Sassanian Sentence Examples

In the time of the Sassanian kings, however, as at the present time, the Tigris occupied a more easterly course.

The modern Persians call this place Nakshi Rustam (" the picture of Rustam ") from the Sassanian reliefs beneath the opening, which they take to be a representation of the mythical hero Rustam.

The Sassanian kings have covered the face of the rocks in this neighbourhood, and in part even the Achaemenian ruins, with their sculptures and inscriptions, and must themselves have built largely here, although never on the same scale of magnificence as their ancient predecessors.

This gigantic work, the line of which may still be traced throughout its course, was formerly called the Khandak Sabur or " Sapor's trench," being ascribed to the Sassanian king, Shapur I.

About the 5th century, during the rule of the Persian Sassanian dynasty, Mery was the seat of a Christian archbishopric of the Nestorian Church.

The name is pronounced Boosheer, and not Bew-shire, or Bus-hire; modern Persians write it Bushehr and, yet more incorrectly, Abushehr, and translate it as "father of the city," but it is most probably a contraction of Bokht-ardashir, the name given to the place by the first Sassanian monarch in the 3rd century.

This Lakhmid kingdom was more or less dependent, during the four centuries of its existence, on the Sassanian empire, to which it formed a sort of buffer state towards Arabia.

The district, however, was reconquered by Persia under the Sassanian dynasty, and we hear of Nestorian Christians at Samarkand, at any rate in the 6th century.

He began successfully to decipher the Pahlavi inscriptions of the Sassanian kings (1787-1791).1 In 1792 he retired from the public service, and lived in close seclusion in a cottage near Paris till in 1795 he became professor of Arabic in the newly founded school of living Eastern languages.

The power of Ardashir, the Sassanian, however, was already rising, and the Parthian Artabanus died in battle in 22 4 (or 227); and Ardashir proposed to prove himself the successor of the Achaemenidae.

The Great Mosque, Ulu Jami, formerly a Christian church, occupies the site of a Sassanian palace and was built with materials from an older palace, probably that of Tigranes II.

If any vestige of Hellenism still survived under the Sassanian kings, our records do not show it.

The spirit of the Sassanian monarchy was more jealously national than that of the Arsacid, and alienrafts could hardly have flourished g y under it.

As for the date of composition, it is evident, from the conflicting statements in the different MSS., that there must have been an earlier and a later recension, the former belonging to 587-589 A.H., and dedicated to the prince of Mosul, `Izz-uddin Mas`ud, the latter made for the atabeg Nusrat-uddin Abu Bakr of Azerbaijan after 593 A.H., since we find in it a mention of Nizaml's last romance Haft Paikar, or the "Seven Beauties," which comprises seven tales related by the seven favourite wives of the Sassanian king Bahramgur.

But when the Sassanian empire was overthrown by the Arabs, the conquerors immediately advanced eastwards, and in a few years Bactria and the whole Iran to the banks of the Jaxartes had submitted to the rule of the caliph and of Islam.

They do not differ on any point of faith; the dispute is confined to a quarrel as to the correct chronological date for the computation of the era of Yazdegerd, the last king of the Sassanian dynasty, who was dethroned by the caliph Omar about A.D.

In the south of Babylonia, in the district of Mesene (the modern Maisan), after the fall of Antiochus Sidetes (129 s.c.), an Arabian prince, Hyspaosines or Spasines (in a cuneiform inscription of 127, on a clay tablet dated after this year, he is called Aspasine) founded a kingdom which existed till the rise of the Sassanian Empire.

The Sassanian Empire.T hat the Arsacid Empire should have endured some 350 years after its foundation by, 4rdashirl.

The new empire founded by Ardashir 1.the Sassanian, or Neo-Persian Empireis essentially different from that of his Arsacid predecessors.

It is, rather, a continua- Sassanian tion of the Achaemenid traditions which were still Wars with alive on their native soil.

The Sassanian Empire, in fact, is once more a national Persian or Iranian Empire.

It was of fundamental importance that the Sassanian Empire could not make good its claim to world dominion; and, in spite of the title of its kings, it always remained essentially the kingdom of Iranor rather west Iran, together with the districts on the Tigris and Euphrates.

That Babylonia permanently remained a Sassanian province was due merely to the geographical conditions and to the political situation of the Roman Empire, not to the strength of the Persians.

Thus it is all the more worthy of recognition that the Sassanian Empire was a fairly orderly empire, with an excellent legal administration, and that the later sovereigns did their utmost to repress the encroachments of the nobility, to protect the commonalty, and, above all, to carry out a just system of taxation.

