and their enterprise carried them to India, Turkestan, and China. So great had become the hold of Christianity upon Persia, that at a very early date the country was divided into bishoprics.
This college was established about A.D. 550 by Nushirvan the Just, shah of Persia, one of the last of the Zoroastrian kings, and of the Sasanian dynasty. ”

“ Before the middle of the seventh century Egypt and Syria were occupied by the Saracens, whose conquest was facilitated by the animosity of the monophysite native populations towards the rule of an orthodox emperor. However, the loss of these territories gave fresh solidarity to the empire in the East by restricting its authority to the religiously and linguistically homogeneous, and thoroughly loyal, population of Asia Minor and the eastern Balkan peninsula. ”

“ Women seem not to have been kept in seclusion, or at any rate not in such seclusion as had been the custom under the Parthians, and as again became usual under the Arabs. The general condition of the population was satisfactory. Most of the Sassanian monarchs seem to have been desirous of governing well; and the system inaugurated by Anushirwan, and maintained by his successors, secured the subjects of the Great King from oppression, so far as was possible without representative government. ”

“ We noticed above the revival of scientific activities in Sasanian Persia. This activity for the most part has its significance in its quality of being a connecting link, in the first place, as the transmitter of Greek knowledge to the East, and secondly, as the unifier of this knowledge with the heritage which Sasanian Persia had received from scientific works belonging to Semitic culture, as well as from the science of India. The principal representatives of this activity were not Persians, but Christians, mainly the Syrian Nestorians, and Monophysites from the school of Edessa. ”

“ The chronicles of the Sassanians, ancient kings of Persia, who extended their empire into the Indies, over all the adjacent islands, and a great way beyond the Ganges, as far as China, acquaint us, that there was formerly a king of that potent family, who was regarded as the most excellent prince of his time. He was as much beloved by his subjects for his wisdom and prudence, as he was dreaded by his neighbours, on account of his velour, and well-disciplined troops. He had two sons; the elder Shier-ear, the worthy heir of his father, and endowed with all his virtues ”

“ On some occasions it directly serves as a source for the internal history of the Sasanian domination. It bears particularly on didactic literature though it has been as yet very ill studied from the comparative standpoint. The Sasanian influence is perfectly obvious. Some portions of Al Yatima of Ibn Muqaffa may be parallelled to corresponding remnants from Pahlavi literature in the Kabus Nameh and the Siasat Nameh. [5] We know further that books under the title of Persian Adab were spread among those who sympathised with Mazdaism and Manichism in the circle of Moslem society. ”

“ Now under Khu-n-Aten the Asiatic character of the government was increased tenfold. The native Egyptian had to make way for the foreigner, and the rule of the Syrian stranger which seemed to have been expelled with the Hyksos was restored under another form. Canaan was nominally a subject province of Egypt, but in reality it had led its conqueror captive. A semi-Asiatic Pharaoh was endeavouring to force an Asiatic form of faith upon his subjects, and entrusting his government to Asiatic officials; even art had ceased to be Egyptian and had put on an Asiatic dress. ”

“ The rapid conquest of western Asia by the Arabs was followed by those internal dissensions which led to the formation of independent kingdoms. The Samanides, who reigned in Persia and dominated the shores of the Caspian Sea, were the principal cultivators of the North trade. The Arabs, if they had little taste for maritime commerce, were admirably adapted to be the leaders of great caravans, by which the riches of the East were spread into far lands. ”

“ Long after the Sasanian dynasty had fallen, and the rest of Persia had been subdued by the Arabs the Ispahabeds continued to strike their Pahlavi coinage and maintained the religion of Zoroaster in the mountains and forests of Tabaristan; and their struggles with the Arabs only ended about A.D. 838 by the capture and cruel execution of the gallant Maziyar, son of Qaren, son of Wanda-Hurmuz. ”

“ The legends of the Sassanian coins, the inscriptions of their emperors, and the translation of the Avesta, by Sassanian scholars, represent another phase of the language and literature of Īrān.
The men who, at the rising of the new national dynasty, became the reformers, teachers, and prophets of Persia, formed their language and the whole train of their ideas upon a Semitic model. ”

