5 ms·

The Central Problem: the world of Late Antiquity from its Persian centre (2021)

55 points by diodorus 5y ago

eternalban 5y ago
Two items from the author of the book itself that delve deeper into the geopolitical background of this historic period: "Roman historians claim that the Sasanians were aiming to recreate the first Persian empire of Cyrus the Great. This meant pushing the Iranian border with Rome further and further west. Unsurprisingly, Rome and Iran were nearly constantly at war. The two powers competed for even the smallest advantage along an ill-defined and porous frontier running south from the Caucasus into Arabia. Each war was worse than the last, and conflict spread southward as far as Ethiopia, with Iran and Rome eventually contesting control of the India trade through the Red Sea. The 6th-century Roman emperor Justinian could not break the Persian monopoly there, so he and his successors tried to dominate the overland silk trade from China. This evolved into a world war when the Turks got involved. In the 6th century the Turkish nomads of Inner Asia were the foremost military power of the age. They had overthrown the Huns who menaced Iran from the east, and had built an empire stretching from the borders of China to the Caspian Sea. With Roman backing, the Turks aimed to disrupt the Persian monopoly on the India trade by flooding Iranian markets with cheap Chinese silk which they had received as tribute from rival Chinese dynasties. Iran retaliated, and the armies of the Persian king Hormizd IV fought Roman and Turkish troops on multiple fronts and emerged victorious – further proof that the Iranian war machine was more than match for its rivals." [https://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Bonner-February-2021-ANEToday.pdf https://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Bonner-Febru...] -- Lessons from the Last Empire of Iran goes a bit deeper and concludes: I wrote The Last Empire of Iran to tell the story of the Sasanian dynasty from beginning to end. It is a narrative that covers some of the most important events of human history. And over the past 1,400 years, the story has lost none of its power. https://quillette.com/2020/07/31/lessons-from-the-last-empire-of-iran/ https://quillette.com/2020/07/31/lessons-from-the-last-empir...
arketyp 5y ago
The scholastics read Aristotle and the development of Western philosophy sprung from pretty much antique sources, AFAIK. It's logical, I guess, that the dark ages of Europe were the golden age of somewhere else. But it does not follow that a shift in center of gravity of power justifies talking about a shift of a center in terms of legacy and what became "modernity", the latter which I suppose would motivate a certain perspective on history.
- Symmetry 5y ago
  Western philosophy maybe but Western science owes its early foundations to al-Biruni, al-Khwarizmi, ibn Sina, etc. That all began to fad in the 11th century as the Islamic equivalents of the gnostics eclipsed the equivalents of the scholastics. Then the Mongols came through and killed all the city dwellers in the region. But an awful lot of what later western scientists would build on came from that region. EDIT: And I'm not actually sure you can say central Asia didn't have a big philosophical impact. I seem to recall that ibn Sina's argument for the existence of God came to be pretty popular among Christians and Jews as well.
  - foobarian 5y ago
    I can't help but think of Intel reading this. What happened to the Islamic world that they didn't capitalize on that progress and reach industrialization first? Was it the Mongol setback, or did European infighting force the tech advancement until it surpassed the East?
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      There isn't any consensus on this. Mongol raids destroyed a lot of Islamic cities, including Baghdad, a centre of learning. [0] Fundamentalist ideas and sects rose to the fore, such as the Hanbalis [1], who were suspicious or hostile towards secularism and secular science. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanbali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanbali
      - trhway 5y ago
        Before Mongols there were Seljuks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuk_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuk_Empire. And fundamentalists of course played a major role. Good movie illustrating it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physician_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physician_(2013_film) The movie also points out the conduit role Jews played between Muslim and Cristian worlds and thus the results of the persecution.
pm90 5y ago
The book itself is $100. I get that it’s a scholarly work but … I find it hard to justify spending that much as someone not in the field professionally.
- wombatmobile 5y ago
  Would your life be better if you spent $100 on junk food, alcohol, pot, gasoline or Netflix instead?
  - pm90 5y ago
    Yes, actually it would be. Those are all things required to live a life that I find fulfilling.
    - wombatmobile 5y ago
      It’s your life, your money, and your choice.
- a11r 5y ago
  Perhaps search for a library that has it. https://www.worldcat.org/title/last-empire-of-iran/oclc/1138997919 https://www.worldcat.org/title/last-empire-of-iran/oclc/1138...
  - pm90 5y ago
    Amazing, thanks! I did try looking up in my local city library (it didn’t have it) but using your link I found there’s a Uni library nearby that does have it!
- yetanotherloser 5y ago
  OK, no dog in this particular fight but as a general principle... why? You can burn through a hundred bucks remarkably easily on subscription TV or live sports or computer games or board games or a few trips to the cinema or a day out or a really good bottle of something... what is it about a book that makes it "hard to justify"? ok, if you can't afford $100 for anything, you can't afford $100 for anything and that's a different (and worse) category of problem. But if you're lucky enough to have money to spend on yourself, why should an interesting book - which you can pick up secondhand and flip if it's not for you - rank low? "When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes." - Erasmus
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
> Indeed, in the 620s the Persian shah Khusro II almost captured Constantinople and was on the verge of destroying the Roman Empire. What would have happened had he succeeded remains one of history’s great counterfactual questions. Not really. There were a lot of people that "almost" captured Constantinople. Persians, Arabs, Bulgars, various other Steppe nomads. Constantinople due to its geography was pretty close to as impregnable as could be given ancient technology (especially when they had naval superiority). It was only the Crusaders of the 4th crusade in the 1200's and the Ottoman Turks in 1453 that successfully conquered Constantinople. The former had naval superiority thanks to the Venetians, and the latter had gunpowder. In fact, because of the strength of its defenses, one of the main strategies of the the Byzantine Empire was the tie down the bulk of the enemy's armies before the wall of Constantinople, and then attack their rear, which is exactly what the Emperor Heraclius did to the Persians leading to their defeat. In addition, the outcome of the war didn't matter so much, because it exhausted both Empires and made them ripe for being conquered by the Arab Muslim armies (the Byzantine Empire pretty much lost all their Middle Eastern provinces, and the Persian Empire was completely conquered).
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  In contemporary IT terms, Constantinople acted as a honeypot for attackers.
- Pigalowda 5y ago
  Heraclius deserved better for the incredible effort he put in. Sad thing to watch it go up in smoke 10 years later. Same could be said for the Sassanids though.

