Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254 brill.

nl/jps

Review Essays
The Fall of the Sasanian Empire to the Arab Muslims:
From Two Centuries of Silence to Decline and Fall of the
Sasanian Empire: the Partho-Sasanian Confederacy and
the Arab Conquest of Iran

Touraj Daryaee
University of California, Irvine

Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy

and the Arab Conquest of Iran. Parvaneh Pourshariati. London and New York:
I. B. Taurus, 2009. xiv, 537 p.

One of the most important and hotly debated issues in Middle Eastern and
early Islamic history is the Arab Muslims’ conquest of the Near East (Donner;
Kennedy). The question of how the Muslims were able to defeat the Eastern
Roman Empire and obliterate the Sasanian Empire in the seventh century CE
has also been central to world history. F. Justi wrote the first complete account
of the fall of the Sasanians and the conquest in his chapter on ancient Iranian
history in the Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie (see References). A. Chris-
tensen’s L’Iran sous les Sassanides, published several decades later, in 1944, has
remained the most important work on Sasanian history and civilization. Nine-
teen years after Christensen’s magnum opus, Richard N. Frye published the
The Heritage of Persia on the history of ancient Iran with a keener eye on the
Muslim conquest covered in its last chapter. Frye’s later book, The Golden Age
of Persia: The Arabs in the East, on late Sasanian and early Islamic Iran is one of
the best interpretive essays and the most important account of the social and
intellectual environment of this period.
Historians of Islam have also provided a narrative of the conquest as told
from the Islamic accounts, F. Gabrieli’s (1968) book being one of the earliest
and best of such accounts. B. Spuler’s work on early Islamic Iran is perhaps
the most complete work on this period of Iranian history (1952). M. Hinds

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/187471610X537280

240 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254

published “The First Arab Conquest of Fars” (1984), taking on a provincial or

micro-history of the conquest. Noteworthy as well, is M. Morony’s work,
which takes into account both Islamic and Syriac Christian material cultures
to analyze the aftermath of the conquest in the Sasanian province of Iraq
(Pahlavi Sūrestān) (Morony, 1984; Spuler, 1984-86: 39-40). Morony investi-
gated the different populations of Sasanian Iraq, including the Zoroastrians,
and their situations in that period. Morony also concentrated on the relation
of Muslims to the conquered Iranians (Morony 1982: 73-88; idem, 1987:
203-10) and patterns of Arab settlement on the Iranian Plateau.
Iranian writers also published histories about the conquest of Iran and its
aftermath. M. Azizi’s La domination arabe et l’épanouissement du sentiment
national en Iran (1938), along with ‘A.-H. Zarrinkub’s works Do qarn sokut
(1966) and “The Arab Conquest of Iran and Its Aftermath” (1975) provided
the hitherto most extensive studies of the conquest and subsequent develop-
ments from a nationalist perspective. Zarrinkub studied the social and politi-
cal situation of Iran on the eve of the Muslim conquest as well as the first two
centuries of the Muslim rule in Persia. Zarrinkub used Muslim sources to
discuss the movement of the Arabs into Iran, the relation of the Zoroastrians
with the Muslims, the status of the mawāli, and the question of jezya and
kharāj. His Persian work has been the standard book for the Persian audience
for the past half a century. It is only recently that new works are being accepted
as an alternative to Zarrinkub’s view.
Zoroastrians have also written about the conquest of the Sasanian Empire
and the situation of the Iranians under Muslim rule. For them, Middle Persian
texts were an important source of inspiration. M. S. Irani’s “The Province of
Khorasan after the Arab Conquest” focused on the resistance of the Iranians
to the Muslim invaders (Irani: 530-37), while B. Faravashi, an important
scholar, attempted to present a set of reasons for the fall of the Sasanians
(Faravashi: 477-84). More recently, J. Choksy, as part of a major work in “sub-
altern studies,” has conducted a very judicious study, giving a convincing nar-
rative of the Muslim conquest of Iran, as well as the Zoroastrian-Muslim
relations in the Islamic period. This study also examines how the Zoroastrians
lost their power and why the Muslims became the dominant force in Iran.
Despite this scholarship, many historians are not satisfied with the standard
scenario given for the fall of the mighty Sasanian Empire and believe that the
questions surrounding the Arab conquest have not been fully resolved. Most
recently, Parvaneh Pourshariati’s massive tome has attempted to provide
another set of reasons for the decline and the fall of the Sasanian Empire.
I believe her book is the most thought provoking work that has appeared on
the subject in the past decade.
 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254 241