“ Each Sassanian monarch had one sultana or principal wife, who was generally a princess by birth, but might legally be of any origin. In one or two instances the monarch sets the effigy of his principal wife upon his coins; but this is unusual, and when, towards the close of the empire, females were allowed to ascend the throne, it is thought that they refrained from parading themselves in this way, and stamped their coins with the head of a male. ”

“ Only in human experience the case is not so simple and harmony is seldom established so quickly. The history of Asia is replete with examples of conquest and extortion in which a rural population living in comparative plenty is attacked by some more ferocious neighbour who, after a round of pillage, establishes a quite unnecessary government, raising taxes and soldiers for purposes absolutely remote from the conquered people’s interests. Such a government is nothing but a chronic raid, mitigated by the desire to leave the inhabitants prosperous enough to be continually despoiled afresh. ”

“ The Greek and the Persian disputed the possession of western Asia in profitless and exhausting warfare, both harassed from time to time by the predatory expeditions of the nomads on their frontiers, both content to enter into alliance with this tribe or with that, and to set up an Arab satrap over the desert marshes. Thus it happened that the Benî Ghassân served the emperor of the Byzantines, and the Benî Lakhm fought in the ranks of the Sassanian armies. ”

“ The court of the Sassanian kings, especially in the later period of the empire, was arranged upon a scale of almost unexampled grandeur and magnificence. The robes worn by the Great King were beautifully embroidered, and covered with gems and pearls, which in some representations may be counted by hundreds. [PLATE XLV.] The royal crown, which could not be worn, but was hung from the ceiling by a gold chain exactly over the head of the king when he took his seat in his throne-room, is said to have been adorned with a thousand pearls, each as large as an egg. ”

“ Assur-bani-pal. Assur-bani-pal succeeded him as king of Assyria and its empire, while his brother, Samas-sum-yukin, was made viceroy of Babylonia. The arrangement was evidently intended to flatter the Babylonians by giving them once more the semblance of independence. But it failed to work. Samas-sum-yukin became more Babylonian than his subjects; the viceroy claimed to be the successor of the monarchs whose empire had once stretched to the Mediterranean; even the Sumerian language was revived as the official tongue, and a revolt broke out which shook the Assyrian empire to its foundations. ”

“ Far beyond the bounds of Islam they were busy; busy upon a scheme which they hoped would crush Islam and exalt Christianity all over Asia, from Pekin to Syria. This scheme was no less than the invasion of Asia by the Tartar kings of Qarakorum, whose power was growing fast, and whose thirst for land was growing keener. The Christians, meanwhile, strove to make the religion of Jesus Christ the national faith before the day of conquest dawned, and had certainly made great progress among various Mongol people when the hordes poured out westwards. ”

“ From that time forward a constant struggle went on between the two races, the Semitic race striving to push back the northern intruders and planting its own colonies in the very heart of the northern area, [169] while the northerners pressed ever more and more to the southward, and at one time even seemed likely to possess themselves of the heritage of the Babylonian Empire in Western Asia. Like Armenia, Northern Mesopotamia was occupied by a people of Caucasian and Asianic affinities, whose armies had crossed the Euphrates and won territory in Syria and Palestine. ”

“ At that time the merchants were awaiting the collection of outstanding debts to leave the province, which they saw would never recover from its ruin so long as the shaikh family exists and is allowed its iniquitous power. Trade has deserted Sulaimania to a great extent. Merchants are going to Persia, which in its worst times never tolerated such a situation as this, and where business—decreased and weak—yet finds a way. ”

“ In the East was found the model of those accretions which gradually transformed the unassuming Roman Emperor of the Tiber into the haughty autocrat who overawed his subjects with pageantry on the Bosphorus; but the native sobriety of Europe always stopped short of the pronounced extravagance and hyperbole of Orientalism. The throne of the Sassanians stood between four pillars which upheld a ciborium. [63] On sitting down, the Shahinshah inserted his head into the crown, a mass of precious metal and jewels suspended by a chain, too ponderous to be worn without extraneous support. ”