SASSANID

(Ad 224–651), ancient Iranian dynasty evolved by Ardashīr I in years of conquest, ad 208–224, and destroyed by the Arabs during the years 637–651. The dynasty was named after Sāsān, an ancestor of Ardashīr I.

Under the leadership of Ardashīr I (reigned 224–241), the Sāsānians overthrew the Parthians and created an empire that was constantly changing in size as it reacted to Rome and Byzantium to the west and to the Kushans and Hephthalites to the east. At the time of Shāpūr I (reigned ad 241–272), the empire stretched from Sogdiana and Iberia (Georgia) in the north to the Mazun region of Arabia in the south; in the east it extended to the Indus River and in the west to the upper Tigris and Euphrates river valleys.

A revival of Iranian nationalism took place under Sāsānian rule. Zoroastrianism became the state religion, and at various times followers of other faiths suffered official persecution. The government was centralized, with provincial officials directly responsible to the throne, and roads, city building, and even agriculture were financed by the government.

Under the Sāsānians Iranian art experienced a general renaissance. Architecture often took grandiose proportions, such as the palaces at Ctesiphon, Fīrūzābād, and Sarvestan. Perhaps the most characteristic and striking relics of Sāsānian art are rock sculptures carved on abrupt limestone cliffs, for example at Shāhpūr (Bishapur), Naqsh-e Rostam, and Naqsh-e Rajab. Metalwork and gem engraving became highly sophisticated. Scholarship was encouraged by the state, and works from both the East and West were translated into Pahlavi, the language of the Sāsānians.

1^st Ardashir

From 227 to 241 CE

1^st Shapour

From 241 to 272 CE

1^st Hormazd

From 272 to 273 CE

1^st Bahram

From 273 to 276 CE

2^nd Bahram

From 276 to 293 CE

3^rd Bahram

293 CE

Narses

From 293 to 303 CE

2^nd Hormazd

From 303 to 310 CE

Adarnarseh

310 CE

2^nd Shapur

From 310 to 379 CE

2^nd Ardashir

From 379 to 383 CE

3^rd Shapur

From 383 to 388 CE

4^th Bahram

From 388 to 399 CE

1^st Yazdegerd

From 399 to 420 CE

Khosrau the Usurper

420 CE

5^th Bahram the Wild Ass

From 420 to 438 CE

2^nd Yazdegerd

From 438 to 457 CE

3^rd Hormazd

457 CE

1^st Firouz

From 457 to 484 CE

Balash

From 484 to 488 CE

1^st Kobad

From 488 to 497 CE

Jamasp

From 497 to 499 CE

1^st Kobad

From 499 to 531 CE

1^st Khosrau the Just

From 531 to 579 CE

4^th Hormazd

From 579 to 590 CE

2^nd Khosrau the Victorious

590 CE

6^th Bahram the Usurper

From 590 to 591 CE

2^nd Khosrau the Victorious

From 591 to 628 CE

2^nd Kobad

628 CE

3^rd Ardashir

From 628 to 630 CE

Shahrbaraz the Usurper

630 CE

3^rd Khosrau

630 CE

Juvansher

630 CE

Boran

From 630 to 631 CE

Gushnasbandeh

631 CE

Azarmidurht

631 CE

5^th Hormazd

From 631 to 632 CE

5^th Khosrau

632 CE

2^nd Firouz

632 CE

5^th Khosrau

From 632 to 633 CE

3th Yazdegerd

From 633 to 649 CE

To the Caliphate

From 649 to 755 CE

To the Abbasid Caliphs

From 755 to 867 CE

SAFFARID

Iranian dynasty of lower class origins that ruled a large area in eastern Iran. The dynasty’s founder, Yaʿqūb ebn Leys̄ aṣ-Ṣaffār (“the coppersmith”), took control of his native province, Seistan, around 866. By 869 he had extended his control into northeastern India, adding the Kābul Valley, Sind, Tocharistan, Makran (Baluchistan), Kermān, and Fārs to his possessions; with the overthrow of the Ṭāhirids and the annexation of Khorāsān in 873 the Ṣaffārid Empire reached its greatest extent. Yaʿqūb then ventured to march against Baghdad in 876, but was defeated by the forces of the caliph al-Muʿtamid at Dayr al-ʿĀqūl.

The Caliph then acknowledged Yaʿqūb’s brother and successor (879), ʿAmr ebn Leys̄, as governor of Khorāsān, Isfahan, Fārs, Seistan, and Sind. But the Ṣaffārid Empire collapsed when ʿAmr, trying to wrest Transoxania from the Sāmānids, was defeated by Ismāʿīl ibn Aḥmad near Balkh in 900. Thereafter few of the Ṣaffārids had any wide authority, though they maintained their position in Seistan intermittently at least until the 16th century, despite Sāmānid, Ghaznavid, and Mongol conquests. 

