United States or Guam ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Nevertheless, this province was not favourable for a particularly successful national evolution. The fact was that even in the Sasanian epoch Tabaristan remained a distant and obscure frontier division and did not take part in the progress of civilisation of the times.
The remains of the structures, monuments of art from the Sasanian times and the ages preceding them attracted the attention of the Arabs and they have left descriptions of the same in more or less detail. From the information of the same Musalman writers we possess accurate accounts of the inhabitants of Persia and their religions.
From early Sasanians also comes the custom of writing on valuable parchment or paper. Now we revert to the supposition of Gutschmid. On the basis of the last-mentioned work it may be affirmed that in the Sasanian times there existed a certain Taj Nameh comparable to the Khuday Nameh and the Ain Nameh.
It was not in this field that the activity of the Persian sacerdotal community in the Sasanian epoch was concentrated.
Therefore it could not form the centre of gravity of Persian life although there is no doubt that in several respects in this province there were preserved typical features of Sasanian antiquity.
The Sasanian dynasty issuing from a small principality in the south of Persia a principality which, properly speaking bears the title of the "kernel of the Persian nation" occupies a considerable position in Persian history. Wide imperial aims were united with a plenitude of solid organisation of government so perfect that it passed into a proverb among the Arabs.
Yahya Ibn al Munajjim whose real name was Abban Hasis, the son of Kad, the son of Mahavindad, the son of Farrukhdad, the son of Asad, the son of Mihr, the son of Yezdigerd, the last of the Sasanian kings of Persia. Story of the onagar with the inscription on its ear written by Bahramgor in the Kufic character. Ibn Khallikan quotes Al Khawarezmi's Mafatih-al-Ulum.
This activity for the most part has its significance in its quality of being a connecting link, in the first place, as the transmitter of Greek knowledge to the East, and secondly, as the unifier of this knowledge with the heritage which Sasanian Persia had received from scientific works belonging to Semitic culture, as well as from the science of India.
There are sufficient reminiscences of neo-Platonic exiles from Greece at the Sasanian Court and of the school of medicine in which the leading part belonged to Hellenic physicians. At the same time in the same field we have to examine other influences. For Sasanian Persia did not remain stranger to the sciences of India.
Therefore for the study of Iranian tradition in Islam the period of the Sasanian dynasty preceding the Arab conquest has a special significance. Comp. J. Darmesteter La Legende de Alexandre chez les Parses.
Word Of The Day