Pourshariati’s volume focuses on several issues in the history of late antique

and early medieval Iran. First, she attempts to explain the internal political
structure of the late Sasanian period, which according to her is directly related
to the success of the Arab armies in the seventh century. I think she has taken
an important step in questioning the traditional approach to Sasanian studies,
namely the consensus established by Christensen, which viewed Sasanian Iran
as a centralized state with an administrative political hierarchy. Pourshariati
believes that the Sasanian Empire essentially remained a “confederacy” of
which the Pārsīg (Persian) and Pahlāv (Parthian) were the main components.
This is an important and innovative suggestion. Rika Gyselen’s seminal work
in publishing the bullae belonging to the aspbeds or cavalry leaders, who all
identify their ethnicity as Pārsīg or Pahlāv is the main source for Pourshariati’s
supposition.
Pourshariati’s fractured or “confederate” view is analogous to Tommanoff ’s
study of the dynastic system of Armenia. These dynasties or the nakharars in
Armenia played an important role in the affairs of the Armenian kingdom,
from the defense of the kingdom to the election and legitimacy of the king.
Similarly, according to Pourshariati, in Sasanian Iran the houses of Karin,
Suren, Mehrān, and Ispāhbed had great influence in royal decision making
and in how the empire was operated. Pourshariati concludes that we must
abandon the idea of a “centralized” empire of late antiquity: one way to do this
is to look at the events from a “Parthian” perspective, which I would call a
“view from the edge.” Pourshariati’s approach is certainly influenced by what
we may call the “Columbia School,” created by Richard Bulliet. While Bulli-
et’s (1994) work focuses mainly on the Islamic East, Pourshariati’s work adapts
his methods to the Sasanian period. No doubt we can learn much about late
antique or Islamic history by questioning the bias of power-oriented sources.
To do so, we must understand a given region or period through extensive
study of its material culture, instead of relying primarily on textual sources
produced by centers of power.
In chapter one of the book (: 19-30), Pourshariati gives an overview of the
Parthian Arsacids, from their origin to the Sasanian period. This is a very use-
ful introduction for setting up her thesis, but the real material is found in
chapter two (: 33-160). Here the author explains the importance of the
Khwadāy-nāmag, the royal/national historical records, and the reasons for their
composition. She suggests that the crisis during the ascent of Khosrow II to
the throne was an important impetus for the re-composition of the Khwadāy-
nāmag and, furthermore, that this rewriting was characteristic of Sasanian
attempts to obliterate Arsacid history. It is certainly true that the Sasanians
attempted to rewrite of history, particularly during the reign of Khosrow I
242 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254

(Daryaee, 2009: 28-31) as a result of the religious and political crisis in the
empire. But we should not forget that these crises were the outcome of an
attempt by Sasanian kings to level the power of the noble houses, and it seems
that Khosrow I was to a large extent successful.
In the early Sasanian period, based on the evidence from Shāpur’s Ka‘ba-ye
Zardosht inscription, a semi-centralized kingdom existed, where independent
kings, local dynasts and even Arsacids were among the cohorts under the rule
of the King of Kings. I would contend that the difference between the Arsacid
and the early Sasanian period was that the Sasanians made sure that the king’s
brothers and sons took over important seats throughout the empire so that as
time went on, their power and reach superseded the local rulers and dynasts.
This loose ruling system has been the subject of a detailed study by M.L.
Chaumont, which Pourshariati surprisingly appears to have missed. While she
did not had to survey every major work on the topic, when it comes to the
idea of what she calls “confederacy” or “feudalism,” Chaumont’s article would
clarify many of the issues that are discussed by Pourshariati about who ruled
which part of the Sasanian Empire in the third century.
The gradual establishment of Sasanian hegemony on the Iranian Plateau
and beyond probably caused the relocation of many of the Arsacid families
into Armenia and the subsequent problems in Armenia. This brings us to
Pourshariati’s view on the structure of the Sasanian Empire and its comparison
with Armenia. In Chapter Two, she covers Arsacid Armenia (the time of the
rule of the Aršekunis) and the reasons for the bitter hostility between the two
states: not only was Armenia Arsacidized, but it was also—although initially
“Mithraic”—Christianized in the fourth century.
Pourshariati claims that Armenia, its structure and society, was much like
the pre-Islamic Iranian world. Although this may be the case, I believe this
similarity is between Arsacid Iran (247 BCE-224 CE) and the Aršakunis who
ruled Armenia till 428: both are very different than the Sasanian Empire.
Armenia in late antiquity represents the “archaic” Arsacid social stratification,
tradition, and the dynastic and ruling system. That is why the nakharars cre-
ated a weak decentralized kingship in Armenia, which had similarities to the
Arsacid system. But the Sasanians never seem to have had such a problem. In
the Sasanian period, when there was noble meddling in the royal affairs, it was
far less frequent and it never had the impact on the Sasanian imperial system
as in Armenia or during the Arsacid period.
Toumanoff ’s ideas, which Pourshariati uses for her thesis about the Sasa-
nian period, only applies to the Caucasus (as Toumanoff intended) and not to
Sasanian Iran. While it may be true that a “feudal”-looking regime was in
place in the third century, the Sasanians left no doubt that only the family of
Sāsān would be kings, whether they were in Kermān or Armenia. The nobility
 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254 243

