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Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War
The ruins of Persepolis evoke the best-known events of ancient Persia's history: Alexander the Great's defeat of Darius III, his conquest of the Achaemenid empire, and the burning of the great palace complex at Persepolis. However, most of the history of ancient Persia remains as mysterious today as it was to contemporary Western scholars. Compared to the world-famous Alexander, the many wars won by the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanian empires, and their revolutionary military technology, have been almost forgotten in the sands of the East.
In its day, Persia was a superpower to rival Greece and Rome, and conflict between them spanned over a millennium. Through these wars, and trade, these foes learnt from each other, not only adopting elements of military technology, but influences in the arts, architecture, religion, technology and learning. In this beautifully illustrated book, Dr Kaveh Farrokh narrates the history of Persia from before the first empires, through their wars with East and West to the fall of the Sassanians. He also delves into the forgotten cultural heritage of the Persians, spread across the world through war and conquest, which, even after the fall of the Sassanians, continued to impact upon the Western world.
In its day, Persia was a superpower to rival Greece and Rome, and conflict between them spanned over a millennium. Through these wars, and trade, these foes learnt from each other, not only adopting elements of military technology, but influences in the arts, architecture, religion, technology and learning. In this beautifully illustrated book, Dr Kaveh Farrokh narrates the history of Persia from before the first empires, through their wars with East and West to the fall of the Sassanians. He also delves into the forgotten cultural heritage of the Persians, spread across the world through war and conquest, which, even after the fall of the Sassanians, continued to impact upon the Western world.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published April 24, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
August 13, 2016
I'm not really impressed by this book. I am an amateur when it comes to Persian history, and being an amateur I bought this book expecting a sound introduction to the military history of pre-Islamic Iran, its developments, its place in the wider ancient world, etc.
What I got instead was an irritatingly programmatic piece of cultural propaganda. The author tries to shoehorn the importance of Iranian culture and its lasting contribution into every conceivable nook and cranny. He takes a combative and almost insecure tone in describing the military history of Persia, instead of treating it with an even hand and objective argument.
At one point he tries to argue the fact that Sassanid cavalry traditions contributed to the rise of medieval European chivalric tradition. I find that point fascinating, and wanted to hear a balanced argument. Instead the author drew on some rather subjective evidence and then topped it off by quoting John Keegan ("to attribute the rise of European chivalry to Sassanid cavalry tradition is not a sound argument" or thereabouts) and then saying that he is wrong in saying so.
By the time the author dealt with the nativity and said that Iranian-speaking magi came to visit Christ, and then extrapolated from this event that the Persians had a hand in preserving Christianity, I did a mental face palm and put the book away.
I am endlessly fascinated by pre-Islamic Iranian history, but this book did not help me sate that curiosity one bit.
What I got instead was an irritatingly programmatic piece of cultural propaganda. The author tries to shoehorn the importance of Iranian culture and its lasting contribution into every conceivable nook and cranny. He takes a combative and almost insecure tone in describing the military history of Persia, instead of treating it with an even hand and objective argument.
At one point he tries to argue the fact that Sassanid cavalry traditions contributed to the rise of medieval European chivalric tradition. I find that point fascinating, and wanted to hear a balanced argument. Instead the author drew on some rather subjective evidence and then topped it off by quoting John Keegan ("to attribute the rise of European chivalry to Sassanid cavalry tradition is not a sound argument" or thereabouts) and then saying that he is wrong in saying so.
By the time the author dealt with the nativity and said that Iranian-speaking magi came to visit Christ, and then extrapolated from this event that the Persians had a hand in preserving Christianity, I did a mental face palm and put the book away.
I am endlessly fascinated by pre-Islamic Iranian history, but this book did not help me sate that curiosity one bit.
September 6, 2018
Good reading for understanding ancient Zoroastrian empire and emergence of persian/parsi culture that dominated the middle east for centuries.
January 24, 2025
A good, readable overview of ancient Persian empires (also getting into the Parthian and Sassanian Empires which followed what is called the Persian Empire founded by Cyrus the Great) and their military history. This is not meant to be exhaustive nor is it necessarily for historians but more for the history buff. The book offers a decent layout of the events, tactics, and armaments of the peoples it describes.
