v16_0127 - SASANIAN - SASANIAN KINGDOM - ARDASHIR I Drachme

SASANIAN - SASANIAN KINGDOM - ARDASHIR I

(224-242)

Ardashir is the first shah, grandson of Sassan (high priest in Persepolis) who gave his name to the dynasty which claimed descent from the Achaemenids. He is the founder of the last Indo-European empire before the Arab conquest. He forged a powerful army, a centralized administration and a state religion, Zoroastrianism. Zoroaster or Zarathustra reformed the Mazdean religion in the 6th century BC. -VS. Ardashir (Artaxerxes) appears from 212. He suppresses his brothers and the little princes of his province, extends his suzerainty far beyond Perside, on Isfahan and Kerman. Artaban IV raises an army to fight him. But in 224, in the plain of Hormizdaghân in Susiane, he was killed by the hand of Ardashir. Tradition reports that the Sassanid crushed the head of the last Arsacid king with his foot.. The new dynasty overcame the ultimate resistance when Ardashir (who would have married a daughter or cousin of Artaban IV), was crowned "King of kings of Iran" at Ctesiphon (226). After 228 and the disappearance of Vologèse VI, he is the only master of the Kingdom. He then turns against the hereditary enemy, the Roman. Alexander Severus in 231 then Gordian III in 240 and 242 were forced to go to the field of operations in order to defend the limes and the threatened province of Syria. When Ardashir died in 242, he left his son Sapor I (Chapour) a powerful and unified empire that would shake Rome for the next thirty years..