certainly placed its pressure on the king of kings, especially when he was weak,
although the Sasanians attempted to remedy this through the designation of a
“minister” from the fifth century onwards. Pourshariati is certainly correct to
remind us that in the pre-modern period, notions of an all-encompassing cen-
tralized system did not exist. But the Sasanians, just like the Romans, did try
their hardest to make sure an organized system of rule and power from top to
bottom existed.
This centralization is apparent in the Sasanian period in a variety of ways,
from the minting practices of the late fifth century to the administrative seals
and even the production of a single unified historical narrative of Ērānshahr,
i.e, the Khwadāy-nāmag. We should not forget that while the Arsacids wanted
to flaunt their ancestry and have their ethnic designation on the bulla of their
generals, the Sasanians were concerned not with the idea of Pārs (Fārs) or any
other specific ethnic designation, but rather Ērānshahr, i.e, the “Realm of
Iranians.” They designated the people as Ērān “Iranians,” and only made an
exclusion with the term an-Ērān “non-Iranians.” Thus, the Sasanians had an
inclusive vision of their empire and the people in it. Any law of the king (dād )
applied to all of the subject, no matter whether they were Arsacid, Sistānis,
Kermānis, or Pārsīg. With the exception of the bullae of several Sasanian gen-
erals from the sixth and seventh centuries, there is simply no evidence to sug-
gest otherwise. Similarly, except the mutinies of Wahrām Chōbin and few
others in the late Sasanian Empire, there was no talk of provincialism or ethnic
separatism. What was at work in the Sasanian period was the idea of Ēranshahr,
just as there was the idea of Rome around the Mediterranean.
I would then suggest that Sasanian Iran was much more centralized than
Armenia. It was armed with the ideological weapon of Ērānshahr along with
the Zoroastrian religion, and started a campaign for complete domination by
the house of Sasan. Until the fifth century, this campaign of centralization was
in process, but by the time of the reforms of Kawād I and Khosrow I in the
late fifth and early sixth centuries the old nobility was fragmented, and the
minor nobility (azādān) had been brought in to support the king of kings.
Perhaps one can see impotence of the nobility during the Arab Muslim
conquest in this light. It can be argued that the major nobility could not
come to the aid of the monarchy to withstand the Arab Muslims because it
had been substantially weakened, decimated and/or co-opted into the Sasanian
imperial system.
What we can learn from Pourshariati in this section is to rethink the issues
of centrality vis-à-vis feudalism, confederacy and the interaction between dif-
ferent sections of nobility. She teaches us not to blindly follow the available
“centralized” data and tries to move from the center, be it Ctesiphon or
Estakhr, and to take the larger picture into consideration. Pourshariati also
244 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254

teaches some of the more conservative historians such as myself to be more

imaginative and view the period from different localities and find alternative
sources for their endeavors.
Pourshariati postulates that the importance of the Parthians from their
inception and throughout the Sasanian rule was so “overwhelming” that, in
the popular tradition, the Sasanian rulers were connected to the Parthian king,
namely Ardawān V. Indeed, she is correct that in works such as Tabari and
those similarly inspired by the Sasanian tradition of the Khwadāy-nāmag, there
is the story of the marriage of the Ardashir I to an Arsacid noble lady, which
also appears in the Middle Persian epic Kārnāmag ī Ardaxšīr ī Pābagān. I
believe that Pourshariati is correct in her view that the Sasanians needed to
legitimize their rule by making connections to the Parthians.
The Sasanians, in fact, attempted to legitimize their rule by connecting
themselves to a series of ancient real and imaginary rulers. Among these were
the Kayanian kings of the Avesta (their main mode of identification from the
fifth century), king Dārā, and through him not only to Darius III, but the
local kings of Persis and the Parthians. Such attempts at legitimation may sug-
gest that the Sasanians were of a much more humble background than other
rulets. Shāpur I in his third-century inscription could only name three or
four generations before him, while Sāsān seems to have been local nobility as
he is simply mentioned as a khwadāy (lord) and not a shāh (king) (Huyse,
1999: 49).
In the third century, the Sasanians also paid homage to the elite in Ērānshahr,
which seems to have been made up of the remnant Greek population in the
poleis and the Arsacids. One could say that the trilingual style (Middle Per-
sian, Parthian, and Greek) of early Sasanian inscriptions is connected to this
heritage. But after the inscription of King Narseh at the end of the third cen-
tury, Parthian and Greek are omitted and never seen again. If the Arsacid
houses were so powerful throughout the Sasanian period, as Pourshariati
suggests, then why hasn’t a single Parthian inscription been found? Even in
Khorasan, Parthian as a written tradition is non-existent after the third
century.
Throughout the remainder of the second chapter, Pourshariati uses the
Shāhnāma and Armenian sources to highlight the importance of the Arsacid
houses such as the Suren and the Karins. In this discussion, the author illumi-
nates the inner politics and history of the Sasanian period. Again, we gain
access to a view from the “other” edge, i.e, Armenia, through sources not usu-
ally utilized by historians of late antique Iran. From her coverage of Yazdgerd
I through Khosrow II, Pourshariati makes fresh and incisive remarks about the
political events. Her agenda in this section is to demonstrate the dormant
 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254 245