June 14, 2016
One thing that can be said about this author without any question is that he is a patriotic pro-Persian military historian, who leaves no stone unturned in his goal of presenting the strongest possible case for the greatness of the Persian military during the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanid Empires. Whether or not this obvious bias is a praiseworthy thing or not, it is sufficiently obvious that the fair-minded reader can discount the claims of the author while still appreciating the book as presenting a funhouse mirror picture of ancient history, one where the Persians are at the center of the world and the goings on of the Greeks and Romans are peripheral, which is in stark contrast to much of the way that ancient history is written [1]. The perspective of this book is not one that should be repeated very often, lest it become as tiresome as other biases, but the fact that this book can be written as a compelling history ought to be a corrective to future historians who write about ancient Middle Eastern history to do so without more sensitivity to the broader sources available.
The book, at about 290 pages of core material, is organized in a straightforward and chronological way. It begins at the very beginning of Persian history, in the mists of antiquity before the Achaemenid dynasty brought Persia to glory, and spends a fair bit of time talking about the importance of the Median empire. The book then covers the three main dynasties of Persian rule as well as the brief periods of Persia under foreign domination, as under the Greeks. The author covers matters of military technology, the problem of cohesion and political legitimacy, the tension between the desire of many rulers to appeal to a broad and diverse set of cultures within the various Persian empires and the desire of the magi to enforce a rigid Zoroastrian orthodoxy, as well as tensions between different family members, who commonly slaughtered relatives as rivals to the throne, and between the monarchy and aristocracy. The author discusses battles on both of Persia’s fronts, showing Persia’s demographic weaknesses and the division of its attention between Western forces with strong heavy infantry traditions and Central Asian tribal confederations with their cavalry hordes, giving the reader both sympathy and understanding with the strategic dilemmas of the Persian empires during their history before Muslim rule, and even closing with a laudatory praise of the continuing importance of Iranian thinkers to the cultural flowering of the early Arab empires.
In light of the book’s contents, it appears as if the title is a reference to the fact that among many Westerners, the Persian military is made up of shadows in the desert, something barely and vaguely and only partially known. The author is deserving of credit for having gone the extra mile to find portrayals and evidence of what the Persian military looked like at various parts of its history, even looking at the historical reenactment of the 2500th anniversary of the construction of Persepolis. It is unclear exactly what Dr. Farrokh was attempting to accomplish with this work: if he wanted to provide a counteracting bias that is as pro-Persian as many existing sources marginalize or neglect Persia, he succeeded at his task, but if he was seeking to provide a balanced perspective that can be taken at face value, he overcorrected and the bias is easy to spot and fairly consistent throughout the book as a whole. In a way, this book is a missed opportunity in that those who are inclined to neglect Persian history are likely to see this book’s exaggerations as an easy target to pillory, but fair-minded readers will find much in this book to appreciate and enlighten and increase their knowledge about the perspective and point of view of the Persians throughout more than a millennium of glorious and successful military history, and that is worth reading.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
The book, at about 290 pages of core material, is organized in a straightforward and chronological way. It begins at the very beginning of Persian history, in the mists of antiquity before the Achaemenid dynasty brought Persia to glory, and spends a fair bit of time talking about the importance of the Median empire. The book then covers the three main dynasties of Persian rule as well as the brief periods of Persia under foreign domination, as under the Greeks. The author covers matters of military technology, the problem of cohesion and political legitimacy, the tension between the desire of many rulers to appeal to a broad and diverse set of cultures within the various Persian empires and the desire of the magi to enforce a rigid Zoroastrian orthodoxy, as well as tensions between different family members, who commonly slaughtered relatives as rivals to the throne, and between the monarchy and aristocracy. The author discusses battles on both of Persia’s fronts, showing Persia’s demographic weaknesses and the division of its attention between Western forces with strong heavy infantry traditions and Central Asian tribal confederations with their cavalry hordes, giving the reader both sympathy and understanding with the strategic dilemmas of the Persian empires during their history before Muslim rule, and even closing with a laudatory praise of the continuing importance of Iranian thinkers to the cultural flowering of the early Arab empires.
