The Sassanid Persia (224-651 CE) has received increasing attention in both Western and domestic scholarship, not to mention within Iranians in general, particularly in the last three decades. The 1979 Islamic Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the theoretic-clerical regime, the apparent failure of its ideologues in their attempt to reinvent an Irano-Islamic identity based on Twelver Shia myth, and the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) were all key stimuli that have contributed to this increased attention towards the revival of a none-Islamic historicity. The present work sheds light on some significant sociopolitical and cultural aspects which played decisive roles in the collapse of the Sasanian Empire, a world's antique power, whose decline--with on exaggeration--rewrote the history of the three Asian, European and African continents. The authors meticulously describe, analyze and evaluate all the major historical events at the eve of the Arabo-Islamic invasions whose prediction, and subsequently underestimation by and rivalry within the Sasanian nobility put a definite end to the last Iranian pre-Islamic monarchy. The reader hence, by studying this book, may reconsider the downfall of Sasanians and the rise of the Islamic Caliphate to be a mere unexpected event; a cliche which still dominates within majority of scholars and those interested in the Middle East and Iranian Studies looking at Sasanians' decline as an incomprehensible surprise.

The Middle East, often referred to as the cradle of the three monotheisms, is saturated with symbolism. Situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, it is a land marked by the rich confluence of religions and peoples. It has also been the focal point of endemic tensions and conflicts, many of which stretch back into the mists of time. In this new history of the Middle East, Jean-Pierre Filiu looks beyond religion and focuses his attention on the processes by which powers and their areas of domination were established over time. His starting point is 395, the year when the Roman Empire was divided into eastern and western halves: at that point, the Middle East emerged as a specific entity, freed from external domination, and a Christianity of the East asserted itself, turned towards Byzantium rather than towards Rome. From this point on, Filiu follows a strictly Middle Eastern dynamic, tracing the rise and fall of powers linked to the three principal centres of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq and recounting the procession of empires, invasions, and assertions of imperialist ambition that have characterized the region since then. The book closes in 2022, when the men and women of the Middle East were still struggling for the right to define their destiny by telling their stories in their own voices. This magisterial and up-to-date history of the Middle East will be essential reading for students and scholars and for anyone interested in the history and politics of one of the most important and contested regions of the modern world.

A new history of Christian-Muslim relations in the Carolingian period that provides a fresh account of events by drawing on Arabic as well as western sources In the year 802, an elephant arrived at the court of the Emperor Charlemagne in Aachen, sent as a gift by the ʿAbbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid. This extraordinary moment was part of a much wider set of diplomatic relations between the Carolingian dynasty and the Islamic world, including not only the Caliphate in the east but also Umayyad al-Andalus, North Africa, the Muslim lords of Italy and a varied cast of warlords, pirates and renegades. The Emperor and the Elephant offers a new account of these relations. By drawing on Arabic sources that help explain how and why Muslim rulers engaged with Charlemagne and his family, Sam Ottewill-Soulsby provides a fresh perspective on a subject that has until now been dominated by and seen through western sources. The Emperor and the Elephant demonstrates the fundamental importance of these diplomatic relations to everyone involved. Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid’s imperial ambitions at home were shaped by their dealings abroad. Populated by canny border lords who lived in multiple worlds, the long and shifting frontier between al-Andalus and the Franks presented both powers with opportunities and dangers, which their diplomats sought to manage. Tracking the movement of envoys and messengers across the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and beyond, and the complex ideas that lay behind them, this book examines the ways in which Christians and Muslims could make common cause in an age of faith.

The most comprehensive account yet of the human past from prehistory to the present.