Iran at War

Аннотация

Once again, the key question arising is Iran or Persia? As noted in the introductory notes of Shadows in the Desert, both are correct. The Greeks referred to the first Iranian Achaemenid Empire as “Perseeya” or Persia, a term which then entered the Western and European lexicon. The Iranians refer to themselves as Eire-Anor Ir-An(land of the Aryans); this was in essence a union of Medes, Persians, and the now mostly extinct northern Iranians. The end of the Sassanian Empire in the mid-7th century as a result of the Arabian conquests marks the end of the history of pre-Islamic Iran or Persia. Though it was conquered and its Zoroastrian faith replaced by Islam, Iran’s cultural identity endured. It was the Safavids who finally restored a united Iranian realm with frontiers approximating to those seen during the Sassanian era.