power of the Parthians during the Sasanian period, and I think she is relatively
successful in this endeavor.
The use of the Shāhnāma as a historical source is a tricky issue, and Pour-
shariati has used it in multiple chapters. On the one hand, those who deal
with the Shāhnāma as a literary work are against its use as a historical source.
They contend that epics are not meant to transit historical information, but
rather are sources for entertainment and education. On the other hand, the
late historian Zeev Rubin in an article on the fiscal reform of Khosrow I,
has shown how accurate and important the later part of the Shāhnāma could
be for economic and historical information (Rubin: 227-97). Pourshariati
has followed this line, showing how much we can learn by examining the
Shāhnāma.
But the Shāhnāma is simply the Sasanian narrative of the past and their his-
tory of what they came to call Ērānshahr. The Armenian noble houses left us
clan or family histories, but in Iran this was not the case. While the individual
houses of Armenia such as the Mamikonian and others commissioned their
dynastic histories, the Sasanians made sure that there was only one book of
kings. The reason why Iranians did not write history in the same way as the
Armenians, at least until the early Islamic period, was that the Sasanian kings
had absolute power to commission, and to therefore determine the written
content, of the history. In other words, “history” was held captive by the court
and existed only as royal chronicles (Klima, 1977). In a sense, Armenian his-
torical written tradition mirrored its politically fragmented state whereas that
of Iran reflected its centralized political system.
Pourshariati mentions that the Arsacids appear side by side with the Sasani-
ans in the Shāhnāma. She argues that this appearance is connected to their
great importance and power in late antiquity. While it is certainly the case that
Arsacids are in the Shāhnāma, they are relegated to the epic past and not the
historical present. As Ferdowsi states: “Since their (i.e., Arsacid) branch and
root were cut short, the learned narrator holds no record of their annals, I have
heard nothing of them but their name, nor seen anything in the Book of the
Kings” (VII: 116 Moscow edition, 1978). Only the name of the founder of the
dynasty, Ashk (Arsac), and some rulers such as Shāpūr, Gudarz, Bizhan, Narsi,
Hormezd, and Ārash, as well as Ardavān (or Artabanus V, the last Arsacid
king) are mentioned. The Shāhnāma remembers the Arsacid rule as a time of
chaos when Ērānshahr became weak (Yarshater: 473). If the Pahlāv were any
more powerful, wouldn’t they attempt to rescue themselves from oblivion and
omission from the national history? Indeed the Arsacids were forgotten except
by the Romans, Classists, and philhellenes. One wonders how much the
Pahlāv generals of the sixth and seventh centuries, whom Pourshariati calls the
246 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254

