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.
Hormizd-Ardashir, better known by his dynastic name of Hormizd I, was the third Sasanian King of Kings (shahanshah) of Iran, who ruled from May 270 to June 271. He was the third-born son of Shapur I, under whom he was governor-king of Armenia, and also took part in his father's wars against the Roman Empire. Hormizd I's brief time as ruler of Iran was largely uneventful. He built the city of Hormizd-Ardashir, which remains a major city today in Iran. He promoted the Zoroastrian priest Kartir to the rank of chief priest (mowbed) and gave the Manichaean prophet Mani permission to continue his preaching.
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. He was appointed viceroy to the province of Sakastan after Bahram II's re-conquest of it sometime in the 280s.
Shapur I was the second Sasanian King of Kings of Iran. The 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 Arab 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 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 Parthian dynasty and established the Sasanian dynasty. Afterwards, Ardashir called himself "shahanshah" and began conquering the land that he called Iran.
Gundeshapur was the intellectual centre of the Sassanid Empire and the home of the Academy of Gundishapur, founded by Sassanid king Shapur I. Gundeshapur was home to a teaching hospital and had a library and a centre of higher learning. It has been identified with extensive ruins south of Shahabad, a village 14 km south-east of Dezful, to the road for Shushtar, in the present-day province of Khuzestan, southwest 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.
Spāhbed is a Middle Persian title meaning "army chief" used chiefly in the Sasanian Empire. Originally there was a single spāhbed, called the Ērān-spāhbed, who functioned as the generalissimo of the Sasanian army. From the time of Khosrow I on, the office was split in four, with a spāhbed for each of the cardinal directions. After the Muslim conquest of Persia, the spāhbed of the East managed to retain his authority over the inaccessible mountainous region of Tabaristan on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, where the title, often in its Islamic form ispahbadh, survived as a regnal title until the Mongol conquests of the 13th century. An equivalent title of Persian origin, ispahsālār or sipahsālār, gained great currency across the Muslim world in the 10th–15th centuries.
Pahlavi is a particular, exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages. The essential characteristics of Pahlavi are:
The Battle of Misiche, Mesiche (Μεσιχή), or Massice was fought between the Sasanians and the Romans in Misiche, Mesopotamia.
Alireza Shapour Shahbazi was a prominent Persian archaeologist, Iranologist and a world expert on Achaemenid archaeology. Shahbazi got a BA degree in and an MA degree in East Asian archaeology from SOAS. Shahbazi had a doctorate degree in Achaemenid archaeology from University of London. Alireza Shapour Shahbazi was a lecturer in Achaemenid archaeology and Iranology at Harvard University. He was also a full professor of archaeology at Shiraz University and founded at Persepolis the Institute of Achaemenid Research in 1974. After the Islamic revolution, he moved to the US, firstly teaching at Columbia University and then later becoming a full professor of history in Eastern Oregon University.
The modern Persian name of Iran (ایران) means "the land of Aryans". It derives immediately from the 3rd-century Sasanian Middle Persian ērān, where it initially meant "of the Iranians", but soon also acquired a geographical connotation in the sense of "(lands inhabited by) Iranians". In both geographic and demonymic senses, ērān is distinguished from its antonymic anērān, meaning "non-Iran(ian)".
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.
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.
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
