First off, this book is a vital one for the study of Sassanian history since there really isn't anything else like it in English. This book and its companion book
Sasanian Iran: Portrait of a Late Antique Empire
are the only books for a general audience that are devoted solely to the Sassanians. There are a few other books that deal with specific issues within the Sassanid empire such as
The Sasanian Era
(a collection of essays),
Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran
(which argues about a specific issue within the empire), and
Sasanian Society: Warriors, Scribes, Dehqans
(an analysis of one aspect of Persian society). There are also a number that deal with the Sassanians within the context of greater Iranian history including Frye's excellent
The Heritage of Persia
The Golden Age of Persia
,
Ancient Persia
, and
Arsacids and Sasanians: Political Ideology in Post-Hellenistic and Late Antique Persia
. There are also foreign language books that deal solely with the Sassians such as 'L'Iran sous les Sassanides' and 'Grundzüge der Geschichte des sasanidischen Reiches.' But in English these two books are it.
While his previous book dealt with the political history this one covers the social, economic, and religious background. Both of these work best in tandem.
There aren't really any problems with this book that couldn't be solved by a good editor or proofreader. There are many examples of sentences which show that the author is not a native English speaker and display rather an excess of punctuation. Such as from the Introduction: "Do we stay silent for the fifth century and make do with what we have, which is very little, or try, according to historians, to do a reading against the grain?" The introduction also gets the chapters wrong. He says that the chapter order is 1. Political, 2. Religious, 3. Economic, 4. Sociological, and 5. Textural. In reality the chapters go 1. Political, 2. Social, 3. Religious, 4. Textural, 5. Economic. This isn't a particularly major problem here but it is symptomatic of a greater lack of care and attention to detail throughout the book. I actually think that the publishers are more to blame for this than the author since they are a small printing company and seem to be filled with Iranian speakers. As such they are unlikely to do as thorough a job of proofreading as a larger publisher would.
The first chapter is a political narrative of Sassanian history. Dr. Daryaee has really been quite lazy here since it is nothing but an abbreviation of his first book. It provides nothing new and in many cases even includes the exact same wording. Here's page 25 from that book: "What was the lie? In effect, although Philip had promised to allow the Iranian control of Armenia, he did not actually cede Armenia to the Sasanians." Compare that with page 7 of this book: "What was this lie? In effect, although Philip had promised to give Iranians control over Armenia, he did not cede Armenia to the Sasanians." One or two words changed is still paraphrasing. If it wasn't his own work that he copied this would be plagiarism. As it is it's just very lazy. How hard would it be to rewrite the entire section? If you've got the time or the money I'd recommend that book over this chapter. This one abbreviates the other a bit too much and is unclear in several sections. But reading both will gain you nothing. It's about half the length and contains the same information.
As with his last book there are several anti-Western comments and complaints of prejudice, but they are so toned down that I probably wouldn't have even noticed them if I hadn't read that book first. This makes the book that much more readable since, let's face it, nobody likes to hear foreigners tell them how bad they are. Especially when they're unfair about it and especially when they're from places like Iran which, as you may know, doesn't have the greatest of governments right now. So well done on that score. Hopefully Dr. Daryaee will follow through on his promise to write a more in depth work about some of the topics covered in here because I would very much like to read it. This work is really just an introduction to the Sassanians and hopefully there will be more to come.
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Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire
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