In light of the book’s contents, it appears as if the title is a reference to the fact that among many Westerners, the Persian military is made up of shadows in the desert, something barely and vaguely and only partially known. The author is deserving of credit for having gone the extra mile to find portrayals and evidence of what the Persian military looked like at various parts of its history, even looking at the historical reenactment of the 2500th anniversary of the construction of Persepolis. It is unclear exactly what Dr. Farrokh was attempting to accomplish with this work: if he wanted to provide a counteracting bias that is as pro-Persian as many existing sources marginalize or neglect Persia, he succeeded at his task, but if he was seeking to provide a balanced perspective that can be taken at face value, he overcorrected and the bias is easy to spot and fairly consistent throughout the book as a whole. In a way, this book is a missed opportunity in that those who are inclined to neglect Persian history are likely to see this book’s exaggerations as an easy target to pillory, but fair-minded readers will find much in this book to appreciate and enlighten and increase their knowledge about the perspective and point of view of the Persians throughout more than a millennium of glorious and successful military history, and that is worth reading.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
October 26, 2012
This book is clinging to that second star by its fingernails.
What little Persian history I know comes from the usual sources: modern retellings of Greek/Roman accounts, especially focused on the Achaemenid wars with Greece, Alexander's invasion, and the Roman wars. This book at least gave me a glimpse of the wider history available, and allowed me to approach the question of, if the Persians are more than simply an 'other' vis-a-vis the West (something I must have suspected on some level), what was their identity and perspective like?
But Farrokh is not a writer able to evoke a clear vision of that past, and I finished the book feeling poorer for it.
'Shadows in the Desert' is one of those books whose title is more arresting than any page between the covers. Despite the fascinating subject - and the fact that it is poorly represented in Western historiography, let alone popular culture - Farrokh manages to make this stuff seem dull. He writes of battles, cultures, religion, you name it, from ten thousand feet up. Events are mentioned, not described, only explained in barest detail.
This is not a book for the reader of popular history, who will come away from it with scarcely a better sense of the Persians than he had before, and without the benefit of an enthusiastic author - a Tom Holland, a John Norwich, an Edward Gibbon - as guide. It is not a book for the reader of military history, whose curiosity about Persian armor and costume will hardly be satisfied by the illustrations, all of which (with the exception of photographs of ruins and art pieces) are based on an Iranian production from 1971 (are there no more recent artists willing to take up the task?). And it is not a book for the specialist, who must know most of this already.
Another reviewer - Daniel, I believe - mentioned the Persian bias he found in this book. I wouldn't go quite as far as he does in his review, but it is true that Farrokh frequently makes grand statements - or hints - about Persian influence, but fails to offer a thorough, convincing argument. He states, for example, that certain Persian practices are similar to what we see in Arthurian legend - but refuses to follow up. Anyone who has read 'Empires of the Silk Road' - with its insistence upon the foundational importance of Central Asian culture to the 'peripheral', settled nations surrounding it - may also wonder whether Farrokh has his causality backwards.
As if all of that isn't enough of a hurdle for the prospective reader, Farrokh's organization of the book is a muddle. Terms are introduced and explained late. The outcomes of battles are sometimes described before the battles themselves. The maps are of minimal use, as the text frequently refers to places that are not shown.
Despite all its flaws, 'Shadows in the Desert' does offer a glimpse of a place and time that has been underrepresented in Western accounts. And perhaps this book's title, with its suggestion of fleeting incompleteness, is not so at odds with the content and delivery of the work after all.
In the spring of 2001, my to-be wife and I were college students on an exchange trip to England. Taking advantage of time off from classes, we rode a train north toward Lindisfarne. It was an all-day affair - now sitting, crushed against strangers; now standing, staring as we rattled past the alternating scenes of bucolic fields and the wreck of industry - and the crowds thinned, and the day faded, and died, and we found ourselves deposited at last, in the complete dark, in the marshy outskirts of a fishing town, no streetlights to guide our miles-long walk to (hopefully) an inn with a vacancy. Hungry, exhausted, enthusiastic about nothing more than a meal and a bed - but out there in the black somewhere was the North Sea.
'Shadows in the Desert' at least gives an intimation - taste of salt water, smell of mud flats - of an immense unseen body beyond the murk.
What little Persian history I know comes from the usual sources: modern retellings of Greek/Roman accounts, especially focused on the Achaemenid wars with Greece, Alexander's invasion, and the Roman wars. This book at least gave me a glimpse of the wider history available, and allowed me to approach the question of, if the Persians are more than simply an 'other' vis-a-vis the West (something I must have suspected on some level), what was their identity and perspective like?
But Farrokh is not a writer able to evoke a clear vision of that past, and I finished the book feeling poorer for it.
'Shadows in the Desert' is one of those books whose title is more arresting than any page between the covers. Despite the fascinating subject - and the fact that it is poorly represented in Western historiography, let alone popular culture - Farrokh manages to make this stuff seem dull. He writes of battles, cultures, religion, you name it, from ten thousand feet up. Events are mentioned, not described, only explained in barest detail.
