Before the Fall: The World of the Sasanians
In order to fully understand the history of the Sassanid Empire and how the Sassanid dynasty came to be the rulers of the Neo-Persian Empire, we must go back to the formation of the Achaemenid Empire. Their rule extended from a region that the natives called Parsa, and in Greek that region was called Farsis. That region was located near the Zagros Mountains in present-day southern Iran and extended to the shores of the Persian Gulf. Their homeland became the name of the entire empire we know today as Persia in Hellenistic pronunciation. From the 6th century BC. From the middle to the 4th BC. By the end, the First Persian Empire had expanded its empire over three continents and controlled the region. For a short time, much of the empire was incorporated into Alexander the Great's Macedonian empire, which united and unified Greece, Persia, and other Eastern cultures. Thus, a Hellenistic culture was created, which was largely Greek in origin, but was not so accepted by the Persians. ...