For a long time, Sasanian studies were mainly cultivated by linguists and historians of religion, and the only standard work on the history of the Sasanian Empire was Arthur Christensen's L'Iran sous les Sassanides (Copenhagen 1936; second revised and expanded edition 1944). Only in recent years, Christensen's authority was challenged: Several new syntheses eventually allowed Late antique scholars to better understand the history and the structure of the great rival of the Roman Empire. However, we still lacked a handy, student-friendly introduction to Sasanians studies. Now, Daryaee and Rezakhani provide us with this very welcome booklet, which I highly recommend to students, to an educated audience, but also to Classical scholars (it's never too late). Giusto Traina, Paris-Sorbonne University.
About the Author
Touraj Daryaee, Ph.D. (1999), UCLA, is Professor of Iranian History and the Persianate World at UC Irvine. He has published monographs and many articles on ancient and late antique Iranian world, including Sasanian Iran in the Context of Late Antiquity: The Bahari Lecture Series at the University of Oxford (2018). Khodadad Rezakhani, Ph.D. (2010), UCLA, is a postdoc researcher at the Institute for Area Studies, University of Leiden. He has published a monograph and articles on West and Central Asia late antique and early medieval period, including Reorienting the Sasanians: East Iran in Late Antiquity (Edinburgh UP, 2018).