“Parthians,” knew about the Arsacids of old and what the connection was
between them. A dynastic family (Arsacids) who ruled several centuries before
to the rise of the Sasanians are not the same as a group of generals and nobility
who originated from northeastern Ērānshahr and called themselves Pahlāv.
Pourshariati’s third chapter is equally if not more exciting than the first two.
She states that her investigation of the chronology of the late Sasanian Empire
and the Arab Muslim conquest is “methodologically heretical.” As she explains
the events, she questions and even disregards the hejri dating system because it
has caused much confusion for the study of early Islamic history. Following A.
Noth (1994), Pourshariati discusses the problems of conquest or fotuḥ litera-
ture, in which an almost epic tradition of the Arab Muslim conquest was cre-
ated by the early Muslim writers after the fact. I believe she is completely
correct in this regard and should be lauded for her attempt to emancipate the
history of the late Sasanian Empire and that of Iran and Iraq from the Islamic
narrative that is dominant in academia and Middle Eastern Studies.
Pourshariati proposes that the conquest of Iraq did not take place with the
enthronement of Yazdgerd III (r. 632-51), but rather between 628-32, when
the last Sasanian king had not even assumed power! Even more intriguing is
her assertion that the Prophet Mohammad was alive when the conquest of
Ērānshahr took place, and that the rule of Ardashir III (628-30) was the main
period of such battles as Obolla and Madhār, which according to her have
been incorrectly dated by almost every historian of the period (633-34). This
begs the question whether it was the Prophet who led or orchestrated the con-
quest of the Sasanian Empire? That question is one that Pourshariati does not
answer and simply states that by answering one set of questions, other ques-
tions and problems arise.
Amidst this “heretical” chronology, Pourshariati does very interesting and
important work in writing the history of the late Sasanian Empire based on
what she calls non-fotuḥ and Khwadāy-nāmag-based sources. Her discussion of
the ten to twelve Sasanian rulers and pretenders to the throne after the death
of Khosrow II opens up the long neglected study of the period from the per-
spective of Iranian Studies. She tries to explain the discrepancy between the
“official” established chronology and the confusing list of rulers who minted
coins with dates that surpass their alleged period of rule. To be sure, this is a
difficult question, and from Nöldeke in the nineteenth century to my own
work the answers to it have been very different from those offered by Poursha-
riati. Before reiterating the established explanation let us look at one example
of Pourshariati’s argument. It is documented that Queen Bōrān ruled for a
year and a half, while she has coins with the year 3 minted, mainly in Sistān
and the eastern regions. Pourshariati suggests that queen Bōrān actually ruled
 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254 247

in two different periods, between 629 and 632, when Yazdgerd III came to the
throne. This makes her the last Sasanian ruler before the young Yazdgerd III
and places the loss of Iraq on the shoulders of Bōrān as well.
As a follower of the tradition, I have suggested that there is an alternative to
pushing back the date of the post-Khosrow II ruling queens and kings to fit
the numismatic evidence. After Kawād II killed most of the legitimate heirs to
the throne, the door was open for different contenders from the extended fam-
ily of Sāsān throughout the country. Kawād II had finished off the x warrah of
the Sasanian Empire and queen Bōrān made a last attempt at restoring it
(Daryaee, 1999: 1-6), but there were many “kings” on the Iranian plateau who
tried to seize power.
I would suggest that in the period from Bōrān to Yazdgerd III’s rule, several
contenders simultaneously minted coins in their own names (Malek: 229-51;
Emrani). There is a list of names from the textual sources as well as coins
with the names of some of these rulers. They include Khosrow III (630-32),
Khosrow IV (630-36), and Pērōz II (631-32), who ruled approximately at
the same time. Other contenders, such as Hormezd V, or Farrokh-Hormezd,
the general who may have had a hand in the death of Āzarmigdokht (Mochiri,
1:13-16, 2: 203-205) also minted coins in Khuzestān and Fārs (Gyselen
2004, 66).
The connection of the chaos in late the Sasanian Empire with the political
power of military generals was discussed by Nöldeke in the nineteenth century
and Howard-Johnston (2006: 224-25). It was not only the Pahlāv generals in
Khorasan who had a hand in the political decision making. One can suggest
that there are two phenomena which have a direct bearing on the situation in
the seventh century: the political power of the military and the conscription
of a nomadic army.
Both phenomena can be found in Roman history as well. The Roman
Empire faced a period of instability in the third century, the period of the
“Barrack Emperors.” At this time, different military camps promoted their
generals to as emperor. Many of these soldier-emperors were assassinated and
replaced rapidly. At the beginning of the fifth century, the Roman army con-
scripted nomadic Germanic forces, leading to what has been called the “bar-
barization” of the Roman army. This in turn weakened the Roman army and
made it unable to withstand the Germanic takeover of Rome and its empire.
In the Iranian case, the breaking of the strength of the old military order
and great houses of the nobility took place in the sixth century, and they were
replaced by the Dehgāns (Tafazzoli). Z. Rubin has pointed out that in the
sixth century we encounter the “barbarization” of the Sasanian army, where
nomadic tribes, such as the Deylamites and others were conscripted (Rubin:
248 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254

