The Last Empire of Iran

The Sasanian state was more centralised than its predecessors. Its organised system of dynastic power can be contrasted with the Roman failure to evolve either a royal family or a smooth method of succession. This gave the Sasanian empire great ideological strength, but made its politics fragile, so that when the Sasanian family was gone the state was extinct.

Older scholarship presented the Sasanian state as a weak, sparsely populated ‘Asiatic despotism’ without a standing army, and which was no match for Rome. This is completely wrong. Sasanian silver coinage, which remained pure for more than 400 years, massive fortifications in sensitive areas, and state-sponsored agriculture suggest a powerful central government. Far from being weak and loosely organised, the Sasanian army matched the Romans blow for blow, and several Roman emperors died or were taken captive in battle with Iran. Famously, the 3rd-century emperor Valerian, was supposedly skinned, taxidermied, and put on display in the Persian capital in order to intimidate Roman embassies.

Roman historians claim that the Sasanians were aiming to recreate the first Persian empire of Cyrus the Great. This meant pushing the Iranian border with Rome further and further west. Unsurprisingly, Rome and Iran were nearly constantly at war. The two powers competed for even the smallest advantage along an ill-defined and porous frontier running south from the Caucasus into Arabia. Each war was worse than the last, and conflict spread southward as far as Ethiopia, with Iran and Rome eventually contesting control of the India trade through the Red Sea. The 6th-century Roman emperor Justinian could not break the Persian monopoly there, so he and his successors tried to dominate the overland silk trade from China.

This evolved into a world war when the Turks got involved. In the 6th century the Turkish nomads of Inner Asia were the foremost military power of the age. They had overthrown the Huns who menaced Iran from the east, and had built an empire stretching from the borders of China to the Caspian Sea. With Roman backing, the Turks aimed to disrupt the Persian monopoly on the India trade by flooding Iranian markets with cheap Chinese silk which they had received as tribute from rival Chinese dynasties. Iran retaliated, and the armies of the Persian king Hormizd IV fought Roman and Turkish troops on multiple fronts and emerged victorious – further proof that the Iranian war machine was more than match for its rivals.

Long before the Roman adoption of Christianity, Sasanian Iran was the world’s first major confessional state. Ardashir I was supposedly descended from a line a Zoroastrian priests, and he and his family made Zoroastrianism the ideology of state. The Sasanian Empire had an uneasy relationship with other religions at first. Fear that Iranian Christians might side with Rome provoked persecutions. But in the early 4th century, the Persian king Yazdgard I granted toleration to his Christian subjects, and was even rumoured (falsely) to have converted. Other kings were not always as generous, but Iranian Christians became more and more numerous, and by the end of the 6th century they were holding high office at the court of king Khusro II.