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In this chapter, the discussion turns to the ‘end’ of the Jafnid dynasty in its attempt to explain why and how the Roman Empire ended its relationship with its Arab clients. It posits that the Jafnids had begun to exercise unacceptable levels of power which rendered them unpopular and troublesome, and susceptible to sanction, like other Roman clients before them,. A similar situation was found in the east, where the Sasanians also chose to eliminate their Nasrid Arab allies. A part of the difficulties which the Jafnid leader al‐Mundhir experienced is to be found in the shifting religious landscape of the 6th century, particularly the increasing liabilities incurred by supporters of the miaphysite position. Arguing that the primary cause of the Jafnid demise was political, therefore, it rejects recent arguments which lay the blame on social and economic factors, such as the Justinianic plague and the economic decline in Late Antiquity.

From a scattered and fragmentary body of evidence, a picture emerges of how an international language of kingship began to arise from the Roman and Sasanian empires' originally hostile and competitive appraisals of each other in the third century. The two realms' third-century expressions of kingship and triumph arose from long and complex histories. In the age of Severus Alexander, the Romans looked back on several hundred years of continuous triumphal ritual, art, and architecture. Although a new dynasty, the Sasanians appropriated their first expressions of triumph from a long-established repertoire developed by their erstwhile Arsacid overlords, which itself drew at least indirect inspiration from an equally venerable history of Hellenistic and Achaemenid precedents. Ultimately, despite the continuing influence—and physical presence—of these august lineages, contemporary concerns engendered a new dynamic in Roman and Sasanian triumphal art. This chapter focuses on the figure of the “Eastern barbarian” in the Roman and Sasanian empires, how they preserved and manipulated cultural memory, and the ritual and visual techniques that they used to shape the past.

The provinces of Northern Iran, the region south of the Caspian Sea, had a particular role in the Arab conquest of Iran. Their geographical isolation, mountainous regions, steamy and often intolerable sub-Mediterranean climate and thick forests caused many difficulties for the early Muslim conquerors in the seventh century ad. The ʿAbbāsid empire could only penetrate into the mountains of Ṭabaristān and the valleys of Māzandarān in the second half of the eighth century. In this chapter, I analyse some legends concerning the early Islamic period of the central provinces of the Caspian regions Ṭabaristān and Māzandarān. On the basis of some of the evidence, it seems that these stories could be linked with the myths of the last pre-Islamic Iranian empire – that of the Sāsānians.

Chapter 31 describes the sixteen lands of Iran and the adversary that Ahriman sent against each one. The Bundahišn’s list is modeled on the first chapter of the Vidēvdād, which describes Ērānwēz and fifteen adjacent countries, most of which are located in today’s northeastern Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. As is often the case in Sasanian reimaginings of Avestan geography, the chapter reascribes originally eastern toponyms to the southwestern districts that were the heartland of the Sasanian Empire as a form of mythic relocation.

The sixth and seventh centuries constitute an extended period of contested hegemony bridging the more stable Late Roman and Early Islamic eras. The period of Ethiopian hegemony begins with the delegation of the Red Sea frontier by Byzantines to the Aksumites, wherein the Byzantine-backed Aksumsite conquest of Himyarite Yemen is discussed. The period of Persian hegemony spans the Sasanian conquest of Yemen and Egypt, which is located within the wider ‘cold war’ between the Byzantines and Sasanians. The period of Arab hegemony considers the Muslim co-option of post-Himyarite Yemen and conflict with Aksumite Ethiopia, culminating in the Arab conquest of Egypt, in which the Red Sea is shown to have played an important role.

This chapter evaluates the Manichaean Kephalaia-collections from the perspective of recent developments in the study of late-antique rhetoric, specifically the role and context of dialogue in ancient literature and philosophy. It pays close attention to the recently edited material from the Coptic text, The Chapters of the Wisdom of my Lord Mani, by analysing the engagements between Mani and a number of teachers associated with the court of the Sasanian monarch, Shapur I. The chapter highlights the importance of Mani’s dialogues with competitor figures from the Sasanian Empire to the development of the religious identity of Manichaeans in late-antique Persia and Egypt.

References to ‘kurds’ appear in Sasanian and early Islamic sources, denoting herding groups. The Sasanians had to contend with a number of nomadic groups on their northeastern, Central Asian frontiers, from the third through the early seventh century ad Periodic incursions onto the Iranian plateau occurred, but the impact of these, beyond ephemeral raiding and plundering, is unclear.

As the last Roman integrative revolution was ongoing, a revolution was beginning in a province of the neighboring and rival Parthian Empire in the first decade of he third century. The local ruler of Persia (Fars) and his son, Ardashir, were rising up against the Parthian king of kings (shahanshah). The highly decentralized and feudal Parthian structure of authority consisted of many kingdoms ruled by local kings under the suzerainty of a king of kings. Ardashir aimed at and achieved the integration of this fragmented empire into a unified Iran on the basis of a pan-Iranian ideology that advocated the restoration of the Empire of Iran (Iranshahr) and its Zoroastrian religion. The fragmented authority structure of the Parthian Empire made the process of Ardashir's integrative revolution--his struggle against the petty kings, unusually prolonged. It was however completed by 240, and its consolidation by Ardashir, who founded the Sasanian dynasty, and his son and co-ruler, Shapur I, went hand in hand with the export of revolution into "non-Iran" through the conquest of Roman Mesopotamia. The Sasanian Revolution thus gave birth to the idea of Iran and integrated its political community.

This chapter gives an overview of the dynamics that shaped the landscape of this frontier region. The region was a stage of war with the Sasanians. This situation resulted in well-fortified cities and a network of fortifications. Christological debates also left a significant mark on the cities, the rural areas, and their churches. This chapter describes the frontier character of the region by giving a summary of the wars between the two Empires and provides an overview of the Christological debates and the formation of the Syrian Orthodox Church hierarchy. It then focuses on the period after the Arab conquest. It looks at Muslim approaches to church building and Syriac accounts on building churches in that period. The chapter concludes with an overview of research on the region, including traveller accounts, surveys, and archaeological excavations.

This essay argues that the Church of the East should be seen as a Sasanian institution that adapted to a regime without central patronage in the Umayyad period. The seventh century was characterized by the private patronage of local elites and the conversion of polytheists. The Marwanid period saw a search for new Arab patrons after the regime began to remove prominent local elites. But the main beneficiaries of this patronage were rural monasteries, rather than the patriarchate, and it was only after the transfer of Baghdad that the patriarchs restored the kind of state patronage seen under the Sasanians.