285). Thus, one may suggest that the new Sasanian army’s loyalty was first and
foremost to their tribal commander in charge. There are many similarities
between this situation and the Abbasid period, when Turkic soldiers were
taken into the Caliph’s army and their loyalty eventually remained with their
general. How cohesive such an army could have been is difficult to judge, but
it could not have been as uniform as before Khosrow I’s reforms of the military.
According to Zakeri, Khosrow I’s military reforms and the division of the
army were dangerous innovations that made the generals very powerful (Zak-
eri: 32). It would have been much easier for such an army to serve their own
interests and that of their general vis-à-vis the Arab forces during the conquest,
than to serve the Sasanian king of kings. Khosrow I had decimated the old
Sasanian military order and the noble houses. Because they did not have the
same force as in the early Sasanian period, they did not—and could not—
rescue the empire.
Like Rome, the Sasanian Empire saw its own Barracks Emperors. While the
important family of Pahlāv and its army resided in northeastern Ērānshahr,
there were other armies that seem to have had a hand in the raising and killing
of the Sasanian kings. We are told that an army in Mesopotamia, which was
initially headed by Shahrwarāz, placed Āzarmigdokht on the throne at Ctesi-
phon. He was replaced by Homrezd V who also controlled Mesopotamia and
northwestern Ērānshahr. Yazdgerd III was finally placed on the throne by
Mehr-Khosrow, who was backed by another army in Khorasan. We also hear
of the army of Azerbaijan (the northwest) which had been lead by Khorokh
Hormezd (probably Hormezd V), Bōrān’s chief minister and perhaps general
(Sebēos: 89; Shahbazi). These actions by the Sasanian military were an impor-
tant factor in bringing the chaos and demise of the empire. By the time the
Arabs had arrived, the Sasanian armies were divided and their loyalty to the
crown shaken. How much of this was uniformly orchestrated by the “Parthi-
ans” is difficult to say, but they certainly had an important part in it, which
Pourshariati has brought to light.
Finally, I would like to respond to Pourshariati’s assertion that the traditions
of fotuḥ and Islamic narrative provide a “wrong chronology” of events, and to
her attempt to introduce Khwadāy-nāmag-based sources to support her claim
that the conquest of Ērānshahr and Mesopotamia took place during the period
between Ardashir III and the end of Bōrān’s rule (628-32). I would like to
provide a piece of a Khwadāy-nāmag-based source, or as close as we can get to
it, which provides the following schema of the late Sasanian Empire (Bunda-
hishn, Ch. 33: 19-21):
 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254 249

ud ka xwadāyīh ō yazdgird mad 20 sāl xwadāyīh kard adān tāzīgān pad was maragīh
ō ērān dwārist hēnd yazdgird pad kārezār abāg ōyšān nē škuftan ō xwarāsān ud
turkestān šud asp ud mard ayārīh xwāst ušān ānōh ōzad.
pus ī yazdgird ō hindūgān šud spāh gund āwurdan ud pēš az āmadan ōy xwarāsān
ōzad ud ān spāh ud gund wišuft ērānšahr pad tāzīgān mānd ud ušān ān ī xwēš dād
ag-dēnīh rawāgēnēd was ēwēn ī pēšēnagān wišobēnēd ud dēn ī māzdēsnān nizārēnīd
ud nisā šōyīšnīh nisā nigānīh nisā xwarišnīh pad kard nihēd.
And when the rulership came to Yazdgerd [III], he ruled for 20 years; then the
Arabs rushed with many numbers to Ērānshahr; Yazdgerd [III] was not able to
battle them; [he] went to Khorasan and Turkestan and asked for horses and men
for assistance; he was killed there.
The son of Yazdgerd [III] went to India and brought army troops, and before
arriving, he was killed in Khorasan and that army and the troops were destroyed;
Iran was left to the Arabs and they have made that law of evil religion current,
many customs of the ancients they (have) destroyed and the Mazda-worshipping
religion was made feeble and they established the washing of the dead, burying
the dead, and eating the dead.