This is not a book for the reader of popular history, who will come away from it with scarcely a better sense of the Persians than he had before, and without the benefit of an enthusiastic author - a Tom Holland, a John Norwich, an Edward Gibbon - as guide. It is not a book for the reader of military history, whose curiosity about Persian armor and costume will hardly be satisfied by the illustrations, all of which (with the exception of photographs of ruins and art pieces) are based on an Iranian production from 1971 (are there no more recent artists willing to take up the task?). And it is not a book for the specialist, who must know most of this already.
Another reviewer - Daniel, I believe - mentioned the Persian bias he found in this book. I wouldn't go quite as far as he does in his review, but it is true that Farrokh frequently makes grand statements - or hints - about Persian influence, but fails to offer a thorough, convincing argument. He states, for example, that certain Persian practices are similar to what we see in Arthurian legend - but refuses to follow up. Anyone who has read 'Empires of the Silk Road' - with its insistence upon the foundational importance of Central Asian culture to the 'peripheral', settled nations surrounding it - may also wonder whether Farrokh has his causality backwards.
As if all of that isn't enough of a hurdle for the prospective reader, Farrokh's organization of the book is a muddle. Terms are introduced and explained late. The outcomes of battles are sometimes described before the battles themselves. The maps are of minimal use, as the text frequently refers to places that are not shown.
Despite all its flaws, 'Shadows in the Desert' does offer a glimpse of a place and time that has been underrepresented in Western accounts. And perhaps this book's title, with its suggestion of fleeting incompleteness, is not so at odds with the content and delivery of the work after all.
In the spring of 2001, my to-be wife and I were college students on an exchange trip to England. Taking advantage of time off from classes, we rode a train north toward Lindisfarne. It was an all-day affair - now sitting, crushed against strangers; now standing, staring as we rattled past the alternating scenes of bucolic fields and the wreck of industry - and the crowds thinned, and the day faded, and died, and we found ourselves deposited at last, in the complete dark, in the marshy outskirts of a fishing town, no streetlights to guide our miles-long walk to (hopefully) an inn with a vacancy. Hungry, exhausted, enthusiastic about nothing more than a meal and a bed - but out there in the black somewhere was the North Sea.
'Shadows in the Desert' at least gives an intimation - taste of salt water, smell of mud flats - of an immense unseen body beyond the murk.
August 20, 2015
this book is an ethnocentric betrayal of history in the model dedicated by Iranian aristocrats to view the world based on German romanticism. with a notion that a group known as the Aryans were the founding fathers of modern day iran. it entrenched in cultural normative values that support at this location from the region to the point where you have to be mildly retarded to believe some of the stuff that's in this book. whether it's Sassananid loss at Qadasiya to the Iran-iraq war...it's pretty much fantastic claims with no real warrant.
Want to read
May 9, 2007This seems to be a great book, I had a chance to have a look at it, very organized, well chosen pictures, and in general very elegant and high quality. The author has his Phd in Iran's history I think and he is professor in british columbia. I was so happy to at last see a new book about persia, specially that it seems to be informative. It is hard to find books about Iran's past/persia on the bookshelves.
January 15, 2016
Excellent review of the military history of the persian empire in its many guises..
aechamenid, hellenistic-dominated, parthian and sassanian
Very useful and a rarely written about subject nicely done
aechamenid, hellenistic-dominated, parthian and sassanian
Very useful and a rarely written about subject nicely done
May 18, 2016
Argues that the influence of Ancient Persia on the modern world is not properly appreciated. Rails against both a Western and an Islamic (Arab) bias in history. Very thorough in its discussion of events (names, dates, places).
November 7, 2024
Nice overview of the history of Persia that occasionally posits some fringe theories (like a Sarmatian origin of Arthurian knights) but doesn't take them too far and doesn't let them pollute the rest of the material.
November 13, 2008
Good solid research and reporting. It's highy recommended to the Persian History enthusiast. He's also been unbiased to a falut and that --in my book-- is a major plus.
July 15, 2013
Enjoyable read about the ancient Persian military. It added several insights that you do not usually get from the usual readings from the Western perspective such as Herodotus.
August 6, 2015
Very easy to read not dry
February 13, 2013
I liked it, lots of info on Persia that I didnt read from other sources.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews