Sasanian dynasty in the context of "Artabanus IV of Parthia"

Ardashir I (Middle Persian: 𐭠𐭥𐭲𐭧𐭱𐭲𐭥, romanized: Arda(x)šēr), also known as Ardashir the Unifier (180–242 AD), was the founder of the Sasanian Empire, the last empire of ancient Iran. After defeating the last Parthian shahanshah Artabanus IV on the Hormozdgan plain in 224, he overthrew the Arsacid dynasty and established the Sasanian dynasty. Afterwards, Ardashir called himself shahanshah and began conquering the land that he called Eranshahr, the realm of the Iranians.

There are various historical reports about Ardashir's lineage and ancestry. According to al-Tabari's History of the Prophets and Kings, Ardashir was son of Papak, son of Sasan. Another narrative recorded in Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan and Ferdowsi's Shahnameh states that Ardashir was born from the marriage of Sasan, a descendant of Darius III, with the daughter of Papak, a local governor in Pars.

Shiraz is the fifth-most-populous city of Iran and the capital of Fars province, historically known by the exonym Persia proper. As of the 2016 national census, the population of the city was 1,565,572 people, and its built-up area with Sadra was home to almost 1,800,000 inhabitants. A census in 2021 showed an increase in the city's population to 1,995,500 people. Shiraz is located in southwestern Iran on the rudkhaneye khoshk (lit. 'dry river') seasonal river. The city has a moderate climate and has been a regional trade center for over a thousand years.

The earliest reference to the city, as Tiraziš, is on Elamite clay tablets dated to 2000 BCE. The modern city was founded by the Sasanian dynasty and restored by the Umayyad Caliphate in 693 CE and grew prominent under the successive Iranian Saffarid and Buyid dynasties in the 9th and 10th–11th centuries, respectively. In the 13th century, Shiraz became a leading center of the arts and letters, due to the encouragement of its ruler and the presence of many Persian scholars and artists. Two famous poets of Iran, Hafez and Saadi, are from Shiraz, whose tombs are located on the north side of the current city boundaries.

Vakhtang I Gorgasali (Georgian: ვახტანგ I გორგასალი, romanized: vakht'ang I gorgasali; c. 439 or 443 – 502 or 522), of the Chosroid dynasty, was a king (mepe) of Iberia, natively known as Kartli (eastern Georgia) in the second half of the 5th and first quarter of the 6th century.

He led his people, through an ill-fated alliance with the Byzantine Empire, into a lengthy struggle against Sasanian Iranian hegemony, which ended in Vakhtang's defeat and weakened the kingdom of Iberia. Tradition also ascribes to him the reorganization of the Georgian Orthodox Church and the foundation of Tbilisi, Georgia's modern capital.

Achaemenid architecture includes all architectural achievements of the Achaemenid Persians manifesting in construction of spectacular cities used for governance and inhabitation (Persepolis, Susa, Ecbatana), temples made for worship and social gatherings (such as Zoroastrian temples), and mausoleums erected in honor of fallen kings (such as the burial tomb of Cyrus the Great). Achaemenid architecture was influenced by Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Elamite, Lydian, Greek and Median architecture. The quintessential feature of Persian architecture was its eclectic nature with foreign elements, yet producing a unique Persian identity seen in the finished product. Achaemenid architecture is academically classified under Persian architecture in terms of its style and design.

Achaemenid architectural heritage, beginning with the expansion of the empire around 550 B.C., was a period of artistic growth that left an extraordinary architectural legacy ranging from Cyrus the Great's solemn tomb in Pasargadae to the splendid structures of the opulent city of Persepolis. With the advent of the Second Persian Empire, the Sasanian dynasty (224–624) revived Achaemenid tradition by constructing temples dedicated to fire, and monumental palaces.

Naseraddin Shah Qajar (Persian: ناصرالدین‌شاه قاجار, romanized: Nâser al-Din Shâh-e Qâjâr, pronounced [nɒːˌseɹ æl‿ˈdiːn ˌʃɒːh‿e qɒːˈd͡ʒɒːɹ]; 17 July 1832 – 1 May 1896) was the fourth Shah of Qajar Iran from 5 September 1848 to 1 May 1896 when he was assassinated. During his rule there was internal pressure from the people of Iran, as well as external pressure from the British Empire and the Russian Empire. He granted many concessions, most importantly the Reuter concession and the tobacco concession, both of which were cancelled.

He allowed the establishment of newspapers in the country and made use of modern forms of technology such as telegraph, photography and also planned concessions for railways and irrigation works. Despite his modernising reforms on education, his tax reforms were abused by people in power, and the government was viewed as corrupt and unable to protect commoners from abuse by the upper classes which led to increasing anti-governmental sentiments. He was assassinated at Shah Abdulazim Shrine in Rey near Tehran. He was the first modern Iranian monarch who formally visited Europe and wrote of his travels in his memoirs.He was the son of Muhammad Shah and Malek Jahan Khanom and the third longest reigning monarch in Iranian history after Shapur II of the Sasanian dynasty and Tahmasp I of the Safavid dynasty. Naseraddin Shah had sovereign power for close to 48 years.

Middle Persian literature is the corpus of written works composed in Middle Persian, that is, the Middle Iranian dialect of Persia proper, the region in the south-western corner of the Iranian plateau. Middle Persian was the prestige dialect during the Sasanian era. It is the largest source of Zoroastrian literature.

The Sasanian dynasty (224–654 CE) were natives of that south-western region, and through their political and cultural influence, Middle Persian became a prestige dialect and thus also came to be used by non-Persian Iranians. Following the Arab conquest of the Sasanian Empire in the 7th century, shortly after which Middle Persian began to evolve into New Persian, Middle Persian continued to be used by the Zoroastrian priesthood for religious and secular compositions. These compositions, in the Aramaic-derived Book Pahlavi script, are traditionally known as "Pahlavi literature". The earliest texts in Zoroastrian Middle Persian were probably written down in the late Sasanian era (6th–7th centuries), although they represent the codification of earlier oral tradition. However, most texts, including the Zend commentaries and translations of the Zoroastrian canon, date from the 9th to the 11th century, when Middle Persian had long ceased to be a spoken language, so they reflect the state of affairs in living Middle Persian only indirectly. The surviving manuscripts are usually 14th-century copies.

Narsieh (Middle Persian: 𐭭𐭥𐭮𐭧𐭩 Narseh; simplified Chinese: 泥涅师; traditional Chinese: 泥涅師; pinyin: Nìnièshī) was a Persian general who fled to the Tang dynasty with his father, Peroz III, son of Yazdegerd III, the last Sasanian emperor of Persia, after the Muslim conquest of Persia.

He was escorted back to Persia with a Chinese army led by Pei Xingjian in 679, in order to restore him to the Sasanian throne. Pei's primary objective, however, was to vanquish an insurgency led by Khan claimant Ashina Duzhi of a Tang protectorate, the Western Turkic Khaganate; the army stopped in Tokharistan after Pei Xingjian defeated the Turks. Concerned by the long route to Persia, Pei lost his interest in reinstalling Narsieh as the Persian king and left him in the Anxi Protectorate alone, although Narsieh was able to keep his many servants and a high quality of life. Minor Turkic chieftains in the region then pledged their loyalty to the Tang dynasty due to the defeat of Ashina. The overall result of Pei's expedition was a success for the Tang. Upon returning to China, Pei was appointed the minister of rituals and Great General of the Right Flank Guards.

Istakhr (Middle Persian romanized: Stakhr, Persian: استخر, romanized: Estakhr) was an ancient city in Fars province, 5 kilometres (3 mi) north of Persepolis in southwestern Iran. It flourished as the capital of the Persian Frataraka governors and Kings of Persis from the third century BC to the early 3rd century AD. It reached its apex under the Sasanian Empire (224-651 AD), and was the hometown of the Sasanian dynasty. Istakhr briefly served as the first capital of the Sasanian Empire from 224 to 226 AD and then as principal city, region, and religious centre of the Sasanian province of Pars.

During the Arab conquest of Iran, Istakhr was noted for its stiff resistance, which resulted in the death of many of its inhabitants. Istakhr remained a stronghold of Zoroastrianism long after the conquests, and remained relatively important in the early Islamic era. It went into gradual decline after the founding of nearby Shiraz, before being destroyed and abandoned under the Buyids. Cursorily explored by Ernst Herzfeld and a team from the University of Chicago in the first half of the 20th century, much of Sasanian Istakhr remains unexcavated.