In these passages the Arab Muslim conquest is placed exactly at the time of
Yazdgerd III’s rule and not earlier, otherwise our Zoroastrian scribes would
have noted it. They obviously did not get their material from the tradition of
Islamic narrative, and mention the Khwadāy-nāmag in this text. This is not the
only Pahlavi text that ascribes such an event to the time of Yazdgerd III. In
fact, every Pahlavi text that mentions the conquest mentions the name of
Yazdgerd III and not Ardashir III or Bōrān for the time of Arab conquest.
Furthermore, independent of the Sasanian royal chronicle, contemporary
Syriac sources such as the Chronicle of Khuzestān makes it very clear that
the conquest had begun after the death of Bōrān and not during her rule
(Greatrex and Lieu: 229-37; Robinson: 14-39).
Chapter Four deals with the history of Tabarestān and the Pahlāv connec-
tion, while Chapters Five and Six are in themselves an independent book, and
have much to say about the history of religion in Iran from the Sasanian rule
through the time of the Abbasids. I think here, Pourshariati is trying to do too
much in one book. Sasanian religious landscape (Ch. 5) and the revolts of late
antiquity (Ch. 6) are each topics with their own set of sources and expertise to
which people such as Sh. Shaked to W. Madelung have dedicated a lifetime of
study. Still, what gives credence to Pourshariati’s coverage of these periods is
her locating the “Parthians” and their religious tradition. She does a fair job in
briefly reviewing the important religious personages and the idea of “ortho-
doxy” and Zurvanism in the Sasanian period.
The place where I absolutely disagree with Pourshariati’s work is in her idea
of “Mihr worship” (pp. 350 onwards), which is one of those notions that
250 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254

most, if not all, serious scholars of Sasanian and Iranian studies understand as
a strange concoction of the Iranian nationalist imaginary. Indeed, Mehr is an
important yazata in the Zoroastrian tradition and Pourshariati does cover this
aspect of Mehr soundly until she arrives at what she calls the “Pārsīg-Pahlāv
religious dichotomy.” At once one is taken back to the Wikanderian imagina-
tive views of the early half of the twentieth century, where gods and männer-
bund in secretive societies rushed through the air and the earth in a strange
frenzy. Even more apparent is the influence of other great Iranist of the
same Uppsala School, G. Widengren, in the thought process of Pourshariati.
Widengren, whom she cites, was very much interested in the mysterious and
esoteric world of Iranian feudalism and its influence on Mithras as well (Wid-
engren, 1966: 433-55).
This aspect of Widengren’s study has long been discredited. While Poursha-
riati may be correct that there was a difference in religious tradition and even
worship among the northern Pahlāv and the southern Pārsīg, the evidence for
this supposition is non-existent and waits to be discovered. Mehr-worship, or
as popularly known in Iran Mehr-parasti, is one of those myths constructed in
Iran to claim a hand in the construction of the cult of Mithras in the Roman
Empire. This was due to the direct connection F. Cumont and the early
Mithra-scholars made between the Iranian Mithra and the Roman Mithras.
There has now been a lively debate about the relation and possible influence of
Mithra of the Iranian World on that of the cult of Mithras in the Roman
world. Most scholars nowadays disassociate the direct connection and see in
Mithras the stamp of the city of Rome and Roman astrological tradition at
work. Although one can not ignore the “Iranian” or Iranian-like symbols and
stories attached to the cult of Mithras, we do not find a single Mithraeum
anywhere east of Syria, and the overwhelming number of Mithraeums are in
Europe and not in Iran. There is simply nothing of this sort in Iran, and
although Mehr is an important deity, there is no evidence that Mehr was ever
the single focus of worship in the Parthian, Sasanian, or the early Islamic
period.
In the Indo-Iranian world, Mitra/Mithra played the role of the judge who
punishes falsehood (Gershevitch: 7). Mithra’s primary function seems to have
been the personification of “covenant,” “contract,” and “treaty,” and later on in
the Indic world, he came to be considered as the personification of “friend-
ship,” which originally could have been derived from the concept of “alliance”
(Schmidt: 345-93). What make the Iranian notions of Mehr relevant for the
cult of Mithras are the Armenian and the Pontus regions, where a good amount
of syncretism took place. It is there that we can see Mithra make its important
appearance, leading to the question of whether the “cult” is in-bound or out
of bounds with the Zoroastrian tradition.
 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254 251

In the first century CE, the Parthians and the Romans had come to an
agreement over Armenia, in which the king of Armenia was picked by the
former and crowned by the latter. We have a description of King Tirdates’
coronation by the Emperor Nero in the work of Cassius Dio (Book LXII). The
Armenian king Tirdates, unlike any other king who came before the Roman
Emperor, came forth with his sword, which must have had important sym-
bolic meaning for both sides, and met Nero in Naples. There he made the
following oath: “Master, I am the descendant of Arsaces, brother of the king
of kings Vologases and Pacorus, and thy slave. And I have come to thee, my
god (θεόν), to worship thee as I do Mithras (Mίθραν) . . .” (Dio, LXII).
In fact we know that there was a temple dedicated to Mithra in Armenia.
Aghathangełos provides us with the details of the destruction of the temple at
Bagayarič: “He (Tirdates) came to the temple of Mihr, called the son of Ara-
mazd, to the village called Bagayarič in the Parthian tongue. Then he destroyed
it down to its foundations” (Sebēos: 790).
In the fourth century when the Iranian king wrote to his Armenian coun-
terpart, the very idea of oath conjured up only Mithra. A good example of
such a tradition is found in Moses Khorenats‘i, where Shaapur II in a letter
tells king Tiran:

The most valiant of the Mazdaeans (Mazdezants‘ k‘aj), the equal of the sun
(bardzakits‘ aregakan), Shapuh, king of kings, in our bounty have remembered
our dear brother Tiran, king of Armenia, and send many greetings. . . . And
we shall in no way harm your kingdom, we swear by the great god Mihr . . .
(Sebēos: 17).

