110 | CHAPTER 4
maturing Islamic world.^54 There is a sense in which the Abbasid Caliphate
was a revival of the Sasanid Empire.
Ancient Iran has traditionally been depicted as an administratively cen-
tralized empire on the model of Rome, and its dominant Iranian- Mazdean
(or Zoroastrian) culture as an elite prerogative rather than something to be
disseminated to other peoples—this in contrast to Rome or China.^55 It has
begun to be recognized, though, that Sasanian Iran can also be seen as a de-
centralized confederacy of local dynasties,^56 and as a land of immense cul-
tural including religious heterogeneity, in which Mazdean orthodoxy occu-
pied a less hegemonic position than has been supposed,^57 while Judaism,
Christianity, and Manicheism flourished. There is also growing appreciation
of how, throughout history, Iran’s language and culture has touched its
neighbors beyond its fluctuating political frontiers, to different degrees de-
pending on the period in question.^58 Among the more significant constitu-
ents of this Iranian Commonwealth were—in widely varying modes—those
areas of Afghanistan not under direct rule, together with parts of India (or
rather, Western Pakistan) from the Kushan period (first to mid- third centu-
ries CE) onward;^59 tracts of Central Asia, until the rise of the Turks began,
from the later sixth century onward, to erode Iranian influence;^60 certain
areas of Asia Minor, notably Commagene, Cappadocia, and Pontus, during
the Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods;^61 the Scythian, Sarmatian, and
other inhabitants of the North Black Sea littoral;^62 also the Armenians, the
Georgians, and other inhabitants of the Caucasus.^63 The Jews of Babylonia
are still studied in such hermetic isolation from the culture of their Sasanid
54 Cf. J. Wiesehöfer, “ ‘Randkultur’ oder ‘Nabel der Welt’? Das Sasanidenreich und der Westen,” in
J. Wiesehöfer and P. Huyse (eds), Ērān ud Anērān (Stuttgart 2006) 9–28.
55 X. de Planhol, “Iran i,” EIr 13.205–12.
56 Pourshariati, Decline and fall [1:22] 33–160.
57 Pourshariati, Decline and fall [1:22] 321–95.
58 yarshater (ed.), Cambridge history of Iran 3(1) [4:46] 479–624; cf. B. G. Fragner, Die “Perso-
phonie”: Regionalität, Identität und Sprachkontakt in der Geschichte Asiens (Berlin 1999), for a brilliant
exposition of the role of the Persian language from the tenth to the twentieth centuries. For maximalist
late Sasanian versions of Ērānšahr from Oxus to Nile, see T. Daryaee, “Ethnic and territorial boundaries
in late antique and early medieval Persia”, in F. Curta (ed.), Borders, barriers, and ethnogenesis (Turnhout
2005) 123–38. On the languages related to or influenced by Middle Persian, see R. Schmitt, Die irani-
schen Sprachen in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Wiesbaden 2000) 43–65.
59 On India, see P. Callieri, “India iv,” EIr 13.13–16.
60 De Planhol, EIr 13.205–12 [4:55].
61 L. Raditsa, “Iranians in Asia Minor,” in yarshater (ed.), Cambridge history of Iran 3(1) [4:46]
100–15; and the relevant articles in EIr.
62 y. Ustinova, “Orientalization: Once, twice, or more?,” in C. Bonnet and others (eds), Les reli-
gions orientales dans le monde grec et romain (Brussels 2009) 311–24.
63 S. H. Rapp, “Chronolog y, crossroads, and commonwealths: World- regional schemes and the
lessons of Caucasia,” in J. H. Bentley and others (eds), Interactions: Transregional perspectives on world
history (Honolulu 2005) 175–76, 185–86, 187–89 (my thanks to Anthony Kaldellis for this reference).