In Persia, the Parthians fell
to Ardashir I in two-twenty-four,
who claimed descent from Sasan, a priest,
and founded the Sassanid rule once more.
The new dynasty revived old glory,
the vision of Achaemenid days,
and made Zoroastrianism state religion,
with Kartir as high priest of ways.
They centered on Ctesiphon their seat,
on the Tigris near old Babylon's ground.
They warred with Rome for four centuries,
locked in a struggle without bound.
Shapur I captured Valerian,
defeated three Roman emperors in field,
carved his triumph on Naqsh-e Rustam's cliffs,
where Achaemenid tombs were sealed.
Mani arose in Shapur's court,
the prophet of Manichaeism,
blending Zoroastrian dualism with
Buddhist, Christian, and Gnostic idealism.
Mani saw himself as the seal
of all prophets — Zarathustra, Buddha,
Jesus — completing their partial light
into a universal global code.
The religion spread from Persia east
to Central Asia and to China past,
west to Rome, where Augustine embraced it
for nine years, before he broke fast.
Shapur tolerated Mani. Bahram
would kill him, and Kartir the priest
would persecute Manichaeans hard,
Jews, Buddhists, Christians — no decreased.
Zoroastrianism hardened into
an orthodoxy defending its soil.
The Avesta was finally written down
to fix the canon from centuries' toil.
Khosrow I brought the golden age,
reformed taxation, built canals,
received Greek philosophers fleeing
Justinian's Athens shut locales.
He commissioned translation of
Indian, Greek, and Syriac books
into Middle Persian, preserving learning
that otherwise would have been shook.
The game of chess arrived from India
to his court, where it was refined.
The Pancatantra was translated
as Kalila wa Dimna, combined
with Persian wisdom, and later became
the source of fables across the world.
Aesop's cousins, Uncle Remus' kin,
traveled through Khosrow's court unfurled.
Khosrow II would fight the last great
war with Rome's Eastern continuation,
capture Jerusalem and take the True Cross,
nearly destroy Byzantium's foundation.
Then Heraclius would counter-strike,
marching into Persia's heartland,
recovering the Cross, ending the war,
exhausting both empires first-hand.
Both empires were spent. The stage was set
for the Arab conquest sweeping north.
Within a decade of that war's end,
the Sassanid realm would be going forth
to its destruction. Yazdegerd III,
the last shah, would flee across the land,
murdered by a miller at Merv.
The fire temples would cease their stand.
But the cultural inheritance endured.
Persian language, literature, art
would resurface under Islamic rule
and shape the Islamic world's heart.
The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi would
preserve the pre-Islamic past in verse.
The Zoroastrians who fled to India
became Parsis, their faith's unsquashed reverse.
Stand.