'Persia. Handbooks prepared under the direction of the Historical Section of the Foreign Office - no 80' [‎12v] (31/164)

18
HISTORY
[No. 80
226-650.—Period of the Sasanian, or second great
Persian dynasty, which waged successful war with
the Romans, .defeated the Emperors Valerian and
Julian, and carried the western frontier of the Persian
Empire into the middle of Asia Minor, to Amid and
Orhai. Its culminating point was the long reign of
Khusraw Amisharwan (Nushirwan), known as "the
Just," who reigned 47 years (531-578), during which
period Yemen was conquered by the Persians and
the Prophet Muhammad was born. Soon after his
death signs of disintegration began to appear in the
Sasanian Empire, which finally succumbed to the at
tacks of the Arabs, invincible in their new-found faith
of Islam, about the middle of the seventh centurv of the
Christian era. With t^e fall of the Sasanian ^Empire
fell the religion of Zoroaster, which is represented at
the present day by a small remnant (some 9,000 souls)
in Persia and by the Parsee community in India.
(3) From the Aral) to the Monqol or Tartar
Invasion (650-1258)
650-750.^—For a century after the Arab conquest,
Persia was governed as a province of the Caliphate;
and such in theory she remained until the overthrow
of Baghdad and the extinction of the Caliphate by
the Mongols in the middle of the thirteenth century.
But with the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate, and the
transference of the metropolis of Islam from Damascus
to Baghdad by the 'Abbasid Caliphs, about a.d . 750,
the period of Arab ascendancy came to an end; and
Persian influence began strongly to assert itself—espe
cially during the Caliphate of Haraun al-Rashid's son
al-Ma'mun ( a.d . 813-833), who was the son of a Per
sian mother, the husband of a Persian wife, and who
owed his triumph over his half-brother al-Amm chieflv
to his Persian supporters.
. 750-1258. During these five centuries Persia con
tinued nominally a province of the Abbasid Caliphate,