Khorenats‘i tells us that Tiran trusted Shābuhr II because “he lost his senses,”
but a more probable supposition is that Tiran felt assured of his safety because
the Iranian king had sworn to Mithra not to harm him, and Tiran understood
the importance of swearing to Mithra. This means that an Armenian writer in
a Christian milieu could not, or intentionally did not, clearly understand the
socio-religious implication of this oath to Mithra that binds the two people.
In the late sixth century, when Wahrām Chōbin had taken flight to Azerbai-
jan, he was surprised that he was not aided in his campaign against Khusrow II
by the Armenians. According to Sebēos, to persuade the Armenians he wrote
a letter which stated:

If I shall be victorious, I swear by the great god Aramazd, by the lord Sun and the
Moon, by fire and water, by Mihr and all the gods, that I will give you the king-
dom of Armenia, and whoever you wish you may make king for yourselves
(Sebēos: 21).
252 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254

The oath taken by Wahrām Chōbin is again quoted by Thomas Artsruni in

exactly the same fashion (Astrusi, 2:153). Now Wahrām Chōbin would not
have invoked these deities if they were not understood in the Armenian World,
even in the late sixth century. This becomes clear when we remember that
these deities were the “ancestral deities of his [King Tirdates’] forefathers,
falsely called gods” (Agathangełos: 778). The worship of such a deity as Mithra
in Armenia is again mentioned in Ełishē’s testimony. When Mehr-Narseh
made the proclamation that Armenians must revert to Zoroastrianism, accord-
ing to Ełishē, the Christian Armenians respond to his letter by stating that “we
no longer believe in fables,” suggesting that they once did believe in these
“fables,” and the “fable” discussed has to do with Mithra/Mehr (Artsruni /
Thomson, 1982: 35).
All of this may give us a notion that Mehr (Mithra) had a special function
and position. When we remember that in Armenia there was also a temple for
Ohrmazd and another to Anahid (Anahita), then it becomes apparent that the
Zoroastrian deities in Armenia were infused with good dose of Hellenic reli-
gious tradition. We know that in the Sasanian period, no temples to Ohrmazd
or Mehr existed in Ērānshahr, and that this was part of the iconoclastic policy
of the Sasanians. Still, in all of the Armenian sources cited above, Mehr oper-
ates within the confines of the Zoroastrian tradition, as a deity of oath and
contract. One can even push for an Iranian influence on the Roman cult of
Mithras, as B. Lincoln has rightfully demonstrated (Lincoln: 76-95). But east
of Armenia there are no temples, no Mehr-worship in the strict sense of the
word, and Mehr operates strictly within the confines of evocation of the Zoro-
astrian tradition. (I will not discuss whether Behāfarid and Sonbād’s revolts,
among others, had “Mithraic” component, as claimed by Pourshariati, as my
views and that of most scholars in this field are drastically different.)
We can conclude by stating that Pourshariati has stirred up a lot of ideas
and issues which had been either dormant or slow to develop in the field of
Iranian Studies. She has certainly pushed the envelope on the standard view of
“Two Centuries of Silence” coined by Zarrinkub. Her single most important
contribution is that this book will receive a hearty response and consequently
open up the discussion about Sasanian historical studies, the late Sasanian
Empire, the nature of the Arab Muslim conquest, religion and practice in
Iran, and the notion of late antiquity as a period of study in Iranian history
and that of Eurasia. She should be lauded for her effort to make connections
between historical events that had not been perceived or discussed before.
Pourshariati has also made us aware of how to be careful in studying the Sasa-
nian Empire and the problems that this period had gone through. She has
 T. Daryaee / Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010) 239-254 253

certainly made an important contribution by drawing Iranian history in late

antiquity away from the Arabo-centric and Islamo-centric approaches that
have dominated North American academia. Iranian history of this period can
stand on its own, and shed light from the east on the great events of late antiq-
uity and the early medieval period. Reading this book will provide plenty of
ideas for the researcher and a thought-provoking agenda for those interested
in the history of the Iranian world.

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