Sassanids

Examples of Sassanids in the following topics:

• Expansion and Decline of the Kushan Empire

  • They had diplomatic contacts with the Roman Empire, Sassanid Persia, Aksumite Empire, and Han China.
  • The western Kushans in Afghanistan were soon conquered by the Persian Sassanid Empire.
  • In 248 CE they were defeated again by Persians, who deposed the western dynasty and replaced them with Persian vassals – cities or kingdoms that forfeited foreign policy independence in exchange for full autonomy and in some cases formal tribute – known as the Indo-Sassanids, or Kushanshas.

• Crises of the Roman Empire

  • Many Roman legions had been defeated during a campaign against Germanic peoples raiding across the borders, while the emperor was focused primarily on the dangers from the Sassanid Persian Empire.
  • Provincials became victims of frequent raids along the length of the Rhine and Danube rivers by such foreign tribes as the Carpians, Goths, Vandals, and Alamanni, and attacks from Sassanids in the east.

• Zoroastrianism

  • The Sassanids aggressively promoted the Zurvanite form of Zoroastrianism, often building fire temples in captured territories to promote the religion.
  • During the period of their centuries long suzerainty over the Caucasus, the Sassanids made attempts to promote Zoroastrianism there with considerable successes.

• The Assyrians

  • After its fall (between 612-605 BCE), Assyria remained a province and geo-political entity under the Babylonian, Median, Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman, and Sassanid Empires, until the Arab Islamic invasion and conquest of Mesopotamia in the mid-7th century CE when it was finally dissolved.

• The Nomadic Tribes of Arabia

  • Arab tribes, most notably the Ghassanids and Lakhmids, began to appear in the south Syrian deserts and southern Jordan from the mid 3rd century CE, during the mid to later stages of the Roman Empire and Sassanid Empire.

• Muhammad's Successors

  • In areas that were previously under Sassanid Persian or Byzantine rule, the caliphs lowered taxes, provided greater local autonomy (to their delegated governors), granted greater religious freedom for Jews and some indigenous Christians, and brought peace to peoples demoralized and disaffected by the casualties and heavy taxation that resulted from the decades of Byzantine-Persian warfare.

• The Eastern Roman Empire, Constantine the Great, and Byzantium

  • He also reconquered southern parts of Dacia, after defeating the Visigoths in 332, and he was planning a campaign against Sassanid Persia as well.

• Arabian Cities

  • Another previous route, which ran through the Persian Gulf via the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, was also threatened by exploitations from the Sassanid Empire, and disrupted by the Lakhmids, the Ghassanids, and the Roman–Persian Wars.

• Spread of Islam

  • For the subjects of this new empire, formerly subjects of the greatly reduced Byzantine and obliterated Sassanid empires, not much changed in practice.

• Post-Byzantine Egypt

  • However, Emperor Heraclius re-captured it after a series of campaigns against the Sassanid Persians, only to lose it to the Muslim Rashidun army ten years later.