Yet it maintained itself not merely in the west, where its head resided at Babylonpropagating thence far into the Roman Empirebut also in the east, in Khorasan and beyond the bounds of the Sassanian dominion.

Of the Sassanian rock-sculptures some have already been mentioned; besides these, numerous engraved signet-stones have been preserved.

The fundamental work on Sassanian history is Theodor Nldekes Gesch.

In the interior of the Sassanian Empire the old troubles broke out anew on the death of Shapur II.

After several encounters there ensued (637) the battle of Kadisiya (Qadisiya, Cadesia), fought on one of the Euphrates canals, where the fate of the Sassanian Empire was decided.

This family was descended from one Abu Shaja Buya, who claimed to be of the old Sassanian house and had become a chieftain in Dailam.

Thus for the first time since the Arab conquest of the Sassanian realm Persia was ruled by a single authority, which extended its conquests westward into Asia Minor, where it checked the rulers of Byzantium, and eastward to India and Central Asia.

The truth is that we possess but a trifling portion of a very much larger Avesta, if we are to believe native tradition, carrying us back to the Sassanian period, which tells of a larger Avesta in twenty-one books called nasks or nosks, as to the names of which we have several more or less detailed accounts, particularly in the Pahlavi Dinkard (9th century A.D.) and in the Rivayats.

Lastly, the numerous other fragments, the quotations in the Pahlavi translation, the many references in the Bundahish to passages of this Avesta not now known to us, all presuppose the existence in the Sassanian period of a much more extensive Avesta literature than the mere prayer-book now in our hands.

The first of the Sassanian kings, Ardashir Babagan (226-240), caused his high-priest, Tanvasar, to bring together the dispersed portions of the holy book, and to compile from these a new Avesta, which, as far as possible, should be a faithful reproduction of the original.

In its outward form the Avesta, as we now have it, belongs to the Sassanian period - the last survival of the compilers' work already alluded to.

All those texts in which the grammar is handled, now with laxness and want of skill, and again with absolute barbarism, may probably be placed to the account of the Sassanian redactors.

But to search for a precise time or an exact locality is to deal with the question too narrowly; it is more correct to say that the Avesta was worked at from the time of Zoroaster down to the Sassanian period.

The great bulk - over threef ourths of the Sassanian contents - especially the more secular literature collected, has fallen a prey to oblivion.

Another monument in the vicinity is a gigantic bas-relief, carved on the vertical face of a rock, representing the victory of the Sassanian Shapur I.

The city is said to have been founded in the 4th century by the Sassanian king Shapur II (309-379).

The modern name, a Persian word meaning "iron gates," came into use in the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century, when the city was refounded by Kavadh of the Sassanian dynasty of Persia.

The ancient Drangiana (Zaraya, Daranka, " lake land ") received the name of " land of the Sacae " after this country was permanently occupied by the " Scythians " or Sacae, who overran Iran in 128 B.C. It was included in the Sassanian empire, and then in the empire of the caliphs.

The Parthian capital Ctesiphon remained the principal residence of the Sassanian kingdom, by the side of the national metropolis Istakhr, which was too far out of the way to become the centre of administration.

The dike became destroyed and was renewed under the Sassanian Shapur I.

That Valerian had a part in constructing these remarkable works does not rest upon any historical basis; we may, however, believe that the Sassanian Ardashir, or his son Shapur I, finding that the river, having its bed in friable soil, was daily getting lower and finally threatened to leave the town and the Mian-do-ab district dry by not filling the Darian canal, engaged Roman workmen.

The capital is the ancient city of Nehavend, where Yazdegird, the last monarch of the Sassanian dynasty, was finally defeated by the Arabs.

As in all his following epopees the subject was taken from what pious Moslems call the time of "heathendom" - here, for instance, from the old Sassanian story of Shah Khosrau Parwiz (Chosroes Parvez), his love affairs with the princess Shirin of Armenia, his jealousy against the architect Ferhad, for some time his successful rival, of whom he got rid at last by a very ingenious trick, and his final reconciliation and marriage with Shirin; and it is a noteworthy fact that the once so devout Nizami never chose a strictly Mahommedan legend for his works of fiction.

Above all, the sacred book of laws, the Vendidad, breathes throughout the spirit of the Sassanian period, in its intolerance, its casuistry degenerating into absurdity, and its soulless monotony.

In point of fact, there is no doubt that the later Sassanian rulers fostered the literary spirit of their nation (see PATILAVI).