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This book explores the idea of Persia as a means of investigating the soul of the fascinating nation.

In 1721, the French philosopher Montesquieu posed the question “Comment peut-on être persan?” ("How can one be Persian?") in the title to his famous Persian Letters. After centuries of invasion, murder, destruction, authoritarian rule, decay of political theory, and increasing dissolution in Iran’s politics, this volume is an investigation into what the answer to that question might be today.

The Idea of Persia explores the notion of what it is to be Persian, but not as it has been constituted in the past with reference to the political experience of antiquity, nor as an affirmation of the secular-rational project of modernity. Rather, the book examines the question of what it is to be Persian against the backdrop of centuries in which a common, plural subjectivity of Persian-ness has been continually delayed by those who, with or without ideologies, believed in politics only as a means of ruling or of being ruled without laws or citizenship. 

The historical battle for social and political freedoms is still underway in Iran. As the nation wrestles with the possibility of an extended period of political, social, and cultural decline, it is a timely moment to return to the perspective embodied in the enlightened thinking of figures such as the writer and three times prime minister of Iran Mohammed Ali Foroughi (1877–1942) and his vision of a country possessing rational and moral capabilities, and to a possible renaissance of social and political institutions.

The idea of Persia as it is presented here sees hope in the future as the means by which Iranians may liberate themselves from the duality of heroes and saints and remake their political mentality while staying true to an age-old idea of Persia and to freedom as an essential virtue. 

A comprehensive military history of one of the most important empires of Late Antiquity

The Sasanian Empire at War: Persia, Rome, and the Rise of Islam, 224–651 is the first comprehensive study in English examining war and society in one of the most important empires in world history: the Persian Empire of 224-651 AD, ruled by the Sasanian clan. At its height the Sasanians governed lands from the Indus River in the east to Egypt and the Mediterranean in the west. Adversaries of Rome, they also faced grave challenges from nomadic powers from Central Asia, notably the Huns and Turks. The Sasanians were able to maintain their empire for hundreds of years through nearly constant warfare, but when their expansion was checked in the north by the Byzantines at Constantinople in 626, and with the Muslim invasions to their south and west beginning in the 630s, the empire could no longer be sustained, and it finally collapsed.

In this book, Michael J. Decker examines Sasanian warfare, including military capabilities, major confrontations, organization and weapons of the Persian army. In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of the conflicts that marked this vital period in the history of Eurasia, The Sasanian Empire at War challenges long cherished notions of the inferiority of Sasanian military capabilities and renders a new image of a sophisticated, confident culture astride the heart of Eurasia at the end of the ancient world and birth of the Silk Road. Persian arms were among the many features of their culture that drew widespread admiration and was one of the keys to the survival of Iranian culture beyond the Arab Conquest and into the present day.