Sasanian Empire
▶ Explore on the mapThe Sasanian empire was the last great Persian state before Islam, ruling from 224 to 651 and rivalling Rome and then Byzantium for four centuries. Ardashir I overthrew the Parthian Arsacids and restored a Zoroastrian orthodoxy with the mobad at court; his son Shapur I defeated and captured the emperor Valerian in 260, an humiliation Rome never forgot. The empire was divided into provinces governed by nobles, and the king of kings was advised by a council and protected by the cataphracts, heavy cavalry whose charge was feared. Under Shapur II and Khosrow I the state collected land tax, built roads and caravanserai, and patronised a literature that included the Book of Kings. The city of Ctesiphon on the Tigris held the great vaulted palace later called Taq Kasra. Long wars with Byzantium exhausted both sides: Heraclius sacked the capital in 628, and when the Arab armies came after 636 the empire was too drained to resist; the last king was killed in 651. Yet Sasanian court art, the idea of an absolute king, and the administrative forms of the conquered provinces shaped the Islamic world that followed. Its coinage, with the fire altar on the reverse, circulated for centuries along the trade routes.