Yaqub the Coppersmith

From 867 to 879 CE

1^st Amir

From 879 to 901 CE

Tahir

From 901 to 902 CE

SELJUQ

ruling military family of the Oğuz (Ghuzz) Turkmen tribes that invaded southwestern Asia in the 11th century and eventually founded an empire that included Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and most of Iran. Their advance marked the beginning of Turkish power in the Middle East.

During the 10th-century migrations of the Turkish peoples from Central Asia and southeast Russia, one group of nomadic tribes led by a chief named Seljuq settled in the lower reaches of the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) River and later converted to the Sunnite form of Islām. They played a part in the frontier defense forces of the Sāmānids and later of Mahmud of Ghanza. Seljuq’s two grandsons, Chaghri (Chagri) Beg and Toghrïl (Ṭugril) Beg, enlisted Persian support to win realms of their own, Chaghri controlling the greater part of Khorāsān and Toghrïl, at his death in 1063, heading an empire that included western Iran and Mesopotamia.

Under the sultans Alp-Arslan and Malik-Shāh, the Seljuq empire was extended to include all of Iran and Mesopotamia and Syria, including Palestine. In 1071 Alp-Arslan defeated an immense Byzantine army at Manzikert and captured the Byzantine emperor Romanus IV Diogenes. The way was open for Turkmen tribesmen to settle in Asia Minor.

Because of Toghrïl Beg’s victory over the Būyids in Baghdad in 1055, the Seljuqs came to be seen as the restorers of Muslim unity under the Sunnite caliphate. While Alp-Arslan and Malik-Shāh expanded the empire to the frontier of Egypt, the Seljuq vizier Niẓām al-Mulk oversaw the empire’s organization during both their reigns. The Seljuq empire, political as well as religious in character, left a strong legacy to Islām. During the Seljuq period a network of madrasahs (Islāmic colleges) was founded, capable of giving uniform training to the state’s administrators and religious scholars. Among the many mosques built by the sultans was the Great Mosque of Eṣfahān (the Masjed-e Jāmeʿ). Persian cultural autonomy flourished in the Seljuq empire. Because the Turkish Seljuqs had no Islāmic tradition or strong literary heritage of their own, they adopted the cultural language of their Persian instructors in Islām. Literary Persian thus spread to the whole of Iran, and the Arabic language disappeared in that country except in works of religious scholarship.

The Seljuq empire was unable to prevent the rise of the Islāmic terrorist sect known as the Assassins and its murder of vizier Niẓām al-Mulk in 1092. More importantly, the empire was undermined by the Seljuqs’ practice of dividing provinces among a deceased ruler’s sons, thus creating numerous independent and unstable principalities. Internecine struggles for power followed.

The last of the Iranian Seljuqs died on the battlefield in 1194, and by 1200 Seljuq power was at an end everywhere except in Anatolia.

Alp-Arslan’s victory at Manzikert in 1071 had opened the Byzantine frontier to Oǧuz tribesmen, and they soon established themselves as mercenaries in the Byzantines’ local struggles. Their employment by rival Byzantine generals vying for the throne of Constantinople (now Istanbul) gained them increasing influence, and gradually they assumed control of Anatolia as allies of the Byzantine emperor. They were driven to the interior of Anatolia by crusaders in 1097; hemmed in between the Byzantine Greeks on the west and by the crusader states in Syria on the east, the Seljuq Turks organized their Anatolian domain as the sultanate of Rūm. Though its population included Christians, Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, and Iranian Muslims, Rūm was considered to be “Turkey” by its contemporaries. Commerce, agriculture, and art thrived in the kingdom, where a tolerance of races and religions contributed to order and stability.

A war against the Khwārezm-Shāh dynasty of Iran instigated in 1230 by the Rūm sultan ʿAlaʾ ad-Dīn Kay-Qubādh (Kaikobad) I led ultimately to the disintegration of Rūm and of Seljuq power. The loss of the Khorezmian buffer state meant that when the invading Mongols reached Turkey’s eastern frontiers, the Seljuqs could not fend them off. At the Battle of Köse Dagh in 1243, Seljuq autonomy was lost forever. For a time the Seljuq sultanate continued as a Mongol province, although some Turkmen emirs maintained small principalities of their own in distant mountainous districts. The Seljuq dynasty died out at last early in the 13th century.

2^nd Mahmoud

From 1118 to 1131 CE

Toghril

From 1131 to 1134 CE

Masoud

From 1134 to 1152 CE

3^rd Malik Shah

From 1152 to 1153 CE

2^nd Mohammad

From 1153 to 1160 CE

Solaiman Shah

From 1160 to 1161 CE

Arslan Shah

From 1161 to 1176 CE

3^rd Toghril

From 1176 to 1194 CE

KHWAREZMID

Most Iranian locals become Mongol vassals

From 1221 to 1253 CE

Most of Iran under direct Mongol rule

From 1253 to 1295 CE