Vox Populi:

At its height, around 620 CE, the Sasanian empire ruled over a territory stretching from Jerusalem in the west to Samarkand in the east. The royal court at the ancient city of Ctesiphon, near present-day Baghdad, was the political heart of this vast realm, and its official religion was the ancient Iranian faith, Zoroastrianism. In royal iconography, the king of the Sasanians was likened to Ohrmazd, the good creator God: just as Ohrmazd vanquishes the evil spirit Ahriman, so, too, does the king triumph over his enemies on the battlefield. For at least 1,000 years, the Zoroastrian faith held sway over the empires of Persia.

In 651 CE, the Sasanian empire collapsed. Armies commanded by the second and third Islamic caliphs, Umar ibn al-Khattab and Uthman ibn Affan, relentlessly pushed defeated Persian forces eastward from the imperial heartland in Mesopotamia. Yazdegird III, the last Sasanian king, was murdered. The remnants of the royal family fled to China. It was a total defeat, unprecedented in Iranian history. Faced with today’s world-changing events, this Iranian experience has much to teach us. In responding to an event different from, but in many ways proportionate to, our own, Zoroastrians, followers of the ancient Iranian religion, sought comfort in the apocalyptic – a comfort we might now turn to as well.

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