55 points by diodorus 5y ago

Two items from the author of the book itself that delve deeper into the geopolitical background of this historic period: "Roman historians claim that the Sasanians were aiming to recreate the first Persian empire of Cyrus the Great. This meant pushing the Iranian border with Rome further and further west. Unsurprisingly, Rome and Iran were nearly constantly at war. The two powers competed for even the smallest advantage along an ill-defined and porous frontier running south from the Caucasus into Arabia. Each war was worse than the last, and conflict spread southward as far as Ethiopia, with Iran and Rome eventually contesting control of the India trade through the Red Sea. The 6th-century Roman emperor Justinian could not break the Persian monopoly there, so he and his successors tried to dominate the overland silk trade from China. This evolved into a world war when the Turks got involved. In the 6th century the Turkish nomads of Inner Asia were the foremost military power of the age. They had overthrown the Huns who menaced Iran from the east, and had built an empire stretching from the borders of China to the Caspian Sea. With Roman backing, the Turks aimed to disrupt the Persian monopoly on the India trade by flooding Iranian markets with cheap Chinese silk which they had received as tribute from rival Chinese dynasties. Iran retaliated, and the armies of the Persian king Hormizd IV fought Roman and Turkish troops on multiple fronts and emerged victorious – further proof that the Iranian war machine was more than match for its rivals." [https://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Bonner-February-2021-ANEToday.pdf https://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Bonner-Febru...] -- Lessons from the Last Empire of Iran goes a bit deeper and concludes: I wrote The Last Empire of Iran to tell the story of the Sasanian dynasty from beginning to end. It is a narrative that covers some of the most important events of human history. And over the past 1,400 years, the story has lost none of its power. https://quillette.com/2020/07/31/lessons-from-the-last-empire-of-iran/ https://quillette.com/2020/07/31/lessons-from-the-last-empir...

arketyp 5y ago

The scholastics read Aristotle and the development of Western philosophy sprung from pretty much antique sources, AFAIK. It's logical, I guess, that the dark ages of Europe were the golden age of somewhere else. But it does not follow that a shift in center of gravity of power justifies talking about a shift of a center in terms of legacy and what became "modernity", the latter which I suppose would motivate a certain perspective on history.

