Fall of the Sasanian

A major problematic of the Iranian history is the amazing defeat of the Sassanid army in the hands of newly-turned-Muslims of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7^th century AD. There are two main-stream explanations for this historical incident: Iranians were fed up with the tyranny of the Sassanid kings and welcomed the Arab invasion of their country with open arms. The other story focuses on the demise of the Sasssanid might due to many reasons, including their 300-years war with the Roman Empire and the continuous in-fighting between different sections of the bureaucracy and the army during that centry.

The advent of the Islamic Revolution in the last decades of 20^th century and the atrocities inflicted by it on the sole of the modern Iranians has given a new impetus and life to this debate. The official version insists on the peaceful entry of the Arab army and the warm welcome of the Iranian people, whereas the unofficial version, mostly written and explained outside this country, renders the accounts for a bloody invasion, massacres, and devastations caused by the Moslems.

Mr. Shahin Nezhad accounts is one of the best amongst the products of the Iranian scholars who write in exile. It is a daring venture into the texts and annals of the history with the eyes of an investigative journalist, finding the discrepancies and mutually-negating facts and fictions and, ultimately, coming up with a believable story that is well written and attractively explained.

I recommend this important book to every interested student of the Iranian history that guides its readers through a maze of sources and narrations, back to that turning pivotal point of history of a nation which has not yet lost its momentum in our very time.