The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group who comprise over half of the population of Iran. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language as well as of the languages that are closely related to Persian.
Balash was the Sasanian King of Kings of Iran from 484 to 488. He was the brother and successor of Peroz I, who had been defeated and killed by a Hephthalite army.
Bahram I was the fourth Sasanian King of Kings of Iran from 271 to 274. He was the eldest son of Shapur I and succeeded his brother Hormizd I, who had reigned for a year.
Bahram III, was the sixth king (shah) of the Sasanian Empire. He was son and successor of Bahram II. As a prelude to his kingship he was viceroy in the province of Sakastan, which had been re-conquered by his father sometime in the 280s.
Shapur I was the second Sasanian King of Kings of Iran. The precise dating of his reign is disputed, but it is generally agreed that he ruled from 240 to 270, with his father Ardashir I as co-regent until the death of the latter in 242. During his co-regency, he helped his father with the conquest and destruction of the city of Hatra, whose fall was facilitated, according to Islamic tradition, by the actions of his future wife al-Nadirah. Shapur also consolidated and expanded the empire of Ardashir I, waged war against the Roman Empire, and seized its cities of Nisibis and Carrhae while he was advancing as far as Roman Syria. Although he was defeated at the Battle of Resaena in 243 by Roman emperor Gordian III, he was the following year able to win the Battle of Misiche and force the new Roman emperor Philip the Arab to sign a favorable peace treaty that was regarded by the Romans as "a most shameful treaty".
Shapur III, was the Sasanian King of Kings of Iran from 383 to 388. He was the son of Shapur II and succeeded his uncle Ardashir II.
Ardashir II, was the Sasanian King of Kings of Iran from 379 to 383. He was the brother of his predecessor, Shapur II, under whom he had served as vassal king of Adiabene, where he fought alongside his brother against the Romans. Ardashir II was appointed as his brother's successor to rule interimly till the latter's son Shapur III reached adulthood. Ardashir II's short reign was largely uneventful, with the Sasanians unsuccessfully trying to maintain rule over Armenia.
Narseh was the seventh Sasanian King of Kings of Iran from 293 to 303.
Ardashir I, also known as Ardashir the Unifier, was the founder of the Iranian Sasanian Empire. He was also Ardashir V of the Kings of Persis, until he founded the new empire. After defeating the last Parthian shahanshah Artabanus IV on the Hormozdgan plain in 224, he overthrew the Arsacid dynasty and established the Sasanian dynasty. Afterwards, Ardashir called himself "shahanshah" and began conquering the land that he called Iran.
Artabanus IV, also known as Ardavan IV (Parthian:𐭓𐭕𐭐𐭍), incorrectly known in older scholarship as Artabanus V, was the last ruler of the Parthian Empire from c. 213 to 224. He was the younger son of Vologases V, who died in 208.
Bishapur was an ancient city in Sasanid Persia (Iran) on the ancient road between Persis and Elam. The road linked the Sassanid capitals Estakhr and Ctesiphon. It is located south of modern Faliyan in the Kazerun County of Pars Province, Iran. Bishapur was built near a river crossing and at the same site there is also a fort with rock-cut reservoirs and a river valley with six Sassanid rock reliefs.
Historically, Iran was commonly referred to as "Persia" in the Western world. Likewise, the modern-day ethnonym "Persian" was typically used as a demonym for all Iranian nationals, regardless of whether or not they were ethnic Persians. This terminology prevailed until 1935, when, during an international gathering for Nowruz, the Iranian king Reza Shah Pahlavi officially requested that foreign delegates begin using the endonym "Iran" in formal correspondence. Subsequently, "Iran" and "Iranian" were standardized as the terms referring to the country and its citizens, respectively. Later, in 1959, Pahlavi's son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi announced that it was appropriate to use both "Persia" and "Iran" in formal correspondence. However, the issue is still debated among Iranians. A variety of scholars from the Middle Ages, such as the Persian polymath Al-Biruni, also used terms like "Xuniras" to refer to Iran: "which is the center of the world, [...] and it is the one wherein we are, and the kings called it the Iranian realm."
Pahlavi is a particular, exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages. The essential characteristics of Pahlavi are:
The Battle of Misiche, Mesiche, or Massice was fought between the Sasanians and the Romans in Misiche, Mesopotamia.
In Modern Persian, the word Īrān (ایران) derives immediately from 3rd-century Middle Persian Ērān (𐭠𐭩𐭫𐭠𐭭), initially meaning "of the Aryans" before acquiring a geographical connotation as a reference to the lands inhabited by the Aryans. In both the geographic and demonymic senses, Ērān is distinguished from the antonymic Anērān, literally meaning "non-Iran".
Meshan was a province of the Sasanian Empire. It consisted of the Parthian vassal kingdom of Characene and reached north along the Shatt al-Arab river and then the lower Tigris to Madhar and possibly further. Its inhabitants included Babylonians, Arabs, Iranians, and even some Indians and Malays. The province was very fertile, the best place for barley according to Strabo, and contained many date palms. It was also an important trading province along the Persian Gulf.
Inscriptional Pahlavi is the earliest attested form of Pahlavi scripts, and is evident in clay fragments that have been dated to the reign of Mithridates I. Other early evidence includes the Pahlavi inscriptions of Parthian coins and the rock inscriptions of Sasanian emperors and other notables, such as Kartir the High Priest.
Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr is a surviving Middle Persian text on geography, which was completed in the late eighth or early ninth centuries AD. The text gives a numbered list of the cities of Eranshahr and their history and importance for Persian history. The text itself has indication that it was also redacted at the time of Khosrow II in 7th century as it mentions several places in Africa and Persian Gulf conquered by the Sasanians.
Shapur IV, was king of Sasanian Armenia from 415 to 420, who briefly ruled the Sasanian Empire in 420. The only witnesses to this brief reign are the 5th century Armenian historians Łazar Pʿarpecʿi and Movses Khorenatsʿi, and the Mandaean Book of Kings, in which he appears as "King Shābur, son of Yazdiger."
Pars was a Sasanian province in Late Antiquity, which almost corresponded to the present-day province of Fars. The province bordered Khuzestan in the west, Kirman in the east, Spahan in the north, and Mazun in the south.
Parthian version of Shapur I's inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht
Parthian (above), along with Greek (below) versions of Shapur inscription in Naqsh-e Rajab
Shapur III's inscription in Taq-e Bostan
