The Sasanian Empire at War: Persia, Rome, and the Rise of Islam, 224–651

by Michael Decker

If you were to take a random snapshot of what the Middle East looked like in the centuries immediately before the advent of Islam you would see an image close to a Hieronymus Bosch depiction of hell. The area from Anatolia to Persia was a realm of constant warfare between the Sassanian and Byzantine empires, the two great superpowers of their time. These empires fought gruesome wars that lasted decades at a time, leaving massacres and charred cities and towns in their wake. As is so often the case, even today, imperial warfare on the periphery also corrupted life in the metropole. Sasanian and Byzantine society both became poorer and more oppressive for the average person, as their leaders poured all their resources and attention to waging wars of conquest against rivals and neighbours. This loss of domestic legitimacy would help set the stage for their demise at the hands of an unlikely Arab Muslim-led revolutionary movement that burst onto the world stage in the 7th century.

This book is a history of great wars that took place between the Sassanians and Byzantines in the centuries before Islam. Usually, I would have to say you need to be a history nerd to enjoy a story like this. But the writing here is so enthralling and immersive that Decker makes this distant period feel almost cinematic. The imperiual wars of Shapur, Yazdegerd, and Ardeshir – some of the famous late Sassanian emperors, reshaped the map of the world. Zoroastrians, they fought the Byzantines as pagans and then as Christians following their embrace of that religion under Constantine. Unlike the Byzantines, who stumbled along for many centuries despite territorial losses, the Sassanian empire was conquered in total by the Arab invasions that established Islam. Yet Persian culture lived on, expressing itself through that fate and attaining political power following the Abbasid Revolution. Islam was heavily “Persianized,” even as the Sassanian line came to an end. Beyond art, architecture, and the Zoroastrian idea of total marriage between politics and religion, much of what carried over from the Sassanians to Islam related to a continuation of medieval Persian martial prowess and military strategy.

As far as military histories go, this was a great one. It was especially interesting to note how much the war between the Byzantines and Sassanians was perceived specifically as a Holy War between Christianity and Zoroastrianism by the participants. This conflict would seamlessly continue in modified form as a war between Christianity and Islam, defined by East and West, once Persian religion sensibilities changed.