Ancient Iran

One of the most influential civilizations in antiquity was that of the Iranian world. The disparate peoples of ancient Iran were remarkable in that their imperial histories proved to be of enduring significance not only for the region from the Oxus to the Euphrates, but also for the Eurasian sphere, and briefly even for that of north Africa. Iran is often encountered through the prism of the classical and biblical worlds, where Cyrus and Darius the Great loom large as rulers of many lands and peoples. However, as Touraj Daryaee shows, neither these great kings, nor Xerxes' military expeditions to Greece, nor Sasanian encounters with the Romans centuries later, are the sum total of ancient Iran. Rather than focusing on the traditional Persian triple empires - Achaemenids, Arsacids/Parthians, and Sasanians (550 BCE-330 CE) - the author explores the much larger expanse of tribes and traditions that culminated in the formation of these great empires of antiquity. The result is a survey that fully reveals ancient Iran to student and non-specialist alike.