Symmetry 5y ago
Western philosophy maybe but Western science owes its early foundations to al-Biruni, al-Khwarizmi, ibn Sina, etc. That all began to fad in the 11th century as the Islamic equivalents of the gnostics eclipsed the equivalents of the scholastics. Then the Mongols came through and killed all the city dwellers in the region. But an awful lot of what later western scientists would build on came from that region. EDIT: And I'm not actually sure you can say central Asia didn't have a big philosophical impact. I seem to recall that ibn Sina's argument for the existence of God came to be pretty popular among Christians and Jews as well.
- foobarian 5y ago
  I can't help but think of Intel reading this. What happened to the Islamic world that they didn't capitalize on that progress and reach industrialization first? Was it the Mongol setback, or did European infighting force the tech advancement until it surpassed the East?
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    There isn't any consensus on this. Mongol raids destroyed a lot of Islamic cities, including Baghdad, a centre of learning. [0] Fundamentalist ideas and sects rose to the fore, such as the Hanbalis [1], who were suspicious or hostile towards secularism and secular science. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanbali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanbali
    - trhway 5y ago
      Before Mongols there were Seljuks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuk_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuk_Empire. And fundamentalists of course played a major role. Good movie illustrating it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physician_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physician_(2013_film) The movie also points out the conduit role Jews played between Muslim and Cristian worlds and thus the results of the persecution.

pm90 5y ago

The book itself is $100. I get that it’s a scholarly work but … I find it hard to justify spending that much as someone not in the field professionally.

wombatmobile 5y ago
Would your life be better if you spent $100 on junk food, alcohol, pot, gasoline or Netflix instead?
- pm90 5y ago
  Yes, actually it would be. Those are all things required to live a life that I find fulfilling.
  - wombatmobile 5y ago
    It’s your life, your money, and your choice.
a11r 5y ago
Perhaps search for a library that has it. https://www.worldcat.org/title/last-empire-of-iran/oclc/1138997919 https://www.worldcat.org/title/last-empire-of-iran/oclc/1138...
- pm90 5y ago
  Amazing, thanks! I did try looking up in my local city library (it didn’t have it) but using your link I found there’s a Uni library nearby that does have it!
yetanotherloser 5y ago
OK, no dog in this particular fight but as a general principle... why? You can burn through a hundred bucks remarkably easily on subscription TV or live sports or computer games or board games or a few trips to the cinema or a day out or a really good bottle of something... what is it about a book that makes it "hard to justify"? ok, if you can't afford $100 for anything, you can't afford $100 for anything and that's a different (and worse) category of problem. But if you're lucky enough to have money to spend on yourself, why should an interesting book - which you can pick up secondhand and flip if it's not for you - rank low? "When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes." - Erasmus

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

> Indeed, in the 620s the Persian shah Khusro II almost captured Constantinople and was on the verge of destroying the Roman Empire. What would have happened had he succeeded remains one of history’s great counterfactual questions. Not really. There were a lot of people that "almost" captured Constantinople. Persians, Arabs, Bulgars, various other Steppe nomads. Constantinople due to its geography was pretty close to as impregnable as could be given ancient technology (especially when they had naval superiority). It was only the Crusaders of the 4th crusade in the 1200's and the Ottoman Turks in 1453 that successfully conquered Constantinople. The former had naval superiority thanks to the Venetians, and the latter had gunpowder. In fact, because of the strength of its defenses, one of the main strategies of the the Byzantine Empire was the tie down the bulk of the enemy's armies before the wall of Constantinople, and then attack their rear, which is exactly what the Emperor Heraclius did to the Persians leading to their defeat. In addition, the outcome of the war didn't matter so much, because it exhausted both Empires and made them ripe for being conquered by the Arab Muslim armies (the Byzantine Empire pretty much lost all their Middle Eastern provinces, and the Persian Empire was completely conquered).

inglor_cz 5y ago
In contemporary IT terms, Constantinople acted as a honeypot for attackers.
Pigalowda 5y ago
Heraclius deserved better for the incredible effort he put in. Sad thing to watch it go up in smoke 10 years later. Same could be said for the Sassanids though.